Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1894 — THE CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

THE CAMPAIGN.

Legalized Bobbery Right at Home - How the Working man is Deceived. . How the People are Plundered. Indianapolis Journal. —— ■ . | The recent decision of the Supreme Court in regard to the unexpended balances of the school fund calls public attention anew to the legalized robbery which for some years past has been going on in the Attorney-General’s office. The fact that the robbery is carried on under cover of law does not make it any less scandalous. Whatever goes into the pockets of trpublic“official“lif the way of exhorbitant and unearned fees comes out of the pockets of the people, no matter what route it travels. An act of March 3, 1893, required all township trustees and treasurers of school boards in incorporated towns and cities to report to and return to the comity treasurer all mnexpendecLbalancesj of tuition revenue previously received from the State under the general distribution in excess of SIOO. Township trustees and school officers neglecting to refund said balances were made guilty of a misdemeanor. Whatever the ostensible object of this law may have been, its real object was to put money in the pocket of the Attorney - General. It might have been rightly entitled “An act to set a trap for township trustees and school officers, to scalp the school' fund and plunder the people of Indiana, and to enrich the at-torney-genero'l.* 5 The Supreme Court has recently held the act constitutional, thus confirming the i right of the Attorney-general to have a dividend out of the school fund. Under a drag-net provision of. the law he claims and receives 12 per cent, on all sums recovered and collected for the State without reference to the justicepf the allowance or the trouble or the labor involved in the collection. The fee besides being wrong in principle, is exhorbitant. In the case of the school fund 'it will give the Attorney-general from $50,000 to $60,000 for services which would have been well repaid by $2,500, and which really ought to have been rendered by virtue of his office. The law having been held constitutional by the Supreme Court there will be little or no further trouble in making the collections. Yet the Attorney-general will get his commission on every dollar returned, and it will all come out of the school fund. This is ouly a sample of the kind of plundering that is carried on in the Attorneygeneral’s office under cover of law. It is a vicious system and should be abolished. Facts About Sheep and Wool; Indianapolis Journal. A correspondent in Gosport writes the Journal as follows: “A Democrat argues that there were more sheep in the United States in the free trade days, back m the fifties, than at the present time, and that wool commanded a

better price under free trade than under protection. Please give statistics regarding numbers, wool clip tmd prices/' At the qutset, let us grasp the fact that since the tariff act of 1816 there has not been general free trade in wool. The cheapest wools, worth eight or ten cents a pound, not raised in this country, have been on the free list from time to time. The Walker tariff of 1846, which is called the revenue or free trade tariff, imposed a duty of 30 per cent, ad valorem on all wools, while the revised Walker act of 1857 imposed a duty of 24 per cent, advalorem on all wools worth over 18 cents a pound, Jhis is the first Congress to put all wool on the free list. -

The number of sheep, as returned by the census, since 1840, was: 1840, 19,300,000; 1850, 21,700.000; 1860, 62,500,000; 1870, 28,500,000; 1880. 35,200,000; 1890, 44,300.000, The highest number was-reached in 1884 —50,626,526. The tariff act of 1883 reduced the duty oh wool, and the number fell to 42,599,079 in 1889. After the passage of the McKinley act in 1890 the number increased to 47,273,533, Jan. 1, 1693, valued at $125,909,264. Since that date, under the almost certainty of free wool, the number has fallen off to 45,048,017 and the value to $81,186,110. In 1880, 21,700.000 sheep yielded 52. 576,959 pounds of wool, or a little over 2| pounds per sheep; in 1893, 47,433,553 sheep yielded 403,153,000 pounds of wool, or 62 5 pounds per sheep. Since 1850 the price of wool has fallen the world over, due to the enormous expansion of the sheep in dustry in Australia and South Amer ica, where it costs next to nothing for lands and the care of sheep. In 184> the world’s clip of wopl was 788,*00,000 pounds: in 1860,-T.IOB. 000,000 pounds; in 1880, 1.988.000, 000 pounds; in 1887. 2,218,000.000 pounds. That is, more than twice as much wool was put upon the market in 1887 as in 1860. In January, 1852, according to Manger & Avery’s wool circular, the price of fine medium and coarse washed Ohio fleeceTvool in the Eastern, markets was 43, 38 and 34 cents. It was a little higher in-1853 and 1854, and lower in 1855. In 1891 the prices of the same wools, respectively,were 33, 37 ami 31 cents. Comparing the prices of foreign' wools with those of this country in 1871, 1881 and 1891, as given by trade trade journals in Liverpool and Philadelphia, the fall

has been a little less for American than for foreign wools—ranging from 351 to 50 per cent from 1871 to 1891 in Liverpool to 30| to 42} on American wools in Eastern markets. None but the ill-informed will claim that the tariff of 12 cents a pound will keep the price of wool up to the figure of twenty years ago when the price of all wools has fallen an average of over 40 per cent, in the free markets of the woidd. ? Excessive production is the cause of the decline in prices the world over. Until Jan. 1,1993, the prices of the same grades- of raw wools in New York, Boston and Philadelphia were from 9 to 11 cents a pound higher than in London anil JAveTpool—-that is, nearly as much higher as the duty imposed by the McKinley law upon foreign wools. With the certainty of the putting of wool on the free list, and the fact that the goods made of this year’s clip "would be sold to compete with European goods made of free wool, the prices of raw wools have fallen nearly to the London price. More of the Sugar Trust. Indianapolis Journal. There seems to be no end to the infamies which the ate and administration have perpetrated on behalf of the Sugar Trust. That there might be no check upon the trust’s monopoly in refined sugars all of the reciprocal treaties made by the Harrison administration were revoked by special provisions of the Senate bill. Rejecting annexation, the President and Secretary of State, for the sake of doing something, if not to favor the Sugar Trust, renegotiated the treaty of reciprocity with Hawaii, which has been of no account since raw sugars went upon the free list by the McKinley law. Pending the passage of the schedule of.the trust, the agents of Claus Spreckels, the representative of the Sugar Trust on the Pacific coast, came to Washington, and, in connection with the representatives of Hawaii, gottheold’treatyrevivedT after which it was hastened into the Senate and ratified. And now in the event of the trust’s sugar schedule shall become a law imposing a duty, of 40 per cent, ad valorem upon all raw sugars, Claus Spreckles will be able to import his Hawaiian sugars free of duty to San Francisco. This means a large amount of money for the Sugar Trust, which, if taken from sugar consumers, should go into the treasury. Strange to say, this performance has not attracted much, attention thus far. The Cleveland organs are anxious to let the President's and Secretary Gresham’s very stupid blunder pass unobserved, while other papers are too much absorbed with current discussions to consider a . most remarkable performance which allows Mr. Spreckels, of the Sugar Trust, to import Hawaiian sugar free pf duty, add the 40 per cent, duty and transfer it from the consumers to the trust’s money bags. Truly, it is a great administration. Tariff Reform Folly. Kansas City Journal. The manufacturer himself suffers loss and his profits are all taken,but the work i ngman loses his ail, The employer may curtail his expenses and keep himself in a condition to start up again when former conditions shall be restored, but the laborer who has by the exercise of economy and self-denial built himself a home on the promise of protection finds that home gone and his entire capital vanished also. His capital is his labor. If there is no market for it what is it worth? If hehas nothing to sell with which he can get money to buy the necessities of life, what difference does it make to him whether the wool in a suit of clothes cost a dollar more or less?

If he cannot buy lumber with which to build a new home, how is he to be benefited by free commerce with Canadian forests? cheese, where is the American dairyman to find a profitable market for his products? If he cannot buy meat, how is the cattle raiser benefited by “tariff reform” that has made the laborer a pauper? These are not matters of sentiment,' but of plain, unvarnished, distressing fact. It requires no familiarity with abstract theories of political economy to understand them. They are within the comprehension of any man who can read, and there is no excuse for refusing to give them recognition.