Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1890 — EXPENSIVE COURTESY. [ARTICLE]

EXPENSIVE COURTESY.

The Senate Bailies Over the. Tariff Bill to the Nation’s Detriment. Kew Yofk Tribune. The courtesy of the Senate is an expensive luxury. The senators claim to enjoy the luxury, but the people know they have to pay the bills. East week’s imports at New York were $12,100,695, against $9, 786,379 last year, and in the five years the increase has been $11,143,000, or 23.2 per cent. More than $2,000,000 a week, in the mere increase of imports, goe3 abroad to pay for goods which many thousand American artisans and operatives are anxious to produce. They are idle because the Senate delays and dawdles. At $lO per week 223,ff00 of them would be kept busy doing the work which senatorial tardiness compels us to pay foreigners for doing. In dry goods alone, and at the port of New Yprk alone, the increase in importations and goods thrown on the market during five weeks has been In value $4,711,677, which would have supplied work for 94,000 American workers—3o,ooo in woolen mills 17,000 in cotton, 27,000 in silk, 14,000 in linen and flax and 6,000 in miscellaneous works. Constituents in these industries who are seeking work in vain will look to their senators for the reason. i

Senators who are doing their best are not to be censured. But it is plain that jsome are not doing their best. The country has a right to expect that this most important measure, upon which the liviihood of great multitudes depends, should be acted upon without unnecessary delay. The refusal of Republican senators thus far to adopt any method of timlcing debate makes those senators personally responsible for the delay, for all that it costs and risks to the country, and for the taking of millions from American workers and sending these millions abroad to pay for goods. Indeed, the figures given cover but a fraction of the loss by delay. It is the object of the pending bill to check importations, where American industries are exposed to excessive competition. If the bill had been passed instead of imports at last year’s rates, there would doubtless have been smaller imports by several millions.