Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1912 — COME BACK TO THE TARIFF [ARTICLE]

COME BACK TO THE TARIFF

All Artificial Prices of Which the People Complain Are Found to Center There. One fact, one that every man of practical sense can grasp, was very clearly set forth in the speech of a prominent Democratic leader at' the Reform club:No doubt there are many reasons why modern business has been organ ized on lines of wide combination. No doubt, too, there are many causes, natural as well as artificial, which lie underneath the rise in prices, but, however economists may argue this matter, or whatever general laws and tendencies they may disclose, we have only to read the testimony taken at trials instituted by the government or iniestigations instituted by congress; we have only to ?Ig a little way into the tariff schedules themselves and get experts to explain to us the real significance of here a phrase and there a fraction, to see the whole business laid baki and bare before Us by which systematic advantage has been taken of the tariff to raise prices •Without awaiting the assistance of economic laws, and without regarding either justice or the rights of the public The tariff is the mother of artificial prices because it is the fostermother of monopoly, and only when these roots of the whole evil thing are touched shall we begin to get control of the forces which have all but mastered- us.” '

To paraphrase the word of the illustrious French statesman, Leon Gambetta: 'The tariff, that is the enemy”’ And it is an enemy that every man with a veteran get at. —New York Times.