Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1892 — THAT 40 AND 47 PER CENT TARIFF LIE. [ARTICLE]

THAT 40 AND 47 PER CENT TARIFF LIE.

It is a oommpn assertion of Prohibitionists, Populists, and some Democrats, that there is*no difference worth mentioning between tiie Republicans and Democrats on the tariff question. “The Mills bill levied a tariff of 40 per cent., and the„McKinley bill a tariff of 47 per cent.,” they say. The two parties are “Sinsmite” twins, as Rev. Peter Hinds puts it, on the tariff question. Now when any really intelligent man, of any party, tells you there is no more difference between the Republican and the Democratic position on the tariff question that is represented by a 40 and a 47 per cent, tariff you may be assured that that man is trying to work upon you a base deception. The two parties are as wide apart on the tariff question as they ever were upon the slavery or the Union questions. They are as far apart aa prosperity is from adversity, as wealth is from poverty, as happiness is from misery; sad those words express the difference in a literal as well as a figurative sense. The method of comparing two tariff systems by comparing the the tilings that are admitted free,

higfaer tariff country than the United States under the McKinley bOl. , On the few articles upon which; England levies a tariff, such as 1 sugar, ct ffee, tea, tobacco, wines Aeirthe average per cent, is higher than the average of the McKinley bill, upon its several hundred articles It is n it the average per ant of tariff, but the comparative exteut of the free trade and the dutiable list, and the character of the articles upon which the duty is placed, which makes the difference between S free trade and a pro tective tariff. If the Democrats were to carry the pending election, and were to carry out, to the fall extent the declarations of their platform upon the tariff question, they might strike down every duty levied by the McKinley bill, and put in their place, a few dozen articles, not produced in this conntry, and now admitted free, such as tea, coffee, sngar, spices, tropical fruits Ac., and the average tariff upon which be made to average 90 per cent The tariff would then be twice as high as the McKinley tariff, and the Democratic party wonid be twice as strongly a protective party as the Republicans! Any one can see the falsenesss and absurdity of such a conclusion, but it is exactly upon that line of reasoniug that the Mills bill is proven to be within 1 per cent of as strongly protective as the McKinley bill.