The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-12-19
THE WILSON BILL,
Majority Report of the
Ways and Means
Committee.
FALLACIES OF PROTECTION.
Benefits of a Low Tax Plainly
Set Forth From Ex-
pefienee.
NO FEAR OF COMPETITION
Conditions in This Country Give
Manufacturers Advantages
Over Foreigners.
THE RATE OF TAXATION.
Sugar Bounties Done Away With
Free Raw wWool-Reduced Rate
on Wooden Goods.

on Wooden Goods.
WASHINGTON. Dec. 10, 1895. -"The Ameri-
can people, after the fullest and most thor
ough debate ever given by any people to
their fiscal policy. have deliberately and
rightly decided that the existing tariff is
wrong in principle and grievously unjust in
operation"
Such is the opening paragraph of the ma
jority report submitted by the Democratic
members of the Ways and Means Committee
today to the full committee. The report
was written by Chairman Wilson. 1t was
laid by him before his Democratic associates
last night and received their cordial ap-
proval.
Continuing, the report says
ssThey have decided as free men must
always decide, that the power of taxation
has no lawful OF constitutional exercise ex-
cept for providing revenue for the support OF
government. Every departure from this
principle is a departure from the funda-
mental principles of popular institutions and
inevitably works out a gross inequality in
the citizenship of country For more than
thirty years we have levied the largest part
of our federal taxes in violation of this vital
truth until we have reached in the existing
tariff an extreme and voluminous
system of class taxation to which
history may be challenged to fur
nish any parallel. So many private en-
terprises have been taken into partnership
with the government, SO many private inter-
ests now share in the prerogatiye of taxing
10000, 900 people, that any attempt to dis
solve this Illegal union is necessarily encoun-
tered by an opposition that rallies behind it
the intolerance of monopoly, the power OF
concentrated wealth, the inertia of fixed
habits, and the honest errors OF generation
of false teaching.
NOT PURGED OF ALL PROTECTION.
1.-THE bill on which the committee has ex-
pended much patient and anxious labor is
not offered as a complete response to the
mandate of the American people 1t no
more processes to be purged of all protection
than to be free of all error in its complex
and manifold details. However we may
deny the existence of any legislative pledge,
or of the right of any Congress to make
such pledge, for the continuance of duties
that carry with them more or less ac-
knowledged protection, we must recognize
that great interests do exist whose ex-
istence and prosperity it is no part
of our reform either to imper;l
or to curtail. We believe and we have the
warrant of our own past experience for be-
leving, that reduction of duties Will not in
lure, but give more abundant life to all our
RlGdU MISUNDERSTANDING lnouStlICo l1O"ONCI
much they may dread the change. In deal
ing with the tariff question as with every
other long-standing abuse that has inter
woven itself with our social or industrial
system the legislator must always remem-
Der that, in the beginning, temperate reform
is safest, having in itself the principle of
growth.
THE FALSITY OF PROTECTION
ssA glance at the tariff legislation of our
own country ought to satisfy every intelli-
gent student that protection has always
shown its falsity as a system of economy, by
its absolute failure to insure healthy and
stable prosperity to manufactures. 1t
teaches men to depend on artificial help, on
laws taxing their countrymen for prosperity
in business, rather than upon their own skill
and effort 1t throws business out of its
natural channels into artificial channels,
where there must always be fuctuation and
uncertainty, and it makes tariff system the
football of party politics, and the stability of
large business interests the stake
of every popular election. None
have recognized this truth more
fully than the wisest men who from time to
time have engaged in the so-called protected
industries Years ago, Mr.. Edward Everett
stated, in an Grafton at Lowell, that the
sagacious men who founded the manufac-
lures of New England were never friends of
, high tariff policy. Hon. Amaza Walker, a
former member of the House from MasSa-
q
economic questions, declared it to be within
his own personal knowledge that when the
proposal was made to impose the protective
tariff of 1916, the leading manufacturers of
Rhode Island amongst whom was
Mr. Slater, the father of cotton spinning
in this country, met at the count
ing room of one of their number,
and after deliberate consultation, came
unanimously to the conclusion that they had
rather be let alone their business had grown
up naturally and succeeded well, and they
felt confident of its continued prosperity, If
let alone by the Government They argued
that by laying protective tariff their busi-
ness would be thrown out of its natural
channels, and subjected to hlictuation and
uncertainty. But, as usual, the clamor of
selfish and less far-sighted men and the am
bition of Law makers to ustup the place of
Providence prevailed.
TARIFF OF ABoMfNATIoNs.
.sThe country entered on a protective
policy. with the unfailing result that gov
crnment help begot violent demand for
more government help. The moderate tariff
of TSIG RAPIDLY grew into the Tariff of
denominations that carried the country to
the verge of civil disorder, and provoked q
natural reyulsion. Protection has run a like
course since 1861 When Congress began
to repeal war burdens and to re-
live manufacturers OF the internal
taxes, which they had rsed to secure
compensating duties on like foreign
products, there arose demand throughout
the country, without respect to party, for q
reduction of the war tariff. Unable to resist
TINS demand, the protected interests baffied
aud thwarted any reduction of consequence
until 1872 when they defeated House bill
that did make a substantial reduction, by
substituting Senate bill which carried a
horizontal cut of ten per cent. As soon,
however, as the election of 1874 gave the
next House to the Democratic party that bill
was repealed by the outgoing Republicans,
and rates restored to what they were before
1872
PROTECTION is PROHIBITION.
rand although the demand for tariff re-
form and for reduction of taxes has ever
since been burning and q growing one in
the country, the protected industries have