St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1888-08-30
THE HIGH TARIFF OF MEXICO.
How n Good Thing May be Overdone,
and Burden the People and Curse a

tariff talk in the United States to speak
of Mexico's tariff. He presents an alb
solute truthful picture of how the ex-
| treme tariff taxation of that country
operates to place the people of Mexico
at terrible disadvantage. His state
ments are valuable as expounding the
fact that protection may be carried to
the extent that makes it a burden on
the national life, while the wages of the
Mexican wOrkmen show that extreme
protection does not always mean good
pay for labor. Following are extracts
from Mr.. Guernsey's letter to the Bos-
/ ton Herald =
The Mexican press is catching on to
the idea that if protection to home in
dustry is a good thing for the United
States, it is equally good thing for this
country. Thus the propaganda in be-
half of high protective tariff for Mex
leo has begun, stimulated by the own
ers of the few, but very prosperous
manufactures down here. Let US see
how protection works in Mexico. Does
it bring high wages and make the COM
mon people prosperous Nothing of
the kind. l will tell you what it does.
The duty on cotton cloth, made in the
United States and England, compels
the poor man here to pay three times
as much for his simple clothing as it
would cost if it were not for this bless
ed tariff. You may put it down that
bed linen, the cheap cotton cloth used
here by the poorer people for their out
side wear, that table cloths, napkins,
etc., cost from two to five times what
they do in the United States. The
enormous duty on white printing and
writing paper makes correspondence a
luxury, and places school books out of
the reach of the masses. A man who
earns 81 cents a day thinks before he
buys 50-cent primer for his boy. A
mechanic who, being exceptionally
skilled, earns 81 day (worth "a Amer
lean cents, by the way) is not disposed
to pay $500 for set of furniture which
you lucky people in Boston can buy
for $50. The duty on furniture is
something tremendous, and yet this
heavy measure of protection to native
woods and native mechanics has not
made it possible yet for a poor man in
Mexico to have a decently furnished
house. am willing to wager good
round sum that can, in half day,
show any investigator 100 houses in
two blocks in this big town where
there is not an average of $50 worth of
furniture per house. Yet furniture
makers are protected" tremendously
here.
Paper is protected. You may be
mighty sure of that. 1t is protected by
duties that compel the publishers of
papers and books to pay from three to
four times as much per pound as in the
case in the city of Boston. But how
about the labOrers in the paper mills
Being protected, they get rich, of
course l spent half day among
lot of them the other day, and they
were a shabby lot of fellows, who re-
garded SO cents day with big eyes
and those among them who could earn
rs cents in deprecated silver were
prosperous men. Their children's
clothes might have cost IS cents suit.
Some of the poorest of them did not
disdain sleeping in caves dug in the
side of hill, which, they say, are
warm and cost no rent. Well, we'll,
protection is big thing, is it not
The cotton cloth industry is protected,
and certainly with such overwhelming
duties to protect them, the wOrkmen
should be very comfortable. But they
are lucky if they get so cents day, say
81 cents American money. The most
prosperous among them consider them
selves happy to be able to live in a
dried mud house, and to eat beans and
corn meal cake the year around.
Glass is protected by big duties, but
the glass-blowers are poorly paid.
Carriage makers are heavily protected,
but their wage workers are on the
same low level of poverty-making
wages. The average rate of wages in
this well-prOtected country is computed
by government statisticians to be about
81 cents day, or % cents gold Yes,
protection is a success in this country.
For whom 2 For the manufacturers,
of course. They are making heaps of
money and they like it. When the
press speaks out loudly and unani-
mously in behalf of lower paper duties,
the paper makers rush up to Congress
and stop the agitation from becoming
formidable. Paper making pays, cot
ton cloth making pays, glass-making
pays-pays everybody but the workers.
Who can doubt that if Mexico was a
the believers in cutting off all custom
house taxes-and the United States
were giving free entrance to Mexican
raw materials, that this country would
grow richer, that the poor mans wages
does to-day. Nature did not build
Mexico for a manufacturing country.
If nature made Mexico with any de-
oil \ 70, hn fnr Iol
ducing country, tropical garden sup
plying the colder north, and silver
and gold mine. 1t is possible to man
ufacture to some extent hereto a
very limited extent. But it is not pos
sible to make this mountainous land
workshop like New England. The
tariff policy of Mexico should be
tariff for revenue, but based on the
scientific idea that low duties, by slim
ulating and extending consumption,
augment the income of the govern
ment. But, under the present system
of high duties some exotic industries
have been forced into life here to the
profit of the owners, but not of the
workers.
A fair tariff would enrich the treas
ury, would cheaper goods and en-
courage competition, and make the
mechanics wages go further in pur-
chasing power but fair tariff is just
what the men who have got the mills
don't wish. They say "they can't
live" unless they have protective tar
iff of from 200 to 800 per cent against
you ingenious Yankees upin the north
ern republic. So when we buy a piece
of furniture we can pay three times
what it is worth in Boston, and when