The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-12-31
SATURDAY. DECEMBER 81, 1870.
THE NEW TARIFF

IT rs estimated by the Secretary of the Trea-
sury that the new tariff which goes into ope-
ration on thu first of January, 1871, will
effect reduction in the national revenue
derived from imposts of forty millions of
dollars AS a considerable portion of the
articles on which the duties have been re-
duced enter into general consumption, the
pressure of taxation on every family will be
materially diminished. The leading prin-
ciple of the reductions, SO far as they embody
principle at all, was to
reduce the taxation on 'sugar and spice" if
not on Everything nice, and there should
be material diminution in the sum total of
future grocery bills. The duty on all sugars
has been reduced while the duty on coffee is
changed from five cents to three cents per
pound, and the duty on tea lowered from
twenty-five cents per pound to fifteen cents
Similar reductions have been made in the
duties on brandy, cinnamon, cloves, cocoa,
cocoa-shell, cocoanuts, cordials, currants,
ginger root, ground ginger, lemons, lines,
liquors, mace, molasses, nutmegs, oranges,
pepper, pimento, pineapples, and spices, SO
that housekeepers will all have good cause
to hail the incoming new year. AS the tariff
on articles which cannot be produced in this
country is an inevitable tax, which neither
stimulates home industry nor becomes suscep-
tible of evasion by the development of home
resources, the reductions above named will
furnish grateful and well-timed relief to the
American people, without injuring any Ame-
rican interest.
Another class of the reductions of duty
like that of pig-iron (from SO to 81 per TOM
of cast-iron (from SIS to $6), and of steel
railway bars, is of a more questionable char
acter, for while it may temporarily lower the
prices paid by few consumers, it will tend
to PROSTATE our growing iron and steel inte-
rests, and in the end rather increase than
diminish the current cost of iron and steel.
Protection, when persistently adhered to,
rarely fails to carry with it blessing to con-
sumers as we'll as producers; and when Con-
gress fails to apply this benefcent doctrine
to any important American interest, it inevi-
tably entails much misery and serious losses
upon industrious and enterprising cities.
Independent of the reductions of duty
already referred to, many others have been
made, and large addition has been made to
the free list. A considerable number of these
reductions or abrogations will tend to reduce
the cost of raw material entering into manu-
factures, and of medicines, and all reductions
of these descriptions are commendable.
The true policy of the nation is to tax as
lightly as possible, or not at ALL the articles
which do not enter into competition with ma
tive industries, and at the same time to i'm
pose the highest duties that due regard for
the revenue will permit upon every article
that competes with growing or established
American manufactures. Let us have free
trade, as near as possible, in the foreign arti-
cles which we must inevitably buy from
foreign nations and protection as thorough
as Congress can make it against all foreign
rivals who seek to fasten on US the chains of
industrial vassalage.