The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1881-11-21
LESSONS ON THE rARIfF CONVENTION.

The first lesson taught by the late tarlH
convention and emphasized in its proceed
ings was that the carrying trade, by land
and water, is crippled by the high tariff.
The land carrier are obliged to submit to
tax of 81 .25 per cent. on steel rails, but
as they have the means of shifting the bur
duen upon shippers. and especially upon
the farmers. ane have no competition to
contend with, they can live and prosper.
But the water carriers, having to compete
with the free ships of all nations, and no
manufactured products of consequence to
take away from the United States, have
been starved out of existence. We do not
know what the managers of the convention
could have been thinking of when they
determined to put Mr.. John Roach on the
stand as a solitary witness to the anguish
ing state of native, American industries.
The foreign carrying trade is not and can
not be domestic institution, and such
hardships as it has undergone have been
directly due to q high tariff. 1t must be
clear to the dullest comprehension that if
built for him by the government he
could not carry on any very active
foreign trade with it so long
as the cost of american manufactures
should remain from 20 to 1875 per cent
ABOVE those of foreign competitors. The
convention has in this connection done
nothing so valuable as in making the facts
known concerning the destruction of the
ocean carrying trade and the tax on the in.
ternal transportation interests, and through
them on the farmers III
The second important service rendered
by the convention was in calling attention
to the conspicuous injustice of the tariff
taxes on raw materials. These taxes are a
oil 11ff hos 5xf he FOR
only one on which it can be successfully
Overwhelmingly, that 1t is designed to
aid in the development of manufactures.
But the taxes on chemicals, shoemakers'
materials, wool for mixing, and raw flax,
to say nothing of copper, iron, and lead in
pigs, are distractions to the development
of manufactures; and this fact was clearly
brought out in the deliberations of the con
vention-
Another and possibly the most impor-
tant consequence of the convention is, that
for the first time it distinctly commits the
subsidy beggars and Ffmore tariff agitators
to an aggressive policy. The tariff men in
the last presidential campaign had the ad
vantage of fighting on the defensive.
From the first to the last note of the cam
paign they were behind entertainments.
They beat off the storming party, and did
it effectually. But it is ques-
ton whether they would have
come off victorious if they had been the
assallants The decisive verdict of the
country, putting the most favorable pro-
tectionist construction upon it, was that
the tariff should be ''let alone" So far as
the meaning of the elections can be inter
preted, they were simply an affirmation of
this Eaisser-a policy. They meant no
more that the tariff should be increased
than that it should be reduced. The
''more-tariT" agitators now propose to
drag the whole tariff interest out into the
open field and commit it to a programme
of avowed aggression, with all the Incl
dent risks of exposure and danger. They
are not content to let well enough alone, /
but must lead those manufacturers who
have nothing to complain of into the |
deadly breach. In SO doing they take the
chances separating themselves from con-
sentative tariff men, who are now making
money enough and have nothing to hope
for from q change. /
These are some Of the indirect beneftsf
of the late Tariff Convention. While it
woul9 have been totally without influence
but for the press, it has been the means of
spreading the light among the people on
several important subjects, and it has sol
far as it could committed to tariff inter- |
ests to a perilous and rash policy of ag-
gression.- Chicago Tribune.