Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1912 — TARIFF AND LIVING COST [ARTICLE]

TARIFF AND LIVING COST

Consumers Are Forced to Pay Fully Two Thousand Million Dollars Yearly to Trusts. Byron W. Holt, a recognized authority on economics, estimates that the tariff-trust tax on the people of this country amounts to |IOB per family per year. These figures have never been successfully challenged. If they are correct they mean that the consumers of the United States are forced by® the tariff to pay fully two thousand million dollars per year to trusts. i In the debates in congress a somewhat smaller figure is given. There the total cost of the tariff is fixed at about two billions of dollars per year, of which the government gets a little over |300,000;000. This leaves the tariff-trust tax on the people at the modest figure of $1,700,000,000 per year! This is almost twice the amount of the Franco-Prussian war indemnity. They extort from the people of the United States every year a sum nearly twice as great as that which was levied on France by Germany at the close of a bitter and successful war. Every dollar added to the coffers of the trusts is paid by an Increase in the cost of living. The only way to abolish the trust tax is to give Governor Wilson and the Democratic party a commission to revise the tariff.