The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-09-25
Free Wool.

4
free wool will acquire such strength
and volume before the year is ended
that even republican congress, elected
upon pledges to preserve ersTy part
Of our protective system, will not dare to
ignore it. The wooden industry Of the
| country is IN PROSTATE condition. Many
of the most extensive mills have failed
during the last six months, and unless re-
lief is speedily extended to this important
interest it promises to be involved in
complete ruin. The trouble is the OPP
pressive and unjust tax upon wool. This
is universally conceded by the manufac-
turers, although many OF them were
induced to keep silent last year, when the
repeal of the wool tariff was one of the
main issues before the country. But In
the face of the disasters which
are erowding thick and fast upon
them they can keep silent no longer. 1t
is a matter of self-preservation. There is
plenty OF demand for wooden goods, as
shown by the fact that the importations of
foreign woolens and worsteds have been
much larger during the last two or three
years than ever before. But the addition
of 30 per cent. to the cost of manufacture
which is a conservative estimate of the
burden imposed by the tax on wool
handicaps the wooden industry hopelessly.
II must be relieved of this burden. or it
cannot long survive. Free WOOL" says
a leading authority, "is essential to the
successful manufacture of those special
classes of goods to which our competition
with foreign looms is principally con-
fined
But republican congress will find itself
surrounded with embarrassment if it I'M
dertakes to put wool on the free list,
while denying free raw materials to other
industries. We already have free cotton
and free hides. What argument can be
made for these and free wool that is not
just as effective in behalf of free copper
and lead, free iron and coal, free lumber
and salt? The New York Commercial Bul-
IetiR, an able non-partisan commercial
paper, puts the case very strongly when
it says:
The duty on woods is part of a system which
amounts to general industrial compact, by
which every manufacturer though not ex-
pressly yet in most literal fact, assents TO pay
ing certain amount OF assessment in behalf of
all other manufacturers, for the consideration
OF being permitted 70 enhance the price of his
own goods, the tariff being a definition OF the
terms Of this compact Reduced 10 its last
elements this complex interchange OF mutual
assessments Is the essence and heart of prOtec-
ton through tariff. In such vast and COM
plicated system OF Undergraduates il is by
g.
relieved of its burthens without opposition
from other interests dependent on the sup
plant one. When, therefore, the wooden man.
ufacturer asks 10 be exempted from the duty
on wool, the wool-grower demands an equiva-
lent IN the shape of relief from the enhanced
price of wOolens consequent on the tariff. A
farther serious question arises as to the equity
of making the raw material of wooden goods
tree without, at the same time, exemphng
every other manufacture from impost on its
raw material
1t will thus be seen that while the exemption
of raw materials from duty is essential to man.
ufaeturers gaining the largest attainable sue
cess and IN very many cases to their maintaining
an existence, yet demands of this kind strike at
the very root of the protective compact and
suggest to the friends of protection grave
questions as TO how much would be left of our
tariff system if every burthen which il imposes
on the manufacturer were removed; for q very
large proportion of our manufactures become
In turn the raw material for yet other prod
ucts.
However, congress must face the alter
native. 1t is either free wool or death to
the wooden industry, involving the loss of
great investments of capital and loss of
employment to many thousands of Amer
lean workingmen. The logic of events is
indicating the wisdom and patriotism of
President CLEvELAND's great tariff mes
sage, and the soundness OF the policy
which dictated the Mills bill and was
avowed in the st. Louis platform. The
political farmers of Ohio-the gentlemen
who insist that congress shall sustain
them in raising sheep upon valuable
agricultural land by taxing the
people for their beneft-may as well make
up their minds to yield gracefully to the
inevitable. But they have the satisfaction
of knowing that after congress has de-
prived them of the privilege of levying
tribute upon their fellow-citizens, they
can even up things by helpingto take away
the same blessed privilege from the
lumber and salt and iron and coal men,
and other benefciaries of our present
wicked system Of licensed spoliation. The
removal of one of the stones of the protec-
tive tariff arch means the speedy down
fall of the whole structure.