The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-12-19

! their protection, occasionally permitting the
, repeal or the lessening of a tax that was paid
| into the Treasury in order to keep away from
| or to increase duties levied for their beneflt.
Protection, left to its natural momentum,
! never stops short of prohibition, and prohlol-
tory walls are always needing TO
be built higher or to be patched
and strengthened. A protective tariff never
has and never can gave stability and salts
faction to its own benefciaries, Even II ITS
! victims are too weak or scattered to agltate
! for its decrease those henefciaries are sure
to agitate for an increase. When the reform
tariff of lS49 was before Congress, the air
| was full of prophesies that it would destroy
our manufacturing industries throw labor
| out of employment, or compel it TO work at
| pauper wages, and dwarf and arrest the
prosperous growth of the country. Every
representative of four great manufacturing
states of New England voted against 1t with
gloomy forebodings of its blighting effect.
The rate of duties provided in that tariff was
much lower than those of the bill we here
offer
THE RESULT.
What was the results Instead Of paralyZ-
ing the industries and pauperizng the La Dor
of New England, or the rest of the country,
the tariff of 1916 gave immense vlgor to
manufactures with steady employment and
increasing wages to labor. So that after
eleven years experience under 1t, the longest
der any tariff, the representatives of those
States with practical unanimity voted for
further reduction of twenty per cent, and
by two-thirds vote sustained the tariff OF
1857 which made reduction of twenty-five
per cent.
''And so well contented and prosperous
were the manufacturers of that and other
sections of the country under the low rates
of the tariff of 1857 that when the Morrill,
bill of 1861 took the first backward step
there was general protest against it. The
Hon. Alexander Ride of Massachusetts,
said in the House: THE manufacturer asks
no additional protection. He has learned
AMONG other things that the greatest evil
next to a ruinous competition from foreign
sources in an excessive protection which
stimulates like ruinous and irresponsible
competition at home
WHAT MANUFACTURERS WANTED.
't{Congressionat Globe, 1S59-60, Page
1,S61-Mr. Sherman of Ohio said:-'Whe
Mr.. Stanton says the manufacturers are
urging and pressing this bill, he says what
he must certainly know is not correct the
manufacturers have asked over and over
again to be let alone Qbid., 2,053). Mr..
Morrill, himself has since said that the tariff
of 1861 was not asked for, and but coldly
welcomed by manufacturers. Congressional
Globe, 1s69-70, Page 3,295)-Senator r. M.
T. Hunter of Virginia, then Chairman of the
Senate Finance Committee, said:-'Have any
of the manufacturers come here to complain
or ask for new duties! Is it not no
torious that if we were to leave it to
the manufacturers of New England
themselves to the manufacture OF hardware,
textile fabrics etc., there would be large
majority against any changes Do you not
know that the woollen manufacture dates lis
revival from the tariff of 1857, which altered
the duties on wool! The history of American
industry shows that during no other period
has there been a more healthy and rapid de-
velopment of our manufacturing industry
than during the fifteen years of low tariff
from 1916 to 1861 nor a more healthy and
harmonious growth of agriculture and all
the other great industries of the country.
A SALUTARY LESSON.
No chapter in our political experience car
ries with it more salutary lesson than this,
and none could appeal more strongly to law
makers to establish just and rational sys-
tenn Of public revenues, neither exhausting
agriculture by constant blood letting, nor
keeping manufactures alternately between
chi1ls and fever by artificial pampering In
this direction alone lies stability, concord of
sections and of great industries
REPRESENT THE PEOPLE.
"We have already said that public discus
sion may disclose errors of minor detail in
the schedules of our bill. To escape such
errors would require so thorough and minute
knowledge of all the divisions, sub-divi-
sions, complex and manifold mazes and in
volutions of our chemical, textile, metal and
other industries, that no Committee of Con-
gress, no matter how extended the range of
their personal knowledge or how laborious
and painstaking their efforts, could ever
hope to possess. We have not forgotten
that we represent the people, who are the
many as well as the protected interests, who
are the few, and while we have dealt with
the latter in no spirit of unfriendliness, we
have felt that it was our duty and their
privilege to make the tariff schedules.
NOT THE AMANUENSIS.
SsThose who concede the right of bene-
ficiaries to fix their own bounties must
necessarily commit to them the framing and
wording of the laws by which those boun-
ties are secured to them. A committee of
Congress thus becomes merely the amanuen-
sis of the protected interests. 1t has been
shown so clearly and SO often in the debates
of this House that nearly every important
schedule of the existing law was made in its
very words and figures by representatives of
the interests it was framed to protect that it
is unnecessary in our report to present the
record proof of this fact, but it may not be
amiss to cite further evidence to show that
this is not only the necessary rule, but the
open and avowed method of framing pro-
tective tariffs.
INDICTMENT OF THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM
when the Senate substitute for the bill
passed by the House in the Fiftieth Con-
gress-which substitute is real basis of the
existing law-was being prepared, Senator
Hoar of Massachusetts appeared before the
Senate sub Committee and used this Ian
guage: Instead of coming before your sub
Committee for formal hearing on our Mas
sachusetts industries, l thought the best way
was to carefully prepare table of all the
various industries, perhaps some sixty OF
seventy in ALL and ask Brother Aldrich to
go over them with me and ascertain what
the people wanted in each case, and if there
were any cases where the committee had not
already done exactly what the petitioners de-
sired, or had not infexibly passed upon the
question: / could have hearing before YOU
but find in every instance the action of the
committee, as Mr. Aldrich thinks it likely to
to be, is entirely satisfactory to the interests
I represent, with the exception of one or
two, and the papers in regard to those cases
have handed to Mr.. AldTich' No stronger
Indictment of the whole protective system
could be made than that which is unconsci-
ously carried in these words of United
States Senator. that laws which impose taxes
on the great masses.
of people must be written i'll language SO
technical that the most intelligent citizen
cannot fully understand them, and that the
rates of taxation should be dictated by the
selfishness and greed of those who are to re-
eeive the taxes. We have believed that the
first step toward a reform of the tariff should
be release of taxes on the materials of in
dustry. There can be no substantial and
beneficial reduction upon the necessary
clothing and other comforts of the American
people, nor any substantial and beneficial
enlargement of the field of American labor.
Inv a4a.. l1 :