Arizona republican., 1891-04-24
THE FARMERS TOOLS.
PROOF THAT THEY ARE NOT
 TAXED" BY THE TARIFF.

First, the Duty Is Not Computed on the
 Retail Price--The "Reformer" Deceives.
 Foreign Agricultural Implements Cam
 not Compare with Ours.
 Of all dishonest charges made by the foes of Protection that which says farm CTS are taxed 45 per cent. on their agri- cultural implements is perhaps the most groundless. A simple illustration will make this clear.
 The farmer buys blow of the local agent for, say $i2. The ''reformer," desperately bent on weaning farmers from their allegiance to Protection, comes along and tells him that the tax on that blow is 45 per cent. The good man takes out his pencil, multiplies the price he paid by the rate per cent. and finds that, if the "reformer'' tells the truth, the "tax" is $5.40. The ''reformer" knows that the farmer will arrive at this result, and he also knows how absurd it is, but he takes good care not to correct the figures.
 Now, even if the farmer did pay the whole of the 45 per cent. tariff, the amount of the "tax" is nothing like this sum. The duty is not computed on the retail price, $l2, but on the wholesale price, which at most is not more than half of this amount. Suppose, then, that the wholesale price of the Ameri- can blow is S6. Any honest Free-trader will admit that the 45 per cent. tariff is not paid by the consumer unless equally good foreign blows can be imported, and with duty added, be placed in the Am erican market at SC apiece.
 But the 45 per cent. must not be com puted on the so which the blow brings in this country, but upon the price at the English or German manufactory, which price, with the 45 per cent. duty added, must equal $e. That is, instead of null tiplying $6 by AS, which would give $2.70 as the tariff, $8 must be divided by 1.45 to obtain the true base, the price in the foreign market. This price would be $4. IA, and 45 per cent of this would be $1.S6, the true duty, which added to the price gives just 80, the price at which it must sell here ih order to compete with the American blow. The "tax," then, even according to the "reformer's" own theory, would be only s1.s6, instead of $5.40 as he designedly tried to lead the farmer to suppose,
 Even these figures do not do justice to the "reformer's" daring in perverting truth. The calculation is based, as has been said, upon the assumption that a foreign made blow, equal in all respects to the American blow, could be placed upon the market at $8, the price at which the latter sells. Now, the fact is that such conditions do not exist. In no country in the world can the equal of the American blow be found. The best agricultural implements in foreign coun- tries are only clumsy limitations of anti quated American models.
 Consul H. T. Dunlap attended the an- nual exhibition of agricultural machin- cry at Breslau, Germany, for the special purpose of comparing the machinery from many countries which was there displayed. "The plows," he reported to the state department, resemble the double Michigan blow so popular in the v anu year ago, but now about obsolete. am per fectly safe in saying that no American farmer would take single one of the blows on exhibition as gift; he would be ashamed to be seen in it's company. It looks very much as though it was the work of country blacksmith of forty years ago."
 Competition by foreign agricultural implements in our own markets would be out of the question, even if they were admitted free-nay, even if we paid a bounty of 50 per cent, foreign imple- ments could not compete, for the simple reason that no American farmer would take the heavy, ungainly things at any price. Since, as we have said before, the tariff can be tax only when the Amer ican consumer would just as soon have the foreign article, with duty added, as the American article at the domestic price, the absurdity of the assumption that the farmer pays even $l.S6 tariff tax" must be plain to any one whose in tellect is not clouded by the Free-trade mania.
 That Yankee Tarin.