People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — THE TARIFF BILL. [ARTICLE]

THE TARIFF BILL.

Merits of the Measure Discussed by the Senators. On the 24th Senator Mills (dem, Tex) closed the general debate on the tariff bill At the outset he declared that legislators often had to make an election between two parliamentary measures neither of which met their approval It must necessarily be so, for no man could frame a measure to meet the approval of every one. Every act of a legislature must be a compromise measure, ar.d no act more so than one regulating taxes. “This bill does not meet my approval,” said he, “and I doubt if it entirely meets the ap- ’ proval of any gentleman on this side of the ■ chamber. But, such as it is. it will have my i hearty support.” He might want to offer some I amendments to the bill, but whether or not he ! was able to secure their adoption he would bow ■ to the will of his party and vote for the measi ure as they ordained it should be. It was a i strictly party measure and had been a < party measure from the foundation of i the government and from the foun- | dation and organization of the democratic party. If he had been , chosen to construct this bill and had had the I forty-four members of the democratic side of I the chamber in accord with his views he would i have constructed it on far different lines. He i would not have left coffee on the free list and would not have put cotton, coal and • iron on the dutiable list He would put on the free list metals, wool, cotton- ! fibers, iron and steel in pigs and all i yarns—everything which required to be manu- . factured. He would do this in order that the ; manufacturers of the country might manufacture their goods at the lowest possible price I so that they could go into the markets of the ■ world. The republican policy, he said, was to provide a homo market but there was SS,uOQ,» 000,000 worth of goods made in this country i Where were the people to come from to consume them? In order to carry out the republican policy people would have to be imported to consume our surplus agricultural products. It would require 114,000,000 people to consume these products and would require the importation of Chinese, Japanese, Singalese. Maltese and chimpanzees to join Coxey’s army. ‘Emancipate our people,” he said. “Give them a chance to show their skill, their genius as a natural and heaven-born right Give them back the ocean and tten tlie workingmen will not be coming to Washington to implore the government to do something for them.” Mr. Mills lauded the action of the committee in reporting a tax on incomes. Why should wealth not be taxed? The object ot all just government is to secure to all its subjects all the rights with which they were endowed by nature and protection In the enjoyment of those rights in which they were guaranteed by their government. “1 would like to know,’’ he said, “on what principle the owners of millions insist that they should not be taxed!” He said that the opponents of the income tax said it was inquisitorial, anarchistic, socialistic, to lay a tax of 2 per cent, on incomes, but When a poor follow wants a shirt and is taxed 100 per cent, tor It nothing is said about its being socialistic and anarchistic. He enunciated tha principle that a tax should be collected in proportion to the tax payer's ability to pay it, and thut depended on the amount of protection he received. It was said that ths income tax was unjust and iniquitous, and the senator from New York (Mr. Hill), in his speech a few days ago, had called it by all kinds of vile names, yet when he was governor of the state ot New York for six years ho had never told the legislature that the Income tax which was on the statute books of the state was unjust and Iniquitous. It was useless to denounce the income tax as iniquitous, unjust, etc. It was useless to make any sophistical remarks about the difficulty of collecting the tax. The law was going to be passed, he declared, emphatically; if not by this congress, then by the next. “The people," concluded Mr. Mills, “want the bill passed now; they do not want to wait until they are starving to death: they do not want to wait until the whole country is paralyzed, but they want to do it now. Then the business prosperity of the country will revive. Then the condition of things will be changed: night will disappear, darkness and distress will leave the land, prosperity will come to our borders, light and sunshine will lighten up all our faces and the country will once more resume its career lit prosperity.” On the 27th Senator Cullom (rep.. 11l ) spoke in opposition to the bill. Ho said the initial policy and the groundwork of the enlightened universe was protection. The civilized world had grown out and away from barbaric free trade and had developed a very universal recognition of the protective idea. Government means protection. Any government must maintain itself and must protect its people. The democratic assumption that a tariff for protection is unconstitutional is in effect an assumption that the constitution of a country may forbid the enactment of laws necessary to the very existence ot the government itself. Such a position is an absurdity. Senator Cullom denounced the income tax as a sandbagging proposition and then proceeded to criticise in detail the various schedules of the tariff bill. He argued that the tariff quesj tion should be taken out of politics altogether and made a matter of mathematical determination and demonstration. “It is,” ho said, “a business question, but, of course, necessarily a political or.s, as in it is involved the great question of raising revenue for the support of the government.”