Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — Prices Under a Protective Tariff. [ARTICLE]

Prices Under a Protective Tariff.

The attorneys for free trade, who seek, to create prejudice eif Protection by charging that it raises the cost to consumers, can best be met by a comparison of prices of a few articles in common use. In 3,860 salt, then on the free list, sold'to consumers at an average price of per barrel. —The tariff on salt inrbarrels is now 12 cents per hundred pounds, (or say 33| cents pei barrel,) and the average price is not more than half that of 1860. As salt has been made the subject of special attack, it may be well to ascertain just how much of the present selling price goes to the manufacturer, ate prejudice. In 1887, at the works in Michigan* Mil sold At 00

cents per barrel —and of this sum 20 cents was paid to the cooper for making the barrel. All beJween this price and that by consumers went for transportation and profits of middlemen. The manufacture of plate glass ; was established in 1800, when the foreign-made article sold-for $2.00 i per square foot. The tariff on a similar quality of glass is now 50 | cents per foot, and file price Ims steadily lowered until it is now 75 cents per-square foot. Rig.lron, in 1800, sold $22.75 per toil. With a tariff of $0.72 per ton, it now sells for $lB. Steel rails were first made here in 1807, when the price was SIOO. per ton. The tariff has been as high as S2B per ton, and is now sl7. Steel rails are now quoted at $31., and have sometimes been lower,

A favorite plea of free traders is that with wools and woolens on the free list “the poor man’s blanket” would be sold for onehalf its present price—when the fact is prices for blankets of equal quality are about the same in the United States and England. Here i! the proof: Last year the Secretary of War invited bids for supplying army blankets of four pounds weight, and allowed foreigners to compete on the same terms as American manufacturers, that is without paying the.tariff. The lowest British .bid was only 30 cents per blaiiket less than that of an American. The tariff, if it had been charged, would be about $1.50. Our free trade ["Cabinet officer gave the contract to the foreigner who pays no taxes- and buys nothihg'in this country, instead of favoring the American, who supplies work to hundreds of people and otherwise adds to the wealth of our country. The money from national treasury went to a foreign country, and American soldiers are to sleep under British blankets, because they can be made in England for thirty cents less than in this country. And here is some testimony

from the other side: Matthew Arnold, the eminent English scholar, statesmen and free trade advocate, recently deceased, last year made a tour of this country, and afterwards gave his conclusions in the Nineteenth Century Magazine, (April, 1888.) In this paper the writer admits that conditions in the United States are favorable to “that immense class of people” whose iucomes.are less than $1,500 a year, while in England the advantage “is greatly in favor of those with income above that sum.” Of wages lie says, “the humbler kind of work is better paid in America than with us, the higher kind worse. Luxuries are, as I have said very dear — above all, European luxuries; but a working-man’s clothing is nearly as cheap as in England, and plain food is on the whole cheaper.