The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-03-15
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL oPIEIoEs oy YRR LEADING JOURNALS
UFoE CUBBBHF ToPIOe---coMPnED ByHRY
DAT FOR The EVENING rBLRGRAPE.
Tea-Protee eetion-ReYenue.

.
ITO the Editor Of the TribuHe-Sir:-If your
plan Of raising lea in tns cUuutry snould prove
successful. and ths Sputn supply Cne tee oon'
sumed In this couutry, would not the Govern
ment lose the large amount IL now receives
from duties on tea? Toe result would % Inae
the consumer wou d not get IL cneaper the
Government would lose lts revenue, aud tne
SoutherDers In order 10 raise me teH, wouu
have TO give up raising cotton. when las exp M
rience showsl Is the most prontaole crop Gney
can raise, inasmuch as A. requires no ptoteU
ton, whereas tea Ia lot now grown thougn IL
would be the gsineI? II you are right, why not
also bave q duty ON pIneapples and oranges
sufficiently high to allow their production under
elassY Cuba might. with equal wisdom, ex-
clude American Ice and manufacture her own
yours truly, WHY NotT
Response by The Tribune.
That IL Is much easier to ask than to an-
swer questions is already well known; and
the encouragement in the premises Is, that
the elaborate response is forgotten and the
needless question asked over again, as though
IL had never been answered. We have an
swered Gin substanoe) the above at least forty
times: let us do 1t once more, and see If it will
not stay answered for at least six months.
The fundamental assumption of our oorres-
pondent is q thrice refuted fallaoy. He assumes
that, If we should grow our own tea, our aggre-
gate imports would be reduced by the value
of the tea now imported, when experience
has repeatedly demonstrated the contrary. In
our childhood, we listened from chimney
corners to the freside discussions which
attended the unsuccessful attempt to enact
protective tariff in 1922, and the successful
attempt to pass partially protective one in
1924; and the argument OF the free traders Cn
New EDgland) ran thus:-"If We protect
domestic manufactures, we shall cease to i'm
port; without importation there can be little
commerce and no revenue from imports; 30
we shall have to resort to direct taxation for
the support of the Federal Government; and
that will throw the entire burden on the
land-that is, on the farmers. In that case
real estate must fall, and the rich,
selling ont their lands, desert the
country for the Cities" How utterly
these doleful forebodiDgs were dissipa ted by
the result, we need not restate. Our most
protective tariffs have always produced the
most ample and constant revenues. II we
had utterly prohibited since 1889 the imports-
ton of iron and STEEL we have no shadow of
doubt that our aggregate revenues from GUS
toms would have been greater than they have
been, because our people would have been far
richer, and thus would have imported far
more of tax-payipg products. And now, were
we to grow all our own tea henoeforth, our
loss of revenue on that article would be more
than made up by the increased importations
of other articles consequent on the increase of
our general resources. We should have
bought more foreign products, because able to
pay for more; just as Massachusetts has
always consumed larger aggregate of duty
paying imports than Virginia.
Is this hard to comprehend? Then look at
facts which illustrate it,
For the last eight years we have had a
tariff incidentally protective; for the eight
preceding we had q much lower tariff, i'm
posed for revenue only or mainly. Now let
MS see what have been the aggregates of i'm
ports (not revenue) under the lower and the
higher tariff respectively
The imports at this pert for the month oi
February of the last sixteen years respectively
are officially valued (in gold) as folows:-