Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1892-04-08
PRESIDENT pUcuASAS's PEN PICTURE.

1.-THE earth has yielded her fruits abuu-
dantle and has bountifully rewarded the
tolls of the husbandman. Our great
staples have commanded high prices, and
until within a brief period our manuiactur
ing. mineral and mechanical occupations
have largly partaken of the general pros
perity. We possessed all the elements OF
material wealth in rich abundance, and
yet, notwithstanding all these advantages,
our country in its monetary interests is at
the present moment in deplorable con-
dition. In the midst of unsurpassed
plenty in all the products and in all the
elements of natural wealth we find our
manufactures suspended, our public works
retarded. our private enterprises of different
kinds abandoned, and thousands of useful
laborers thrown out Of employment and
reduced to want"
In four years after this declaration the
crisis came. when, in the hour of its su-
preme need, with the hand of treason
upon its throat, the nation found its
Treasury empty, it's obligations scorned in
the money markets of the world and its
credit gone.
Between the Morrill, tariff bill of 1861,
passed to recuperate treasury bankrupted
by the free trade system of the Democratic
party, and the Mckinley bill of 1890, pass
ed to relieve the surplus in treasury fill
ed by the protective system of the Repub-
liean party, what change my country
men.
Our present tariff law is draftod consist
emily and logically upon the lines that
distinguish a protective from a revenue
tariff. 1t aims to give to US, free of tax,
all those articles necessary to our comfort
that We either do not not or cannot sue
cesslully produce at home. 1t gives to us
free list unprecedented in the history of
tariff legislation.
BIG FREE LIST or THE PRESENT LAW.
The revenue tariff of 1876, the idol of
Democratic worship, gave us but II per
cent of our importations free. The tariff
of 1857 gave us but IS per cent of our i'm
portaticns free The present law gives us
in the neighborhood of one half of all that
We import unburdenea by any tax, for, as
have already said, revenue tariff, unlike
a protective tariff, is a tax paid by the con
sumner.
A comparative statement OF the free and
dutiable imports published by the Treasury
Department for the u months ending with
February, 1891, and February, 1892, re-
spectively, which I viii not read, but will
print as an appendix, shows that whereas
for the first named year our free imports
aggregated SO 81 per cent, for the year just
ended they aggregated 80. 10 per cent.
A single item, that of sugar, transferred
by the Mckinley bill from the dutiable to
the free LIST, relieved the taxpayers of this
country of burdens to the amonnt of $780,
600, 900 1t effected reform that reached
into every home, lofty or humble. A
hundred years or more of expense and ex-
pertinent had demonstrated that for the
present, at least, We could not raise more
than one-eighth of our consumption of
sugar The duty paid thereon was there
fore revenue duty and a tax affecting the
price of both the foreign and the domestic
product.
THE GROWING TIN PLATE INDUSTRY.
The years we have been dependent upon
England, without reason and against
reason, for that which, by proper protection,
we have the ability to make with profit to
ourselves. The total quantity of tin plates
imported into this country in the 20 years
from 1871 to 1891 was 3, ,622, 750 gross tons,
and the total foreign value 1907 BAL ,404.
In addition we paid freights and importers
profits. AS to prices, England has dealt
with us as she would, for as to this Article
we have been absolutely dependant upon
4 ~. hv