Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1893 — Too High a Price to Pay. [ARTICLE]

Too High a Price to Pay.

It is entirely apparent now to every body who has taken the pains to wade through the labyrinth of explanations, accusations, complaints and cross complaints concei niug the Hawaiian muddle, that the administration foot is in it; but as soon as a web of lies that will look plausible can be woven, the organs of Democracy will be in the field defending Gresham and Cleveland, and charging the whole business up to Har i is'in. —Lafayette Quohosh.

The democratic commissioners of Ma. k-u County have advertised for bide for -..county stationery, but confine the bids to residents of Ind is i .epolis. 'J bis is done in the interests of the great democratic stationery houses of Wm. B. Burford & Co., and the Sentinel company. If this is the kind of a gam. the Indianapolis firms are Working it would be the proper thing for commissioners in other counties to give them a little of their own medicine, by declining to n ceive bids from the Indianapolis firms. Infallible results of the new tariff bill, if it becomes a law, will be that hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods will be imported from foreign countries every year; that under the McKinley law would be made at home. This will vastly increase the numbers of the unemployed in this couij.i!:y. r ..aiid greatly.. reduce Ute. wages of those who do find work. It will also drain the country of its gold and surp us capital to pay the ever increasing balance of trade against us —in short impoverish the people as individuals, and impoverish them as a nation, just as every other free trade tariff always has impoverished it.

If the populists of Kansas don’t succeed, why not? They have Peffler, Simpson, Lease & Co. for leaders, and now they have the support of the Trusty, the paper published by the convicts of the penitentiary of that state which has become the most violent populist organ in the state. The New York Tribune remarks “that the convicts of the state should do the thinking for the populists will hardly commend these job lot politicians to the people of Kansas. There is something incongruous in the idea. If the paper were issued from the state asylum for the insane it would seem much moie in accordance with the fitness of things.”

The proposed democratic tariff 'levies nearly pll duties on the advaiorem basis, instead of specific duties, as is generally the rule witfl, Ihe McKinley law. Briefly illustrated, the difference between utbe-twq methods is that a yard of ‘ cloth of a. certain grade would, under the McKinley tariff pay a ' specified duty of ten’ cents a yard, lludi-i the proposed tariff-rippers’ law it would perhaps pay a duty , of 20 ja r cent, of its alleged cost in foreign country it was ini- ' pprtm from. This udvalorem bj e <dv ays subject to euor-‘ mous abuses. It lays a bounty on perjury and ultimately drives every nonest importer out of business. Only men who will undervalue the price of their goods, can succeed as 'importersunder the addjcalorem system, and it robs the rnrernmeut of the larger part of. dr r>o enues, besides.

■4s indicated in the American Economist last woek, the Free* Trade members of the Ways and Means Committee have now practically completed their work, and we believe that an outline of their new tariff bill will be given tojthe public within a few days, formulated on the lines we have suggested. There is a feeling and disposition on the part of some manufacturers Who favor Protection, and who have become so disgusted with the efforts of the present Free-Trade party to overthrow and revolutionize the. industrial and commercial progress of the United States, not to oppose whatever changes in the McKinley tariff may now be offered by the party in power. The idea of these gentlemen is to let the Free Traders have full swing, that the people of the United States may learn to its full extent how disastrous the Free-Trade policy would be to the country and that the “object lesson might be The greater. This they think would so effectually kill all advocacy of the Free-Trade theory that the industrial progress of the United States would then become permanently *established under a Protective policy, and no effort would be made to disturb it for a quarter of a century at least. Such reasoning is wrong. The men who advocate it do not stop to consider what the effect would be. The American Economist showed only last week that the mere fear of Free-Trade had cost a loss of five billion dollars to business and labor since the present Administration assumed office. What, then, would be the result of its permanent establishment and enforcement? The importation of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of foreign goods annually to take the place of goods that have recently, under Protection, been manufactured in American mills, by American workingmen, will involve such an enormous loss in money circulation, such a terrible waste of American labor, such a vast amount of distress among the poor classes of our people, that its effect is too terribly astounding to contemplate. A policy of passive submission to the present Administration’s Free-Trade recommendation would be far too high a price for the American people and the American nation to pay. The Free-Trade policy of the present party in power must be fought at all points and by all fair methods. —American Economist.