Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1894-07-27
The Cost to the People.

[From the New York Herald, July GOTH
BY carefully collating the statistics bearing
on the question OF the working and effect of
the Senate's Tariff bill shouldi it become law,
the Herald is now able to present the Ameri-
can people with fair estimate of what it
will cost them to permit the passage of this
revised edition OF the Mckinley law. The
Treasury experts report that the Senate duties
on imports would yield $163, 900, 900 of reve-
nue. annually. But this is only one-seventh
of what the people will have to pay annually
for the protection" which an imperious Sen
atorial junta has secretly prescribed. Every
tariff has proved poor and Wasteiul eXped-
ent for raising Government revenue. but
mighty and monstrous engine for increasing
the cost OF living and clandestinely piling up
bounties, eXacted from the earnings Of every
consumer and heaped into the Golfers of few
pet manufacturers. An able authority has
shown that the tariff in force in 1882, while
furnishing scanty income to the Treasury
(ess than Sl60, 000, 000), SO raised the prices of
commodities throughout the United States
that it imposed in that year burden of 81,
00,00O,00O on the whole people A moderate
estimate, based on the official statistics of the
Kinley tariff is costing the country some So
900, 900 day, Or not far from 81, coo GOO, 900 a
year. though it has never yielded one-tenth
that sum in customs duties
The statistical comparisons seem clearly to
show that if the Senate tariff could yield the
S163, GOO, 900 OF revenue claimed for it, it would
entail an annual protective tax on Amer-
| can consumers Of not less than 81 $50 COG 600
in the purchase Of their necessary supplies
Not one dollar Of this sum would reach the
Federal Treasury, but it would all go into the
Golfers OF the protected industries and
trusts. The Senate's scheme, in word, will
| enable the manufacturers and trusts to keep
up the prices OF all protected" goods on the
average 20 per cent higher than they could
| possibly be sold for were there no tariff al
all. The value of our home manufactured
| products as given by the census Of 1880, ex-
ceeded 81, 900, 100000, and must now exceed 81,
000OOO,0O0. AS Americans will be forced by
the Senate tariff to use most of these products
at protective" prices, ranging from Is to so
per cent. above their real natural value, the
resulting burdens will be far too mountain
Ous for even the Titanic shoulders of the
American people.
1t is the very genius of protection, while
laying vast and crushing taxation on the peo-
pie, like the Egyptian task masters of old, TIC
deny its victims the means Of discharging the
task assigned. "Protection'' has destroyed
our foreign commerce and driven our mercan-
tile marine from the ocean, thus deprivng oul
citizens of the most powerful agencies for
acquiring the wealth which it exacts for its
pampered and plutocratic beneflciaries.
The time has come when this ''new slave
ry, as calling and debasing as that of ante
bellum days, must give way. The battle fol-
commercial freedom cannot be long postpon-
| ed.
Protection" must go, gradually, if posi-
BILE, but in any case it must go. With our
commerce now terribly Frustrated, business
paralyzed and agriculture compelled to sell
its products for barely more than the actual
cost of production, the cry of the suffering
American people is to roll off the burden Of
unequal and unnecessary "protective' taxa
ton. The Senate must give us back the Will
son bill in its simplicity and integrity.