Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1893-10-05
REPEATING OLD FALsEHooDs.
St0ek-ln-Trade Arguments of High Tariff
Republicans.

St0ek-ln-Trade Arguments nj High TeFin
Republicans.
Said Mr.. Mckinley in his recent
speech at Akron: .'They say protec-
tive tariff is a tax and a burden upon
the people. It is a tax upon the foreign
producer, and his welfare is not our first
concern.
The soft coal beggars in their suppli
cations before the ways and means
committee told a different story. They
all agreed that they wanted the tax on
imported coal because without it Nova
Scotia coal could be delivered in New
England ports cheaper than their own
could be- That is, they wanted the
tax to enable them to exact seventy
five cents per ton more from New Eng
landers than they could get without
the tax. They wanted it as tax on
New England consumers, not on Nova
Scotia producers.
Other tariff beggars have admitted
the same thing, some of them expressly
as well as by necessary implication.
For instance, George p. Ikert, who was
heard on behalf of the pottery beggars,
said in reply to a question from Mr..
Reed that 1.-THE tariff tax was undoubt-
eddy added to the price, and the con-
sumner really paid the duty" Three
years ago ex-Gov. Warmoth, of Louisi-
ana, protested against the substitution
of bounty for the tariff tax because
it would disclose the fact that the tariff
is bounty" and the people wouldn't
stand it when they discovered that fact.
When Benjamin Harrison was presi-
dent his protectionist solicitor general
made an argument before the supreme
court in which he said that 1.-The
amount of duty levied is a bounty to
the domestic manufacture" and that
cit is with a view to such benefit for
him that it is levied"
And so say they all when they are
not trying to deceive people whom
they take to be unidentified. Nc
Kinley himself said so when he
was defending his notorious bill
three years ago. Speaking of his
ridiculous provision putting the same
duties on articles imported for govern
ment use as on the same articles iru-
ported for private use, he said: 1.-THE
government, its officers, agents and
contractors will hereafter have to pay
the same duties which its citizens gen.
orally are required to pay" In his
eagerness to fool the people in one way
he let slip the truth in another way.
He admitted that the citizens of this
country. and not foreign producers,
pay the duties. In the same speech. re-
ferring to the free admission of ''per-
sonal effects under the old law, he
said:
1.-THE practical effect OF this provision was
that the wealthy classes who were able to
visit diStar.L countries secured exemption from
the7rayment of duties while the average citi-
zen, unable to go abroad. was compelled to pay
a duty upon the articles which he might want
to use.''
So it was the average citizen" who
paid the duties, while the wealthy citi-
zen, who could 20 abroad and bring in
small cargo of personal effects"
free, escaped. And even in his Akron
speech, after asserting that the tariff is
tax on the foreign producer, he adj
mits in no less than three places that
the home consumer pays it in the form
of higher prices.
OF course every man who understands
the subject knows that the object OF
protection is to tax the domestic con-
sumers for the benefit of favored pro-
ducers, and that If this were not the
effect the latter would lose all interest
in protection. But since the prctec-
tionists persist in their old attempt to
deceive, it is in order to convict them
of falsehood out of their own mouths.
|-Chicaoo Herald