Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1888-10-18
THE MINORITY REPORT.

Senators Harris, Vance, Voorhees, and
Mcpherson on the Senate Tariff Bill.
Commenting on the connection be-
tween the tariff and trusts the minority
of the Senate Committee on Finance
says:
1.-The present tariff is the nursing mother OF
trusts. 1t is the wall behind which these COM
binations are formed. by which the people are
pluudered. Tariffs keep out the foreign COM
petite and the comb nation suppresses the
domestic, and the whole people are at their
mercy and must pay whatever is demanded
Language is inadequate to describe the in:quity
OF these combinations against the rights of the
people, or to depict their disastrous effects
upon the general welfare. AS the tariffs
which render trusts possible, are estab-
hshed and maintained at the special instance
of those who form them, it would seem but
simple justice, as well as good policy, to tear
down as much as possible OF their covert and
refuse to longer aid them in wrongdong
They are not - private AFFAIRS as has been as
serted, but public evils of grave character
affecting the price of every article which con-
tributes to the comfort and support of the
people. The provisions of the substitute favor
them greatly and will serve to encourage their
formal on in still other branches Of manufact
ure.
THE absurd accusation that the Mills bill
means free trade the ruin OF industry and
the degradation of American labor is as false
as misleading. How the flow of surplus money
into the Treasury can be stopped without re-
ducing the taxes which produce it no man can
devise. How these taxes can be reduced with
out taking of from the top toward the bottom
no imagination can conceive Therefore, it
would seem. no man can propose to cut of ex-
cessive taxation without subiecting himself to
the charge of free trade because any reduc-
ton whatever socks toward free trade True,
Government revenues night be reduced by
making duties so high as to prohibit imDorta-
tions altogether; but that is the other end OF
the road, which increases the taxes paid to
private persons. If the first method of reduc-
ton leads to free trade the other leads to free
plumber, which is worse
The report closes by recommending to the
Senate and the country the Mills bill as a
measure for the reduction of taxes, based alike
upon justice and good policy.
Senator Beck. n his individual report on the
Tariff bin. says in substances:
The struggle of the majority of the Com
nnittee on Finance seems to be, and its effect
certainly is, to close our ports as far as posi-
BILE against commerce from abroad, and sur
render to other nations the trade and COM
merce of the outside world, and subject our
exports to such extortions in freight charges
combinations OF foreign shipowners may see fit
to exact"
Continuing he argues that the attempt of
the majority of the committee to report spe
cific instead Of ad valorem rates means that
the goods used by the poor shall be taxed and
out of all proportion to those used by the rich.
The pretenses upon which high tar. Fl are now
demanded will be as strong, he says, fifty
years hence as they are at present. 1t is no
longer infant industries that are clamoring.
The manufacturers are stalwart giants q ow.
1.-The bills now presented by the respective po-
litical organizations" continues Senator Beck.
".are infinitely more important in the princi-
pies they represent than N the amount of tax
alton they propose to remove, measured mere
ly by money"
Referring to the Presidents message he says:
"sIf any President ever satisfied the American
people that he subordinated private ends to
public interests and had the courage to express
convictions regardless of personal conse-
quences, President Cleveland in this message
has satisfied them that he has acted with an
eye signal to the public good. 1t will be a
striking evidence of the power of employers
over their working-men if they succeed in
making them believe that their welfare enters
into the contest to be waged. The struggles
made by their leaders, General Harrison in
cluded, to flood the country with Chinese.
sending money to China and importing 10.0O) OF
them at q time as the managers of the Ce ntral
Pacific railroad did. give the lie to all their
professions of sympathy with hlgh-priced
Amer can labor"
Continuing, he says that the Presidents
message and the House bill were both eminent
" conservative. the Senate bill in the wool,
cotton and other schedules not only increased
the rate of tax, but did IL in the form of COM
pound and specific duties, SO as to conceal the
increases. The cotton schedules were simply
outrageous. Senator Beck says he is glad the
committee has gone to the extreme OF protec-
ton restriction and destruction. Concluding,
he condemns the cotton bagging trust as
tariff creation