Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1884-04-28
WASHINGTON LETTER.
Views OF Texas Congressman OH the
Burdens of the Tariff.
The Political Philosophy Involved in
the Great Controversy.
Citizenship Broadened by Discussion
Triple Fealty.

VI yuuI representative, Nhls w cllDOlii,
in the course of the interminable tariff
debate, was rs vlvacious and spirited
and full of enthusiasm as if the subject
were fresh, and Morrison, Cox,
Carlisle, Randolph and Tucker
had never discussed it. Mr..
Wellborn must be deemed henceforth
one of the very best and most success
| full disclaimers and debaters of the
house. His strong and ingenious APP
peals in behalf of legislation for the
| many instead of that for the few,
to which the government has ad-
dressed itself through twenty years,
were most effective. A listener to Mr..
Wellborn's argument was led to say
that the people would willingly submit
to direct taxation to maintain the pen
sion list, even though it recognize dis
tinctions of rank. If all wounded and
disabled soldiers were alike honored
and rewarded, there would be no OBJ
lection to direct taxation in order to
collect the hundred millions to be an
nually disbursed among pension
ers. Then the tariff for
revenue which would support the
government might be again reduced
by another Morrison's quasi horizontal
process, at least one-third. The same
tax collectors, serving the several states,
might collect the pensioners tax, and
since there would be no custom-houses
or great internal revenue offices and
bureaus employed the sum paid by the
people would be the least possible re-
| CURED by the pension bureau, and the
| people, seeing and knowing how much
they pay, these congressman would eX-
tort the least sums possible; now, on
the contrary, under the tariff
system, they exact the greatest
sums possible. They have abso-
lutely gathered an enormous surplus
fund, and that the tariff may not be
reduced and direct honest taxation
never inaugurated, it is proposed to
enter upon grand and perhaps bene fl .
cent scheme of popular education.
People grow rich in proportion to
sums they save; but the theory of our
rulers is that the people grow richer
in direct ratio with the vastness of
sums extorted from them, and the
more the people are required to pay,
the less willing are they to know how
much each pays. Therefore it
would be unwise to have
the pension list sustained by
direct taxation. In truth, the induce
ment to squander the peoples money
springs mainly from the fact that the
people know not where or how much
each pays and the tariff scheme of
revenue is necessarily most corrupting
because its processes are those of fraud,
concealment and indirection. The
tariff pays not dollar to laborers.
| MI xre Ill a 4
tected products of toll, and as q tax, as
tariff Is alike fraudulent and indefensi-
BILE. In its ultimate ANALYSIS il is
worse than indefensible, since it rObs
one man of his money without his con-
sent and gives it to another without any
consideration. The pretext for the
wrong is that the government thus
compeis one man to help another pros.
ecute AN otherwise profitless industry.
Ana the sublimest absurdity of the
theory is that he whose pockets are
| thus filled, at the cost of the Commune
| nifty, goes out among his poor, work.
ing people and shares with them hi.
unearned earnings, when everybody
knows that if high tariff makes
. wages high, the protected EMPLOYER Of
labor imports at once, with the money
given him by the government, cheaT
labor by the ton. Therefore we see
, the higher the tariff, the greater the
volume of immigration. The cost Of
, living Is, of course, made greater by the
high tariff, and since wages are moi
!. proportionately advanced, employees
, must strike or starve, and therefore it
= happens that strikes are most numer.
GUS where tariffs are highest, and the
/; greater the government-given revenues
q of the capitalist, the less the relative
:. wages of employees.
|. THE SHEEP MEN.
:, Protection makes three thousand mr..
l ticles which shepherds and Others
u must use or consume so costly here
Z. that shepherds caLnot grow wool ne
cheaply as those of Australia. Land
climate and Gods laws are faultless.
but these are so perverted by the
2. greed OF those who use the govern.
ment as money-getting machine
,e tnat Australians not only produce
n cheaper wool than we, but shin II fen
l. thousand miles and sell it here for Ice,
T. than our protected labor''t?l can nro,
n duce 1t. Protection thus become
,r progressive calamity. The more q,
le ~ we have, the more we require, anf
s. therefore the supreme blunder OF fin,
IS wooi-growers. Instead of demandine
8. an augmentation of the wool tariff
a they should compel congress To lassa,
IS all tariffs, and thus enable thensaI,,al
TO live for less and finally underssIl
Australians even in Australia nit
tariff of ours is so all-pervadinu. dnn,;,
eating and quadrupling the cost her,
m OF protected commodities, that we On !,
" sell nothing abroad. Our markets arl
3, soon overstocked by unnatural nro
v cesses and stimulants of protection p pnS
Of instead of protecting ourselves we nrn
l. tect and enrich Australian shenherd IA
at g,vlng them monopoly OF the world,
~ wooi market, while We stupidity weer
m UNA. we have not a monopoly of AMI
IN own. The drunken we are, the
1t drunken we would become. 'A'
NATIONAL sELFIsHNRss.
In truth, intense selfishness os -.
.,ons, Ike that OF individuals, defeat,
!, i.s own ends, and properly. A her
y mt, whether an individual or n ma
tion, Is fool. The nations are aI
u members of one great family of M
" lions, occupying separate apartment,
d under the rooftree of one God and on.
u statesmanship, and the day ia nn,
Vi distant when each will be the connie
ment of another, each SUPPLYING TN.
necessities of the other, each hny;na
where II can buy cheapest. and ssiIinss
where prices of It's products are eraas
y est. We have recognized this 6,ct os
y between Texas and Maine. and in
u our relations to Mey;nn ~