Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1892 — LUMBER AND SUGAR. [ARTICLE]

LUMBER AND SUGAR.

HOW THE TARIFF OH THESE STAPLES WORKS. A Manly Statement Which Every Interested Voter Should Read. [nON. T. J. HENDERSON.] .1 say I am willing to put rfefined sugar on the free list, as well as raw sugar, because after-many years of protection we are not able to produce more than one-tenth or oneeighth part of the sugar we consume. We have not been able to produce enough to enter into competition with the sugar imported into the country and thereby reduce the price of sugar. We do not produce enough to control the price of sugar. If jve could enlv produce sugar enough to supply our own people and have a surplus to sell toother countries, as we do in lumber and almost every other protected article, then we ' would control and fix the price of sugar, and the price would be reduced, notwithstanding the duty levied upon : imported sugars. j In regard to the duties levied on ' sugar, they have been a tax which has been paid by the consumer, and 'the evidence of this is that wheu raw I sugar was put on the free list and J the duty on refined sugar was reI duced from 3 and 3* cents per pound to a half cent a pound, down went the price of sugar; and at once every free trader aud tariff reformer began to say, “We told you the tariff was a tax, and you see now, as long as the tax is taken off, down goes the price and you are getting cheaper sugar.” Certainly sugar is cheaper, and why? For the reason, as I have Said, we never produced enough of Sugar in our own country to supply our own people or seriously to enter into competition withjho sugar imported from other countries, and therefore we could not control the price nor produce sugar enough which did not pay any duty to give to our people cheap sugar. Now, in proof of this I will refer to lumber. We reduced the duty on lumber from $2 to 91 per 1,000 feet; and I believe because of a perversion In tbe law of 1890 Canada removed

the duty on logs exported, which she had impo-ed. And did the price of lumber go down, as did the price of sugar? No. it did not. The price of lumber remained as high and we are paying just as much for lumber as ever; and it is now proposed to Fmit lumber on the free list, and venture the assertion that if it should be done the price of lumber would not thereby be lessened to the consumer. The farmers of Illinois, of lowa, Nebraska. Kansas, and other States, complaining, as some of the citizens ot those States do, about “the tax on lumber.” would not get their lumber one cent cheaper than they do now. And why? Simply because we have produced lumber enough in our own country to supply, and more than supply, ouy.own people, and therefore the price is fixed and controlled here at home, and, and the lumber which we ___ mawbaf nwioo wH/itkaw ft 1 KWI Am own marKtsb pnte, winsiuer /.* uau 10 fjftv A dutv 01 12 QQI* I ()00 fpf*t 01* II

* i taxes that we farmery are compelled to pay on account of it. especially on lumber, just.” he said, “as if I did not know that for every cargo of lumber we import from Canada we tnanufactured nineteen at home, and the nineteen cargoes at home control the price, and not tbe one that comes from Canada.” J ; Now, you cannot answer tbe argument of the farmer, and that is the truth as to hundreds of other articles of which we produce a supply or more than a supply to meet the demands ot our own people. ~ Stamp with care ANYWHERE inside the square surrounding the eagle if you would vote a straight ticket.. • j ......,,... r '- i »