Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1891 — HOW THE TARIFF REDUCED THE PRICE OF BUNTING. [ARTICLE]

HOW THE TARIFF REDUCED THE PRICE OF BUNTING.

Gen. B. F. Butler, in speech delivered in Boston recently, said: All through the war of the reI hellion no bunting was made in this country. It could not be made: it was not made. "We depended upon Great Britain. There was no Tariff mi bunting exe- pt the very ordinary Tariff of that class of goods, for another purpose, and we were paying from •t? 25 835 for the different grades of bunting; and no soldier or sailor fought in the great war under a yard of American bunting.

Well, at the request of the Secretnry of the Navy I undertook, with some of my young friends up in Lowell, to see if bunting could be made here, We found out how to make it; sent a man over to England to to learn; and we started it with 12 looms, and there was a 40 percent Tariff put on the bunting. What was the effect of that? I would not, if 1 could have had my own way, had more than 10 per cent, put on it Everybody said: ‘Oh, General Butler, put a great deal of Tariff op. the bunting.” I Knew too much for that. What was the effect of that? The Tariff was so high that within 12 years there were 13,000 looms weaving bunting in the United States, and the bunting now has come down so that tiie very best that can be made on earth may be got for 818 a piece instead of 830 and 835.

And so it is with every article. I hear some people say, “Why, the Tariff is always an addition on the prices.” The last I knew about cotton cloth (for I am not a cotton cloth weaver, and somebody will correct, me if am wrong) the Tariff was five cents a yard on calico cottons, print cloths they are called: and I can buy all the print cloths in this country for thiee and-qnart-er cents, as you all know. A voice.—Three cents, three cents, General