The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1893-09-21

I've or fifty per cent
This done, he disposes OF the goods
30 imported 10 the people in this vi
cinity. All being sold, who, l ask, will
have paid the tariff taxes to the gov
ernment? Not the English manufao-
kurer; not your home merchant; but
The final purchaser Of the goods, the
customers of your home merchant, the
consumers.
The proposition that the consumer
pays the duty becomes, when thus
stated, self-evident one.
II is as plain as that two and two
make four, that your home merchant
simply advanced the tariff taxes TO the
government, and that the consumers
not only repaid them to him, but repaid
them with his twenty-five or fifty per
cent profit added thereto.
II is just as plain that the taxes,
though indirectly paid, more than
doubled the cost of the goods TO the
ultimate purchasers
The whole burden Of taxation under
such q system rests upon the comsump-
tion of the people. The property and
wealth of the country pay no part of
dts taxes
This destroys that principle Of equal
ity, which is an essential requirement
Of Just method of taxation.
The rich and the poor are not
placed on an equality in their con-
tributions of taxes, under such q
system. The taxes paid by them are
not in proportion to their ability to
pay. The very fact that consump-
tion constitutes the basis of the
tax, prevents equality in the pay
ment of IL, and does so to the disad-
vantage of the poor man, because the
consumption of the rich man does not
bear the same relation TO his income
that the consumption of the Door man
bears to his earnings.
The burden presses with the most
unequal weight upon those who are
least able to sustain it,
This is true even when the tax is coll
lected by the government upon a pure
ly revenue basis for its own support.
But that which is IN such case an in
justice, becomes a crime against the
great masses of the people, when the
laws impose the highest duties and re-
turn the lowest revenue, to compel the
giving of gratuities and the payment
of tribute TO those whose riches and
power already endanger the perpetuity
of our free institutions.
The enormity of the offense is aggra-
waited by the indirect and subtle man
ner in which the tax is collected as is
that of the assassin by the stealth and
secrecy with which it is committed.
But, pernicious as is this system of
taxation in its general effects upon the
farmers, mechanics and laborers of the
country, as developed by the McKin-
ley act it reaches the acme of iniquity
and wrong when, in the adjustment Of
its burdens, it discriminates against
the humber and poorer classes of our
people, by imposing the heaviest duties
upon the coarsest and cheapest of
goods, which are primary necessities in
the households of the wage earners
and toilers of the land.
The true principle of taxation would
impose the highest duties upon articles
of luxury and the lowest possible
duties upon the necessaries of life.
But the Mckinley act reversing this
principle and adopting the contrary
one, made more rugged and harder the
pathway through life, and more diff
cult Of attainment the means Of liveli-
hood for every laboring man, woman
and child in this country, by its in
crease in the duties, already too high,
on clothing, blankets, carpets, felt
hats, earthenware, glassware, cutlery,
tinware, kitchen utensils, and almost
every conceivable article required for
personal comfort and daily use and
convenience in their homes; and did il,
while they were lulled into nom
resistance to its infamous provisions by
the siren song of protection to Ameri-
can labor and the constant iteration
of Governor McKinley's absurd propo-
sition that we should never tax our
own people so long as we can have
other people to tax"
1t has been demonstrated to q math-
ematical certainty that the in
crease made in the rates of duty upon
the necessaries of life by this act, in
creased the cost of living to the people
OF the United States during the first
year OF its operation, as a law, more
than s1s5, 200, 900.
The alleged protection to American
labor by such legislation is just as much
a fiction and fraud as is the miserable
pretext that our tariff taxes are paid
by foreigners whose goods we buy.
The protected barons, whose selfish
ness and greed have eradicated from
their very nature, the common instincts
of humanity, care not for the welfare Of
the laboring men Of this, or any other
country.
They believe in free trade in men.
Cheap labor is with them as essen
tial part of their protective system as
. high tariffs; and the profession of de-
sire by them to secure protective duties
in the interest and for the benefit of
the men who work in their protected
industries, is a dishonest concealment
of their true motives and purposes.
The history of tariff legislation proves
this to be true.
The passage of the Mckinley act did
not have the effect to increase the
wages of the men employed in the in
dustries most highly protected under
it. Nor has this been the result of any
previous act passed by congress giving
higher duties to the manufacturers On
the contrary, in every instance, the
tariff, while diminishing the purchas-
ingpower of wages by its increase in the
prices of the goods TO be purchased by
the wage earners, has left the question OF
the rates of wages to be determined by
the law of supply and demand, which
governs in protected and non-protected
industries alike.
The official records establish the fact