Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1901 — Trust Hurt By Tariff. [ARTICLE]

Trust Hurt By Tariff.

The efforts of the Free-Traders to put into the public mind the idea that the Tariff is responsible for trusts and for whatever evils are connected with them keep getting one hard knock after another by coming into contract with hard facts and unyielding logic. Perhaps, though, they have never received a harder knock than that which has been delivered by the jnresent situation in the sugar industry, when the sugar trust is the most active agent in attempting to secure the ratification of a treaty of reciprocity with Cuba admitting Cuba raw sugar free of duty. The trust finds itself unable to crush out the independent producers and refiners of beet sugar «nd it is therefore attempting to WOCompolish their destruction by having them deprived of the Protection which is afforded to them hy the Tariff. In this case the fact frequently pointed out by Protection, viz., that the result of attempting to curb the power of trusts by the abolition of the Protective Tariff on the articles produced by them would be the destruction of the small producers jand the annihilation of domestic competition with the trust, is made go manifest that he who runs may read. Circumstances have not developed in such a way as to make this fact equally manifest in the cases of other industries, but the reasoning man oan work it out for Jiimself.