Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1892-09-30
FRIDAY MORNING, SEPT. 80, 1892

10 understand the detailed WORKING Ol u
tariff man would have to be a merchant,
manufacturer Of every trade, something
of a statesman, and, besides all a consumer.
Few men have that wide reaching equip
ment for understanding the tariff. But the
consumer has the same advantage about q
tariff that horse has about a bad saddle;
he may not know how to make one, but he
knows well enough the point at which it
makes his back sore. There are very few
men who understand State taxation, but
every farmer can tell you just where land
tax, school tax and other taxes under it
hit him. If the farmers of this country
had paid one half the attention to the taxa
ton imposed on them by a high protective
tariff, that they have to their State and
county taxes; if they had held their con-
gressnlen to as strict an accountability
about that taxation as they have held the
members Of their State legislatures about
State taxation, Protection would have
long ago have teen numbered with the
things of the past.
1t is pity that tariff has been made a
partisan question; it makes it just that
much harder to get the truth about it. Par
tisanry is not a promoter Of frankneSS. The
question Of tariff should be as non-partisan
as the building of a navy, as the providing
for judiciary, as the working of a post
office department. 1t means the taxation
of all the people, and there should be no
tx,l ;e,o A iva drift
is simply proposition to the people to sub
nit to so much taxation in order to derive
some future benefits. These benefits were
in the future nearly century ago, and they
are still in that condition to-day-one of
the latest being, that if the people of this
country will submit to pay $16,O00,00O a
year additional taxation the manufacture
Of tin plate employing about 10000 people
will be commenced in the United States
and pushed to success. The people have
already commenced paying the additional
price for tin ware under the Mckinley bill.
When the future benefit will come no man
can tell. That is a good and fair exam
pie of Protective tariff; for the tax payers
VI CuC " ulCtll pUttUGS W Oulu OttFC JUDI RtOU,-
600 year by paying the 10000 people $500
a year each for doing nothing, and go on
buying their tin plate from Wales as they
have been doing.
Naturally a mere promise OF future bene-
fits at an uncertain date, is not very strong
argument to advance before the people for
increased taxation, and so the Republicans
have reinforced 1t by all sorts of vagaries.
One is the extraordinary one that whilethe
tariff is tax, the foreigner who sells the
goods pays it and not our own people. This
Is an argument which deserves to rank
with those of the rain makers, or. even
worse with the promises OF the green goods
dealers. If the foreign producers were pay
ing the tariff tax OH sugar, how was it that
the price to the American consumer went
down directly it was put on the free list
Such arguments as that are the worst of
folly. Take the tariff tax in your own
home and see how you would like it BADLY
applied there. 1t is calculated that the
tariff tax under the Mckinley bill is just
$40 a head for every living inhabitant of
the United btates. That is just $3.50, 900
a year paid by the people of Augusta nine
tenths of it by the farmers Of the county
into the protected manufacturers pockets
OF the U. S. Treasury. AS near as can be
arrived at, this $40 head is the amount
which the cost of clothing, farming nipple
ments, everything we use, is increased by a
10 Of, 70 II, in,
country and which bars off foreign COM
petition from making prices cheaper. Sup
pose you were to submit this naked prOpo-
sition to the people of Augusta-to pay
$350.000 year in money that American
manufactures might be established and
encouraged and that American workmen
might get high wages. How many do ys u
think would vote for it? How many speak
ers advocating it would be listened to five
minutes? And yet that is just what you
are doing. Why this is robbery you say !!
Well, you are not far wrong, but it is also
human nature. Just wall off Augusta
county from the rest of the world and tax
everything so high that nothing made else
where can come into it and you would soon
see it cost S. to shoe horse. You mid
die aged men had taste of this during the
Confederacy. Just as soon as the ports
were closed and trade with Europe and the
Northern States was cut off. prices of
everything went up and you had to pay the
increase. Ports closed by the Mckinley
bill are just as effectually closed as by a
navy as far as giving the protected manu-
facturers the power to fix the prices is con-
cerned.
But they say it is to help the American
workmep. This is another green goods az
gument. How are you going to help the
American workmen by closing up manu-
features in Europe-the boast Of the
Mckinley bill people-and bringing the
workmen over here to compete with the
American workmen? What workman in
Staunton wants competition to lower his
wages, whether it comes from Europe OF
anywhere else? Do you know Of any? Ism t
there enough competition from Europe
brought to this country every week in the
way of immigrants; have they not pretty
well rooted out the American farm -laborer
in some parts of the West and lowered me-
chanics wages in the Eastern States En-
able the American Workman to own his
home! How many of s'the'n own thei1
homes?' How long was the procession OF
those that were evic5e from their homes
owned by thei: employers, the Carnegies
at the late Homestead Strike? Look at
workmen all over the country. Every adj
vance in wages the American workman
gets, he has to strike for. No Protective
tariff gives it to him nor does any manu-
facturer protected by this tariff, unless the
,rorlrnaon com hi ne &c thew have to do to