The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-07-14

this surplus wheat, or the government will
collect a fine from them for doing So
Thus farmer has ZOO bushels of surplus
wheat, worth 81 per bushel, let US say. His
neighbors have all the wheat they need,
but would buy iron from him if he had it,
so he sends his wheat to Scotland, where
pig iron sells at $40 per ton.
He then waits for his 100 tons of iron to
arrive. When it arrives, however, he finds
he must pay $3.50 on each ton Tor $3.50 on
the 100 tons) before he lands the iron, and
so he is obliged to sell forty-fve out of the
100 tons in order to pay the tariff tax on it.
The result is, he gets only fifty-five tons
of iron for his wheat, instead of the 100 he
expected to get. Then he begins to reflect,
and discovers that it took $50 out of his
1000 bushels of wheat to pay his fine at the
custom house for receiving pay Gmports)
for his surplus wheat. The result, too,
would be precisely the same to him if the
custom house officials had kept back $50
bushels of his wheat before it was sent
abroad. The government protects CARNE
GLE and the other iron masters from COM
petition by the farmers, and fines the latter
class for presuming to buy and sell iron.
It's the same with sugar. Three miles
off our coast, or anywhere on the high seas,
sugar sells at ~ cents. If the farmer
were permitted to receive sugar for wheat,
he would supply himself and sell sugar to
all his neighbors at profit of 5 cents
pound But the government will not per
nit the farmer to sell the same articles that
~
trust sell, so the whole people buy sugar
at cents from the few millionairesinstead
of at 5 cents from the millions of farmers.
1t is the same with nearly the whole tariff
list. The farmers surplus products,
amounting by actual valuation to IS per
cent. of all our exports, are taxed 80 per
cent of their value, when the pay for them
arrives.
The farmers were told that imports must
be stopped but were not told that theseim
ports are the pay received in exchange for
the farmers exports. To stop imports is
to stop exports, and hence to stop farmers
from having any surplus products. 1t is
the farmers surplus that pays the carpen-
ter, the mason, the blacksmith, the school
master, the lawyer, and the doctor. And
while the law can and does diminish the
purchasing power of that surplus in the
case of nearly every manufactured arti-
Gle, it is too much to believe that the farmer
will ever consent to laws intended to abol-
ish or destroy that surplus product.
But there is another and different "sur-
plus" which the Republican party is also
pledged to destroy-the S1O4, 900, 900 surplus
revenue.
The condition and the theory have
fallen into the hands of the Republicans,
and it is interesting to watch what tariff
tinkering they will undertake to appease
public sentiment.
The Republicans began by denying the
existence of any surplus; they then ad-
mitted there was surplus, but said a
surplus was better than deficit and should
not be removed. Then they framed bill
to reduce the revenue, in which the esti-
mated average reduction in 500 was some
what larger than in the Democratic mea-
sure for the same purpose. They did not
pass this bill, which, for the first time in
history, was an attempt to reduce revenue
by raising taxes; for while it removed taxes
on tobacco and whisky, it actually in
creased the rate on most of the common
necessities OF life.
The condition" still remains, despite
the efforts to rid themselves of it. The
fabulous sum still lies idle. What will
they do with it, and what will the tax
payers say if they squander it? The
special session of Congress has an elephant
on it's hands.