St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-09-15

system of universal taxation, commence
ing with h baby's bottle and ending
with the old mans tombstone. 1t lays
its burdens upon everything he uses or
needs or desires.
1t taxes your family family wearing
apparel, your linen, cotton and WOODEN
goods. your shirt, coat and bat; it taxes
the lumber, paint and glass, nails and
hardware in your house, shop and barn;
it goes into your sitting room and taxes
your carpet. furniture, wall paper, books,
pictures and ornaments. 1t steals into
your dining room and taxes your table,
chairs, cutlery and e~arthenware. 1t
stumbleS into your kitchen and taxes
your pots, kettles and cook stove; into
your pantry and taxes your sugar. salt,
starch and vinegar; it
Climbs Into Your Bedroom
and taxes your blankets, bedding and
looking glass; it gropes into your cellar
and taxes whatever it finds there. and
if the boxes are empty it taxes the bot
ties.
1t disturbs your little children and
taxes the girls doll and boys tin whistle
and jack-knife.
1t dives into your wife's work basket
and taxes her thimble, pins, needlesand
thread. Diamonds escape with 10 per
cent duty. But the family Bible pays
its full measure of tribute. 1t comes to
your bedside when disease and pain
rack you and levieS its impOSt upon the
drugs thatSo0the and the medicines that
heal you.
1t comes. too, in that last terrible hour
when Gods reaper comes and with in
eXorable hand and forces tribute from
the shroud which covers you, from the
casket in which you sleep, from the
marble slab whose epitaph cut with a
taxed chisel proclaims that at last you
are protected from protection.
Every tax is not a tax. 1t is so only
when it in fact protects some home prod
uce, or when the article upon which
1t is levied is actually imported.
A tax of 20 cents per buShel on wheat
has never added a fraction of a cent to
the selling price of our wheat.
Why's. Because no foreign wheat
comes in to compete with ours. 1t
would be"carrying Goals to Newcastle"
Every year we raise more wheat than
ket is o~verstocked. We are compelled
to sell our surplus crop in foreign mar
ketS at the worlds price. Whenever
there is an unusual surplus of any crop,
the price per bushel for the entire crop
does not exceed the average price of
the surplus. Your warehouseman never
offers you II price for
That Part of Your Wheat
which he will ship to Liverpool, and a
different price for that part which will
be consumed here. 1t all sells at the
same price, and that price is dependent
upo the price in Liverpool, where all
the surplus wheat of the world finds an
open and competing market. COnse-
quently it makes nc difference what the
tariff may be, OF whether there is any
tariff at all on wheat. 1t does not en-
able US to sell it at an increased price,
for more than it is worth, and there
tore we are not protected by it.
The object and effect is to compel the
people to pay for the things they pnr-
chase more than those things are act
ually worth. A tax upon imports is
therefore in effect a tax upon exports.
We sell our own products in order to
purchase the products of others. We
sell in order to buy. Whatever increases
the cost of that which we buy, Reflect
decreases the value of that which we
sell. Protection debaSeS the crops of
the American farmer just as the Bour-
bOns OF France debased the coins of the
realm-by lessening their purchasing
power.
No wonder that farming does not pay.
No wonder you send your boys into the
cities, seeking a different employment
from that to which you have devoted
your lives. What inducement does the
farm offer to the young man on the
Threshold of self-support? Can he find
in the cultivation of the soil that steady
prosperity and independence, that
rounded and self-reliant manhood which
in times past has been the life
blood of American nationality?
Is the millionaire among the
crops of your farms? Can you,
thirty years hence, give to your coun-
who ''fred the shot that was heard
round the world?" Can you again send
to the front heroes like those who strove
with Thomas at Chickamauga or tri-
umphed with Hancock at Gettysburg?
At the breaking out of the war all
civilized nations were Oh the
Road to Free Trade.
By means of reciprocity, treaties and
| commercial legislation, tariffs were be-
ing rapidly reduced and abolished. 1t
| seemed as if in a few years the nations
would become so in%terlinked and inter-
commingled by expanding trade that
non could afford to war with another,
| that the profession of the soldier was
being merged into the duties of the
police.
Our civil conflict was a Earring dis
cord in this harmony of the nations.
Under %pretense of raising a wal reve-
nue., we began raising the tariff on inn
ports. This was an u%nfriendly and
dangerous policy. At the time we most
enemies by shutting our ports to their
trade.
The war closed, but the war taxes re-
NAMED. Men made rich by the tariff
were strong enough to prevent its re-
duction. They flung out the bloody shirt
tor the people to shudder at, and while
the people shuddered they picked the
peoples pockets. The balance of trade,
said the politicians. was in u favor.
We had a soft thing on Europe. She
was buying all our surplus products,
and we were buying nothing from her.
Europe waited twelve years for US to
abandon our hostile system, and then
retaliation begun. Russia commenced
raising her tariffs in 1877; Italy and
Austro-Hungary followed in 1878, Ger
many in 1879, France in 1881, SwitZer-
land in 1885. Canada in 1888 and again
in 1887, Belgium ana Brazil in 1887.
Our beef, pork. lard, corn, wheat, the
whole of that enormous surplus of agri-
cultural product which we dispose of
abroad,
rs Disseminated Against.
shut out and debarred in the markets of
the world.
England, wiser than the others. still
holds to free trade. She also has retail
lated against us, not by ian eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth' tariff, but
by developing the wheat fields of India
and Australia. buying her breadstuffs
from those who are willing to buy from
her.
1t is not right to so use the power of
taxation as to ruin one class of our peo-
pie and give unlimited wealth and pros
perity to another.
The tariff is something more thar a
matter of state policy, a problem of
economics. 1t is a question of morals,
an issue between right and wrong, be-
tween that which is fair and that-Which
is unfair, between the selfshness of the
privileged few and the prosperity of the
many; between a system productive of