The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1894-01-11
HENDERSON, n. c.. THURSDAY, JANUARY II, 1894
ONE VIEW OF IT.

UNE VIEW UF II.
THE QUESTION OF TARIFF.
The South Can Utilize It's Own
Raw Material.
There is new and prosperous era
awaiting the entire country under tenn
perate tariff rates. with the raw mate
rials of manufacture admitted free. Its
blessings will not be concentrated on
any one section, nor be disproportion-
ately enjoyed by two or three States;
they will be ditfused with something
approaching equality in all sections
and to every State. The South will
have lis share Of the advantages Of the
new&policy, of which free raw mate
rials of manufactured is the main feature.
What Pennsylvania has been doing
under protective tariffs that have been
extremely partial, not to say sectional,
in the bestowal of their benefits, the
South will be able to do under the more
just and impartial application of the
taxing power of the government which
is contemplated by the pending tariff
bill. Pennsylvania has been building
herself up on the foundation of raw
materials-the yield of her own mag
nifcent coal and iron mines. There
they are, securely in her own keeping,
and she has fully utilized them. Around
her prolific mines she has built steel
and iron works in large numbers and
made herself the centre Of a vast sys-
tenn of metallic manufactures which
has no parallel in this country or any
other. She can well afford to concede
free coal and iron to the rest of
the country. Her natural advantages
in that regard are handicaps enough
to every other State in the Union
without adding to them the extra
burdenof IS cents ton toll on the
soft coal for lack of which nearly
all the furnace fires of New England
and California have been extinguished
and thousands Of their working people
deprived of work and wages.
This is question that touches some
coal interests in the South as we'll as
in Pennsylvania. But in readjusting
the tariff on lines that are fair and
equitable to all sections, States and in
terests, something must be conceded
and given up locally here and there in
exchange for the larger benefits which
are to be gained by the North, South,
East and West alike. We know that
the Southern people do not expect OF
desire jug handled revision Of the
tariff-all the benefits and gains on
their side. They want the greatest
good Of all, and they are content to
take their proper share in the general
improvement in trade and business
conditions that will undoubtedly follow
a lowering of the present higher than
waa tariff rates, and the freeing Of
those raw materials that are the nee
essarles of life to all our manufacturers.
The South can utilize its own raw
materials as Pennsylvania has done.
To-day it is sending out its great staple
product, cotton, to foreign ports, and
selling it at extremely low prices, and
then buying it back again as manufact-
ured cotton goods at from four to six
times the price at which it sold the
raw material thereof. This is as though
Minnesota should send all its great
product, wheat, abroad and sell it for a
song, and then buy it back again as
flour at high prices, made higher yet
by protective" tariff. But Mime
sofa is wiser than that. She makes
her own wheat into -four and sells it
all over the world.
The South is rich in raw material.
Her cotton crop is splendid basis for
superstructure of manufactures of
cotton. The South has, coal and iron
of her own too. The freeing of raw
materials and the lowering of the ex-
tortionate tariffs on manufactured goods
which have massed manufacturing en-
ergy, capital and labor in few States,
and divided the nation, broadly speak
ing, into agricultural and manufactur-
ing sections, will open out new vista
Of diversified industries to the South as
well as to other sections that have
hitherto been outside the favored circle.
The system that has kept one-half the
country raising cotton, corn, wheat
and farm products, the selling price Of
which no tariff, however high, could
improve-because they had to find
their markets abroad-and gave the
other half of the country protection"
so excessive that it had the farming
class completely at its mercy and
charged it whatever it pleased for
clothing, carpets, machinery, imple
ments and all other manufactured
goods, was and is manifestly one sided
and unjust. The prices of manufact-
ured goods must accommodate them
selves to the free raw material policy.
And the South, with its cotton crop
and other basic elements Of manufact-
uring, has now plainly in sight an op-
portunity to develop and diversity her
industries and enter upon new and
splendid period of growth and prosper
ity, based upon her own abundant free
raw materials. s.-Baltimor San.
Home and Country for January.
The New Years (January) Home and
Country is replete with good things. The