Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1888-10-06

He Scores the Senate Bill and Eulogizes
the Mills Measure.


He Scores the Senate Bill and Eulogizes
the Mills Measure.
In his supplemental and individual report
Senator Beck, after eulogizing the features OF
the Mills bill, says that the struggle of the
majority of the committee on finance seems
to belts effect certainly is--to close our
ports as far as possible against commerce
from abroad, to make our people dependent
for their supplies upon the products of
the machinery of the home manufacturer
by limiting and restricting their right to
use manufactured articles to such Amer
lean producers furnish and at such prices as
they So lit to exact, the obvious effect being
to surrender to other nations the trade and
commerce of the outside world and subject
our exports to such extortions in freight
charges as combinations of foreign ship
owners see fit to exact.
The senate substitute, wnen carefully ex-
amincd, continues Mr. Beck, will show that
in every feature of it it aims to increase the
cost of the goods he needs to the home con-
sumner, and to close the markets of the world
against imports and exports as well, except
such as are clearly agricultural and have to
be sold abroad for any prices they will bring
in free open market with foreign competi-
ton.
The senator then argues that the attempt
of the majority of the committee to restore
specific instead of ad valorem rates simply
means that the goods used by the poor shall
be taxed out of all proportion to those used
by the rich, and that the people shall derive
no benefits and no reduction of taxation from
he invention of new machinery or economic
processes which cheaper the cost of the pro-
auction of the goods. The right to plumber
Eie people was all the combinations of wealth
asd power asked; that seemed to be the OBJ
je;t which the majority of the committee by
its bill endeavored to attain.
The question, now presented continues the
senator, is not one of temporary taxation.
The pretenses upon which high tariff taxes
are now demanded win be as strong fifty
years hence as they are at present. 1t is no
longer infant industries that are clamoring.
The manufacturers are stalwart giants now,
with machinery equal to the best in the
world, and much of it imported from foreign
countries and owned by foreigners who bring
it and their workmen here to secure the sub
sidy congress gives them, as was confessed by
the men engaged in the bagging conspiracy.
They control this market against foreign
made goods, and with their machinery at
home control all foreign markets against our
products.
There is no dispute about the fact that the
present surplus in the treasury is not only
needless, but dangerous and corrupting in all
its tendencies, and must continue to increase
unless taxation is reduced; and it is equally
true that that surplus was produced by the
maintenance of unnecessary and, therefore.
unjust and oppressive taxation, against the
protest of the Democratic party, by the Re
publican leaders, who are now opposing tariff
revision.
After brief resume of tariff legislation
since 1864, Senator Beck refers to the Repub-
lican platform and says: Never before was
the avowal boldly made in party platform
that the American market should be con-
trolled by American manufacturers, by
trusts and combinations to suit themselves,
and that congress should by law prevent our
citizens from buying with their own money
what they needed, except from them and ct
their prices. Local partisan leagues and
neighborhood conventions and snch news
papers as are owned or subsidized by protected
organizations have demanded taxation for
projections sake. but until now the platforms
of all former Republican conventions have
demanded that taxation should be confined
to the amount needed for revenue, only ask
ing that within that limit it should be adj
manufacturing industries and the labor en-
ployed therein.
The bills now presented by the respective
political organizations are infinitely more
important in the principles they represent
than in the amount OF taxation they propose
TO remove measured merely in money. The
Democrats seek cautiously and prudently to
reduce all taxation to the revenue standard,
SO as to take from the people nothing except
for public uses and purposes, at the same time
taking care that no injury is done to
any domestic industry. Even though
unduly stimulated by protection, ON
whose success the employment of any
considerable portion Of cur people depends.
they seek to aid our manufacturers by
cheapening wherever it is possible the raw
material from which finihed products are
made so that the markets FOR them may be
enlarged and extended to other countries and
steadier employment be furnished TO th1oe
who produce them.
Senator Beck then proceeds to make ve-i-
Gus citations from the presidents annual mc1-
sage and letter of acceptance, and highs
compliments the president