Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1888 — The Seven Per Cent. Fraud. [ARTICLE]

The Seven Per Cent. Fraud.

Journal. Among all the frauds and false pretenses of the free-traders there is none more contemptible than the assertion that the Mills bill reduces the present tariff only 7 per cent., or, in other words that it affords only 7 per cent, less protection than the present tariff'does. The claim gives the lie to all their previous professions, to the St. Louis platform, to the President’s free trade message, and to all the speeches made in support of the Mills bill. If it were true it would stultify the Democratic party. But it is not true. The alleged result of per centage is reached by distorting facts and figures. By a mathematical hocus pocus they produce figures to show that the Mills bill only reduces the present tariff an average of 7 per cent., and then ask how can a tariff bill whose average duty is 40 per cent, be called free trade? The very same process of figuring shows the duty of England’s tariff to be a fraction under 70 per cent., or nearly twice as high as the average rate proposed to be left by the Mills bill. And England’s is the model free trade tariff of the world. The fact is, the amount of protection afforded bv a tariff is not determined by the height of the average rate of duties, as the Mills bill advocates deceitfully pretend. They well know, as every intelligent man must, that the amount of protection depends on the way in which the tariff is levied and the class of articles it is levied upon; just as they may know that the average rate of: duty in the British free trade tariff is 43 per cent, higher than the Mills bill. Any man can figure it out for himself. The values of England’s dutiable im»ports in 1886 aggregated £28,955,368, of about $145,000,000, and the duties collected on these imports, amounted to £20,139,582, or SIOO,OO ',OOO, being over 69 per cent, on the values. Yet it it a free trade tariff.