Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1882-06-27
pRoeREss TAKIrF .EFoRn

The great question that is looming up be-
fore the people, that will evidently soon give
the watchword TO reviving agitation, is the
reform of the tariff. The people clearly ap-
prehend that they are paying out of their
incomes and earnings more money than good
government requires. They are beginning
% perceive that it is disadvantageous to
business to tax the farmer and the store
keeper and the laborer in order to help GER
tain businesses to escape competition, and to
enable them to build up high prices that
shut our country up from foreign trade, ex-
cept in raw products, and enable monopolists
to build up fortunes. A Tennessee paper
said week or two ago that high tariffs
would necessarily exist for hundred years
TO come. That journal was not skilled in
reading the times. The people are already
beginning to see what an unfair, one-sided
business this protection scheme is, and how
1t is raising up wealthy set who cultivate
exclusiveness and talk about "the lower
classes" whe run profits up aud wages down.
The consequence of this insight is that the
next time depression comes, when work
is scarce and wages are declining,
and panic stalks abroad in the. streets
and the markets, univers al shout will go
up against monopoly, against the system of
prohibition that is exalting one set of men
at the expense of another. Opposition to
monopoly will soon become the darling OBJ
ject OF the people, and their representatives
will have to show how they have battled
against that enemy OF those who get their
living by toll and the labors of the field.
The monopolists have obtained delay by the
appointment of their one-sided commission;
all the more thorough and searching will the
changes in the tariff be when they come.
Delay is only damming up the stream OF
public sentiment, its current will sweep along
all the more powerfully and effectualy when
the Time OF action comes. The authors of
Ihat postponement measure, the tariff COM
mission scheme, have had it clearly demon
strated to them that their measure is one tina
will tell against its authors, and they have
come to the conclusion to endeavor to neu-
tralize the tendency that way by doing some
thing with the internal revenue. The whisky
and the tobacco taxes public sentiment de-
any ordinary necessary of life are consid-
cred necessary. The tax on bank capital,
also, it is decided to retain, although that
tax is much objected to as dead weight
thrown upon commerce. Taxes on bank de-
posts, bank checks, friction matches, patent
medicine, perfumery, cosmetics and playing
cards it is proposed to remove before Con-
gress adjourns. The people could,
with great patience, see cosmetics, cards and
perfImery pay on, while shoes and stock
ings are taxed, but the proposed concession
shows that the grasp of reform is felt to be
too strong to be resisted. 1t is hoped by
throwing this stub to the whale" to reduce
the easerness for tariff duties being decreased.
That hope is vain, "the appetite grows upon
what it feeds" and the call for reduction
of the ill-regulated, monopoly-creating tariff
duties will become more eager and more de-
termined as time more completely demon
strates the necessity for change.