People's voice. [volume] (Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas) 1890-1917, 1893-12-01

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aud the magnitude, difficulty and deli
cacy of the duty assigned them of
framing the tariff bill for nation of
20, 400, 900 of people
Thetbill they were called on to re-
form is vast and labyrinthine sys-
TEN of class taxation, the culmination
of thirty years control of the taxing
power by a few great interests
gathered into their train a host of
petty toll gathering. 1t was carefully
framed to prevent, as long as possible,
what its author called ANY monkey
ing with the tariff, by which he
meant any successful effort of
the people to undo or lessen
the bounties which its bene-
fciaries were permitted to write
down therein, In their own words
and their own figures. 1t transferred
to the free list proper and fruitful
venue articles where most of the taxes
paid By the people were received by
their movement, and greatly increased
the rates of these articles, where all
or most of the taxes paid by the peo-
pie went into private Golfers. And it
was oolstered about by many defenses,
chief among which are a swept and
garnisheed treasury and a swollen
and colossal scale of permanent ex-
penditures.
Such are the conditions that con.
fronted us at the threshold of our
work. The committee have welcomed
information and counsel from every
trustworthy source, and, while they
do not expect their bill to escape Just
criticism in all its details, they do
present it to the country as the result
of months of patient, anxious toll, and
of an honest desire to discharge their
duty, purged of all faint of local and
personal favoritism or prejudice.
Its main features are two: First, the
adoption, wherever it seemed prac-
ticable, of ad valorem instead of
specific duties, secondly, the freeing
from taxes of those great materials Of
industry that lie at the base of pro-
duction.
Specific rates of duty are objection
able for these reasons: They fire.
quently conceal rate of taxation TOO
enormous to be submitted to if eX-
posed in ad valorem terms as the duty
of eight cents 100 pounds on salt in
bulk, which amounts to over eighty
per cent on a common necessity of
life. They always bear heavily on
the common article used by the
masses and slightly on the ex-
pensive article consumed by the
rich, as a tax of $50 on
all houses would be nothing on the
great mansion and very high on the
humble home And contrary to COM
mon belief specific duties lead to
greater frauds in administration, for
counting and weighing at the custom
house are done by the cheapest and
most easily corrupted labor while ad
valorem rates are assessed by the best
paid and most responsible appraisers.
The ad valorem system has worked
well in practice, is essentially the fair
system, because 1t is tax upon the
actual value of an article, and was de-
clared by Mr. Clay himself to be in
the ry and according to every sound
principle of justice entitled to the
preference, and indicated by long
trial.
The boldest innovation of the bill is
its large free list of the raw materials.
Taxes upon pro iuction are double
wrongs They gather and accumulate
on the consumers of the finished
products They hurt labor by
narrowing the market for what
it produces. Coal and iron are
the foundations of modern industry.
Material progress is measured by the
amount of their consumption. No
other country can supply them as
abundantly or cheaply as we can. No
possible competition can interfere
with our own producers, few miles
in the interior Of the country. Re-
moteness from the sources of supply
is in itself enough disadvantage to
any section of the country, without
further burdens in tariff taxes.
Untaxed ores, coal, lumber, wool
other things must immensely stimu-
late production in certain parts of our
country. The thin wedge of Ameri-
can manufactures has entered every
country. With releases from taxes
on their materials there is no limit to
the growth of our foreign trade. This
will more than compensate the home
producers of raw material, who, tariff
or no tariff, control all the in
terror of the country from any appre-
hended loss of markets anywhere
along the seaboard. It's incalculable
advantage to labor is apparent In
every great line Of manufactures we
can produce in from six to nine
months enough for our own market
We can get rid of our surplus only by
foreign trade. AS long as we have
taxes on the materials of industry we
cannot build up that trade, hence the
other alternative, trusts to keep down
production to the home market
As to details of the bill, l will
briefly recapitulate the salient changes
OF the several schedules. In the chem
istry schedule we have transferred to
the free list quite number of articles,
used in manufacturing. In the pottery
schedule reductions are made. Plain
white ware is decreased from the high
schedule in which it mysteriously
crowded itself Decorated ware is re-
duced from sixty to forty-fve. In
plate glass reductions are made, the
largest size from fifty cents to thirty
cents per square foot; on silvered from
sixty to thirty-fve cents
In the iron and steel schedule we
begin with free ore. Pig iron we re-
duce from s672 per ton which is so to
80 per cent to uniform duty of 221
per cent-a rate somewhat higher in
proportion than the rest of the sched-
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