Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1920 — TAXES AND REVENUE [ARTICLE]

TAXES AND REVENUE

The idea of Senator Curtis seems to be that all that is necessary Jo raise the $1,00v,000,000 he proposes to raise by tariff taxes is to make [ those taxes sufficiently high. The* Payne-Aldrich taxes were certainly high enough, and yet they yielded a revenue of only about $300,000,000. The men who are now beginning to press for higher duties are not thinking of revenue at all, but only of the exclusion of products that compete witlj those of their own production, either of exclusion or such an increase in their price as will make it possible to raise the price of domestic products. On excluded goods no duties would be paid, and so from them the government would get no revenue. If revenue Is what is sought from tariff taxes it should be realized that it will be great pre 2 cisely in proportion to the amount and value of the goods admitted' to the country. Lower duties and higher revenue —such is the rule. The policy proposed by Senator *Curtis is at this time an extremely dangerous one; What our farmers, manufacturers and merchants need i

now more than anything else Is the widest possible Inarket. To shfit them out of that means closed factories, lower wages or none at all. declining prices for farm products, and general business depression. The American market is today a very bad one to buy in, since the prices are so high—yet it is proposed to make them higher! It Is seriously suggested that we erect high barriers against imports, when imports are what we need if the present exchange situation is to be corrected, and the people of the world are to be able to pay for what they buy of us with what they sell to us. There is no sound industrial or commercial policy which the program favored by Senator Curtis, and others of his way of thinking, would not violate. It is not therefore a ques tion of free trade or protection but of sound business sense. The resentment over the PayneAldrich bill was deep and lasting. It, as much as any other one thing, contributed to the split in the Republican party, and its crushing defeat in 1912. Yet the conditions then were much more favorable than they are now for the successful working of such a tariff. But the American people would have none of it. Today the whole world is cursed with scarcity. Billions of dollars’ worth of property has been destroyed. Nations that once did an enormous business are now without raw material, machinery, capital and credit. People are complaining bitterly of high prices—and yet Americans are expected to Indorse and adopt a policy the only effect of which would be still further to complicate a situation that Is already deplorable, and to aggravate all the evils from which the world is now suffering. As our soldiers remembered the Maine and the Lusitania, Republicans will be wise if they “remember the Payne-Aldrich tariff.” — Indianapolis News.