The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1890-10-31

|
campaign. Now. aside from little mere
personalities, what is it they raise in this
campaign, my friends? Now, will discuss
this to you in my own plain. blunt way, just
as would address jury of our grangers
up the country. Now. what is it? What is
it they have to say in this campaign? Oh,
they say There is that great Mckinley bill.
That is terrible thing That is the
only issue there is. Well, now,
WHAT ABOUT THE M 'KINIlEY BILL,
my friends? will tell you about the Nc
kinley bill. it is good deal like you and /,
it is picture of human frailty. You and
aim at perfection, but we are unable to
reach it, and SO with the Mckinley bill. The
men who passed it no doubt aimed to make
it q perfect bill, but as Macauley has truly
said, 1.-THE science of government is an ex-
perimental SCIENCE" So of all things in the
matter OF government, there is nothing SO
much matter of experiment as making
and preparing tariff bill. Two years ago,
| Brother Mills, of the Democratic party,
wrestled with the subject, and he found it a
most difficult subject. This year the Re
| publican party has wrestled with it, and on
the whole / want to tell you land shall
| enter more into detail) while think the bill
! has some faults, / think on the whole it is a
fairly. good bill, and at all events. my
friends, (and that is the great nub of this
CONTROVERSY, 1t is a better bill than the
Mills bill. [Great laughter and applausel.
81 want to keep you, in this tariff question,
to the plain issue. You who believe in pro-
| lection could reasonably like protection. It
is this: Granting, say, that the Mckinley
bill is not as good a bill rs it ought to be, it
is sufficient for the Republicans to show that
! 1T is better than the Mills bill or better than
free trade. GApplause.l Now, that is all
the Democrats have to offer us. They can
point to the past, to the Mills bill, and as to
the future. take them today on the hustings
and on the stump and through their papers,
what is it that they recommend? Do they
| come and say we want different kind of
| protection? No. the whole sum and sub
| stanc Of their arguments, the sum and
| substance of their attacks is that we ought
to have free trade in this country. APP
| plause. Now, as / said a moment ago,
there are some features in the Mckinley
| bill don't like. For instance, the wooden
and worsted schedule, I don't think, my
| friends, after 30 years of protection, that
should have been raised at all. But that Is a
minor matter.
'sThere is another matter In the Mckinley
bill,
IT HAs GIVEN US FREE SUGAR;
| and do you know what that means to the in
| terests of this country? 1t means the shak-
| ing off from the shoulders of upwards of
| 100000 or people of a taxation of nearly
| 81 head from every man, woman and child
in this country. [Applause.l
"Now / want to call your attention to two
leading features of the two bills, the Nc
| Kinley bill and the Mills bill. The leading
feature of the Mills bill was free wool, if
you remember. Now in regard to free wool,
| and I read from book compiled
| by the treasury department at the
request of the COMMITTEES of ways and
means of the Fiftieth congress (Mr. Mills
committed hold the book in my hand here
and anybody curious to examine it can after
the meeting is over. 1t appears from that
that the effect of putting wool on the free
list in 1888, of the bill, based upon the
statistics of the Last fiscal year of 1887. would
simply relieve the people of Sc, 300, 900 of
taxation. In other words, for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1887, there were SIS, $685.
987.97 worth of wool imported, and the
equivalent ad valorem tax on that was
Sc, 1896, 654.z3. In other words, that was the
whole amount involved in the matter of
free wool, and the whole amount
that the bill proposed. to relieve
that bill. Applause. Now. under the
Mckinley bill, Twill take the statistics of
the same year. I had occasion at that time
to compile them on the sugar question and
molasses question, and as they come at the
same time and cover the same period as the
Mills bill, will read them. They were in
corporated in little speech made at that
time. For the fiscal year ending June 80,
1887 we imported into this country, S68, 862,-
884 worth of sugar; and on that sugar there
was levied and collected from the American
people $56, 507 1856, or amounting to rate of
82.04 per cent. On every dollars worth of
sugar imported into this country we paid
duty of 82.o4 per cent. Now, the Mckinley
bill
HAS RELIEVED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
of that tax [great applausel; it has relieved
us as against the six million and odd hun
dred thousand dollars on the wool in the
Mills bill, and we can put up to the Ameri-
can people and show that there has been
lifted, by the grace of God and the McKin-
ley bill, $56,o00,OOO. Tremendous ap-
| plause.
Snow, what do you suppose the Mills bill
| had to do about the sugar? Sugar was
mainly a Southern product. They had a
tenderness for it. It is another thing; the
| sugar tax comes nearer than any other of
| being revenue tax. The wool tax is pro-
| tective tax, for this reason: Every state,
| from the state of Maine even to far Alaska,
can raise wool of some kind. It is a matter
that can be cultivated and built up by means
of protection; but not SO with our sugar IN
dustry-at least that part of it that comes
out of the pure cane. That is confined to a
limited area, and statistics show that, in spite
of the high duty of 80 per cent, the product
| of Louisiana and part of Mississippi, the
| product of the sugar plantations has rather
diminished than increased, SO that the sugar
tax, unless it may operate on sorghum and
beets (Which is matter of experiment SO
far), outside of that it is purely a revenue
| tax, and in no sense is protective tax, be-
cause protective tax must be of that char
acter that it can build up an industry and
increase it to such an extent that we can be
| self-sustaining.
''Now, I was about to say land will read
/ from this same Democratic official docu-
ment) what did the Mills bill offer us on the
sugar question? l read from a capitulation
at the end of this document, schedule e.
This is for the fiscal year 1887, the year next
before the Mills bill was introduced. Sugar,
total importation Ct will read the whole
column, so you can see distinctly what itis),
total importation, $6S, 897, 102.27;' tax on it,
| $50, Sic, 601.67. Present rate of duty, 82.04
per cent; proposed rate of duty by the Mills
! bill, 65.& per cent. In other words
| THE MILLS BILL
| Only proposed to cut down the duty on
| sugar from an ad valorem equivalent
rate of 80 per cent to 65.64 per cent, so you
can see not much more than Ii per cent, if
l figure correctly, not hardly quarter of
the duty. Now, you can take and apply the
| figures yourself: Go p cent, or Sc, 600, 900,
the Mills bill proposed to relieve. Now,
| there you have it. The whole American
people by the Mckinley bill are relieved
from this tax on sugar; nothing is left now
except mere bagatelle tax of half cents
pound to protect the refners. The Mills
hi bill left this. as ! said, for double reason:
| The Democrats in the first place. were not
anxious to injure the planters of Louisiana,
as they thought it would, In the next place,
of all taxes dear to the Democratic heart
was the sugar tax, because it was revenue
instead of protecting tax.
But there was another niger back of it.
| III .aunhtar oyOfa traafu M ada