Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1912 — THIRD TARIFF HURTS [ARTICLE]

THIRD TARIFF HURTS

ELIMINATION OF THAT IS UP TO THE AMERICAN VOTER. Admitting That in the Past the Tax, Honestly Applied, Was of Benefit, ( the Resent System Is One ■of Pure Robbery. The Payne-Aldrich tariff is not merely a single system of imposts. It contains three systems in one. There is a tariff for protection only. There is a tariff for revenue only. There is a tariff for robbery only' There three tariffs are jumbled together in the Payne-Aldrich schedules. The task of statesmanship is to separate them. ' The Examiner believes that the tariff for protection and the tariff for revenue are both legitimate in principle. They are indeed both absolutely necesary to the prosperity of the country, On the other hand, the tariff for robbery is, of course, wholly illegitimate. It should be utterly abolished. A protective tariff is a tariff to preserve home markets for home products —to the advantage of domestic lafor and capital. Obviously, if such a tariff is rightly levied it will tend to restrict the sale of foreign goods in the home markets. Therefore, it will not yield much revenue at the Custom houses.

A revenue tariff is a tariff levied to get money to run the government. It should be levied so as to bear mainly Upon luxuries that are not produced in this country. Hence there cannot be much protection in it. Thus it is a plain fact of fiscal science that a tariff system that Intends to be both protective and revenue producing is virtually two systems joined together. That is to say that the parts of such a tariff that are protection are not productive of revenue; and that the parts that are productive of revenue are not protective. But the tariff system under which we are trying to live is not merely two tariffs; it is three.

Besides the tariff that is protective and the tariff that puts money into the pubic treasury, there is a third tariff that neither protects nor yields public revenue. The tariff for robbery only is a tariff levied at a murderous high rate on the necessaries of life to enable home monopolists to charge extortionate prices ft does not in the least tend to protect American labor. On the contrary, it enables a privileged class of manufacturers to extort high prices without paying high wages. It dries up the springs of national wealth by lowering the purchasing power of every honest man’s income. It produces no public revenue, sjnee it bars out foreign goods—keeps them from coming through the custom house. It is simply and wholly a crushing tax levied by private citizens upon the mass of the people.—Chicago Examiner.