Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1892 — TWO TARIFF SPEECHES. [ARTICLE]

TWO TARIFF SPEECHES.

SMcMillin and Dingley Begin the Debate in the House. i > fThe Two Leaders State tlie Questions | ' "tor their Respective Sides. 'I . _ ji The first important tariff st>eech of the session was delivered in the House Wednesday by Mr. McMillin, of Tennessee, fwhp had evidently careful lf~ prepared For it. As an introductory Mr.. McMillin said: ' r “The last Congress imposed the highest tariff tax ever imposed in this country. Jit also made the most extravagant appropriations ever made Here in time of peace. This Congress was sent here to correct both evils. The expenditures in the two years, for which the last Congress appropriated. besides the deficiencies, aggregated $1,0e0,000.000, or more than $500,000,000 •each year—about a third of all the money Jin existence in the United States. When we take from our currency the one hundred millions of gold held for redemption purposes in the treasury, the reserves required in the National Banks, and the different reserves held from circulation in other ways, we find that these expenditures reached annually nearly one naif of all the money in actual circulation. Can there be permanent prosperity while onehalf or even one-third of all the money has to go through the hands of a Federal (tax gatherer every year, besides the taxes for State, county and municipal purposes? There Isa remedy. Impose less taxes and Spend less money. That is what this Congress means to do. Mr. Chairman, the tariff law has now been in operation for one year and five months. VVEeie are the beneficial effects (that were to follow from it? Where is that magnificent price the farmer and wool grower was to realize? Where arethe.increased wages the laboring man was to get? I see before me many-men who Voted for that monstrous measure. If the facts were with them they would proclaim them to the world. I defy contradiction" when I say the farmer has realized from 2 fco 3 cents less on the pound from his wool . than he did before, and I challenge any Representative herd’ to point to a single line of manufactures in which the laborers’ wages havo been increased by that law. The laborer has been forced to pay more for the roof that shelters him, for the hat that covers his head and the woolens that cover his back. He has had to ray more for tha. linen he wears and the hammer and hoe*With which he works. Yet his wages have not gone up one cent. What benetitb as increased protection been to hirnj It was passed under pretense of a desire to benefit him, yet while wages Btand still or go down what he, his wife, and children consume lias been increased In price unconscionably. I ask any of the Republicans of the committee of ways and means to point to a single laborer whose wages have been increased by the law. If it diminishes the revenue received by the Government, if it does not increase the value of the raw material to the farmer, if it does not increase the wages of labor, if it fosters trusts, if it makes pooling profitable. In heaven’§ name let us not further legalize the robbery, but try some better method. Continuing, Mr. McMillin discussed at length the effect of the tariff on tho various articles in which it is proposed to make reductions. The first of these was wool, the duty on which was increased to U cents a pound in 1867, he said, so as to encourage the industry. Tho results, he added, were apparent. In the States west of the Mississippi, in 1868, there were 137,W 5,000 sheep. Jn 1891 there were but 81,176,000, a reduction of more than one-half, although there had been a great increase In population. This reduction had been accompanied by a corresponding reduction Df onb’half in the price of wool, Mr. McMillin added. Mr. Chairman, the firstquarter of a century of the history of the Government there was no duty imposed on wool. The first duties that were imposed were Insignificant as compared with those now in existence. The pretense that a high duty would increase the number of sheep in the older States has not been verified. The value of wool of a similar quality has varied very little in the markets of Boston and Ldndon since tho duty was imposed; occasionally a little higher abroad, sometimes a little higher in this cotfntry, but the aveiitge advance, in favor of one country or the other, has not been onefifth the duty imposed by our government, which proves conclusively that, whilst the cost to the consumer has been increased - h-y.,tliadntv. and the possibilities of the manufacturers have been restricted, both in markgt and quantity, the sheep husbandmen- have derived no substantial benefi t. The tariff rates levied at the close of the revolutionary war were not onelixth of those imposed by the present law. Those levied tr , carry aon the war with Great Britain in 1812, when this capital city had itebaptism of fire, were mot onethird iHiUgreat. They are about two and one-half times greater than the rates imposed to carry on the Mexican war, and 60 percent, higher than the rates imposed to carry on our recent civil war. Mr. when the Morrill tariff was imposed to carry ow our great civil war and maintain more than two millions ol men in the field, it is said by the author of the bill and those who favored it, that the high rates were only temporary-and would be reduced with the return of peace. Sir, about one-third of a century has now elapsed, more than two--thirds of the expenses incurred have been paid, every legitimate excuse for the increase of rates has disappeared, and yet not only has there been no reduction in tariff rates, but they have been vastly increased. Tho act of 1883 [imposed an average rate of 45 percent., The two acts in JB9O which supplanted it have imposed an average of nearly 60 per cent. This is not the worst. The rates of duty were placed lower by that act on luxuries than on tho neccessarys of life. There was less increase on the finer goods than on the coarser. There was less increase on silks than on woolen goods: less on jewelry than on cutlery: less on diamond than on table knives; Jdss on cbamlpagne than on linens. On tiffiny-of‘ the article upon which the duty was almost prohibited before, it was made still higher, seemingly for no other purpose than to enable those now engaged in operating here to form pools and organize “combines." I remember well, when the bill was under discussion in the Bouse, a Republican member from Illinois, Mr. Hopkins, rose, and pointing to the gallery, said: “I see a man in the gallery who will go from there worth millions more than he is now if this bill is fussed.” His amendent was not adopted; the bill did pass. His is only an illustration of the hundreds of jobs and schemes which that bill in one way or another fostered and carried. ,Mr. McMillin next took up the sugar question, on which he said: Sir, the authors of the bill take much credit to theiflselvcs for having placed sugar on the free list. They dki, it is true, place some, and most of the grades of sugar on the free list, but tho finer grades are still Vexed heavily for the benefit of the manufacturer and he is left with more protection by that bill than by the rates Imposed in t her Mips bill. It Is true that fifty odd milliofis of dollars was taken off tno sugar tax. But thn) was no free-will offering for the same measure provided for the payment of Sl2,Ol)O.CO'to the producers of sugar a* bounties. Again, while the fifty odd millions of tax was taken off sugar, an increase of duties amounting to about *65.0pQ,Q00 was put on , other things, and generally on the neces-

saries of life. They removed the sugar tax, which yielded eight-ninths of ite' benefits to the treasury, and but one-ninth to the manufacturer, only to place many millions more than the sugar tax on other things, where but one-fourth of the l aws exactions went into the Treasury, and thn e-fourths went into the private coffers of favored manufacturers. Mr. Chairman when we reflect that the $12,000,000 paid in bounties on silks, sugar, etc., has to be raisfed by the imposition of taxes on other things, where three-fourths go Into the manufacturers’ pocket, and only one-fourth into the Treasury, it will be seen that the tax is still a burden of $48,000,000 indirectly to the people,'and that instead of their getting $60,000,000 of relief by this change of taxes, they have hardly obtained ten millions of net benefit. The whole bill was characterized by a conscious favoritism for the few and oppression of the many. In the consideration of the bill the manufacturer alone was favored. The consumer was never considered, or if considered at all it was only to ascertain how much more taxes be could endure. The greed of the seller, and not the need of the buyer, was the measure of the eate of duty. On the subject df reciprocity Mr. McMillin said: - -UOur opponents have made great boasts of the benefits they have brought to the country by the tariff bill which they passed, which provides r tbr “reciprocity” with other countries. It provides for the imposition of taxes and she remission of taxes by the President of the United States alone. He may, according to the provision, as often as he sees fit, impose 2 cents a pound tax on sugar, 3 cents a pound on coffee, IK cents a pound on hides and 10 cents a pound on tea. He may impose these taxes at will and remit them at. pleasure. He is not required to consult either Cabinet or Congress. He may levy $50,000,000 without convening Congress or consulting it should it be in session. lam astounded that in a free Republic, where the right bf“TSxatidn through chosen representatives was bought with blood such a thing is possible as to surrender this right to one man. The most sacred right the free man has is to determine the extent and character of this taxation, but it is sad to reflect that 114 years after the right of self-taxation was substituted for taxation “without representation” some of the sons of these sires had so degraded that the. were willing without a protest, without even a murmur, to surrender their blood-bought right to the President of the United States. The speaker discussed at length rebates, and the effect of the tariff on foreign commerce. He showed by the official that in many cases, woolen producers had been compelled to pay a tariff greater than the original cost. The McKinley bill, he said, had taught the American people that the tariff is a tax. When the duty was removed from sugar that commodity went down, when the duty was increased on tin-plate, linens, etc., the price of them was increased correspondingly.

MB. DINGLEY ’s REMARKS. * Mr. Dingley, of Maine, opened the debate on behalf thejßepublicans in opposition to’the Democratic tariff bills. “If the gentleman from Tennessee,” said he, “represents in his speech and in his recent North American article the views and purposes of the Democratic party as to tariff legislation, and I have no doubt he does, then the three sporadic bills reported by the Democratic majority of the ways and means committee and now before the committee as the tariff reform scheme of a Democratic House containing 140 Dem" oeratic majority afford the most striking exhibition of letting ‘I dare not’ before a presidential election wait on ‘I would’ after the election, that it has ever been my fortune to observe in the political history of this, country. Tho gentleman from Tennessee condemns the McKinley tariff enacted by the Republican party and presenting a complete plan of protection, and condemns all projective duties as ‘class legislation,’ 'robber jj’ a ‘wall o? fire,’ to destroy foreign trade, and a measure which is springing ruin upon the country. And he'aunounces—just as he and his Democratic associates did before the election of 1890, at the time the new tariff law was framed—that' the mission of the Democratic party is to sweep every line and, word of the ‘unholy tariff’ from the statute book and substitute a measure of ‘tariff reform,’ from which shall be eliminated all ‘class legislation,’all ‘robbery,’ all ‘protection.’ “The voters who were deceived and persuaded to accept Democratic promises in New England that the Democratic scheme of tariff reform looked to the relief of manufacturers suffering for want of free coal, iron ore and free pig-iron with a sly intimation 'that the manufactured articles would be undisturbed are anxiously awaiting the redemption of these pledges by this Democratic House. The voters in West Virginia, Virginia and other coal and iron-producing States, who were told that the Democratic plan of tariff reform would leave coal and iron ore and pig-iron undisturbed and would severely cut tho duties on Eastern manufactured products, are asking for the redemption of pledges made to them, and those Western and Southern farmers whose votes were captured by the assurance that the Democratic plan of tariff reform contemplated a genera] overturn of the McKinley tariff and protection, are becoming uneasy at the noii-fulfillmeut of the pledges made to them.

“In this situation, with the Republican polican fluly and clearly set forth in the existing law, with the representative of the great Democratic majority in this House repeating bis old denunciations of the enormities of the McKinley' tariff, what does the Democratic majority of the ways and means committee propose as the Democratic plan of tariff reform? Frst, to place binder-twine on the free list; second, to place on the free list bagging and hoop iron when manufactured into cotton ties, and all machinery for the manufacture of cotton bagging; third, to place on tho free list the farmers’ wool ana abolish so much of the duty on cloth, which is for the benefit of the farmers, and to leave an average ad valorem duty of 39 per cent, to pvotect the manufacturer.” Mr. Dingley defended tho McKinley act eloquently and at length and argued that the three bills proposed by thdDemocratic majority of.the ways and means committee could result in nothing but Injury to the farmer. The free wool bill, he said, proposed free trade for the most universal product of the farm and continued protection for the manufacturer of wool. It would certainly reduce the price and destroy the wool Industry. Continuing, Mr. Dingley said: “Every evil prediction relating to the McKinley tariff has been disproved by the march of events. Every prediction of Its benefits have been made good. Protection is more than justified. The policy which has done so much to make this country the largest manufacturing, the largest mining, and the most prosperous country on the face of the earth is hero to stay.” [Great applause.] Before the conclusion of Mr. Dingley’s speech the committee rose and jthe House adjourned.

When the House went into comnflttee of tho whole Thursday, on the free wool bll Mr. Blount of Georgia was in the chair Mr. Dingley of Maine resumed the floor He referred to an article in the March number of the North A merican Review by Mr. McMttHh, in which the statement was made that the expenditures of the last Copgrtu was $1,000,000,000, This he denied and said the Democrats had included'

for purposes, the reduction of the publldebt and not chargeable as legitimate ext penses. The appropriations made by th» last Congress were less than $700,000,000 He reverted to the speech of Mr. McMilInWednesday and said he was wrong is saying that materials for ships were higher under the McKinley bill. They had been cheapened. Mr. McMillin denied that he had made any such statement. He said that Mr Dingley was in favor of free salt lot Maine fisheries. Was he in favor of free salt for the balance of the country? Mr. Dingley replied that the gentleman from Tennessee had not read the history of the Democratic party. . Mr. McMillin said he [Dingley] dodged his question. Mr. Dragley safd that he had stated the true Democratic principle, as that party was the first to introduce a bill for th importation of salt in bond by the American fishermen. Mr. McMillin—lam glad you have fair en in love with Democracy. While th lantern holds out to burn, etc. [Laughter on the Democratic side.] Mr. Dingley stated that everything the lahorer needed was cheaper under the McKinleylaw. The hat he wore, tho woo; on his back and the lumber with which the roof of hls house was constructed. Mr. McMillin raised a laugh by asking; •‘How about the tin-roofs?” It was some moments before the House recovered Its composure. . . In conclusion Mr. Dingley said this country, under the policy of protection vrartfiritSirgeWagTfwiltural, manufacturing and mining country on the face of the earth. Let us be true to that policy which has carried tho Nation to such a height of prosperity,