The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-07-10

The Chicago Tribune which is saplent on
the Tariff question, figures up the effect oil the
Moorhead Tariff bill as follows:-
A carpet which might be laid down at osr
door for 81 square yard, will cost under
this law as follows
Cost of Carpet
Premium on g 40
Duty, zoe ana 90 per cent w
Premium on ~
Total q
Rate OF taxation, i2I per cent.
The following are few of the errors ex-
pressed and implied in this calculation
First Error.-The premium on gold cost of
the carpet, amounting to 40 cents, would have
to be paid, whether there were any tariff or
not, if the purchaser paid for the carpet in de-
preciated currency.
Second Error.-B Because British importers
would clay carpet down at our door for
81 in currency" when trying to undersell
American manufacturers running at full blast,
it does not follow that if the American COM
petitors should be undersold and broken
down, and the British manufacturer should
get full command OF the American market, he
would then lay the same carpet down at our
doors for 81 in gold, or $l'40 in currency. On
the contrary, he would be likely to charge 50,
to make up the losses he had incurred in COM
peting with, and underselling our manufac-
turers while the latter were protected. For fire.
quently, to keep the market against the manu-
features of other nations, the British manu-
facturer will pay the tariff himself, and stand
the loss of it, rather than not dispose of his
goods. Reports made on behalf Of the manu-
facturers of Great Britain prove that they have
thus often submitted to enormous losses
by paying foreign tariffs, and still underselling
foreign manufacturers, at less than cost in
order to ultimately break down foreign indus
tries, and make up for their losses when they
got control of the market. The cheapest way
for Americans to get their carpets is to induce
the men who make them cheaper in England
than we can to come here and make them
cheaper here. By importing carpet weavers,
instead of carpets, we not only obtain surer
reduction in the price of carpets, but we add
to our own means of purchasing carpets
from the fact that the carpet weaver buys of
US his food, clothing, machinery, WOOL cotton,
etc thereby increasing the demand for and
the value of all We have to sell.
Third ErrOr.-Americans do not produce
"dollsrs," but crops and manufactured pro-
ducts. Whether carpets are cheap or dear
depends not so much on the number Of dollars
asked for them as upon the number of dollars
the American purchaser is getting for his
crops, his labor his skill, or his products of
whatever kind. Free Traders claim that free
trade will reduce wages here to the level of
wages in Great Britain and France, and so
enable manufacturers to flourish on pauper
labor. But the laborers and farmers of Great
Britain and France have no money to buy
carpets with-not because carpets are not low,
but their wages and crop profits are lower.
So long as Americans farmers raise wheat
instead of dollars, apples instead of shillings,
it is far more important for them to sell dear
than it is to buy cheap; for they sell about
three times as much as they buy, and
twenty times as much as they buy,
of any foreign product. The stats
tics show that 35-36ths of all American
agricultural productions find their market
in America. The chief aim of American legis-
latiOn, therefore, far as it bears on'industry-
should be to give us good market to sell in.
Give the people that and they will attend to
their buying Protective tariffs have always
given all classes good markets to sell in. If
free trade, therefore, while reducing carpets
from 1924 yard to 81 40, should reduce labor
from 50 day to 81, as we think it would, the
laborer would have to work nearly day and
a half to earn a yard of the carpet which he
now earns by working three -fourths of day.
So If free trade should reduce the farmers
wheat from $l'90, as we think it would, to 60
cents, the carpets which he can now purchase
for 10 bushels of wheat he could only purchase
then for l9 $40 bushels of wheat. The car
pets in such case would be dearer to the farmer
by nearly 100 per cent at 81 40 than they are
now at 1924. So, Free Trade friends, don't
give su these things too cheap.
The Financial PlankS of the Democratic
Iat