The Windham County reformer. (Battleboro, Vt.) 1876-1897, 1894-06-01

1T daily grows more evident rs the REFOR-
MER has been predicting ever since the sen.
ate tariff bill was reported that there will be
some radical changes in it before the House
will permit II to become law. The senate
committee started out to make the bill more
tarif-reducing one than 1t was when 1t passed
the House, though the Houses action had gen.
orally been in the way of cutting duties lower
than the Wilson committee had thought judi
cious. But forthe sugar schedule, with duties of
40 to 50per cent where the House provided for
absolute free sugar,the senate bill, as it stands
today, proposes considerably lower range of
duties on the average than the Wilson bill
did. This would be an improvement if the
reductions were equitable, but they are not by
any means. When reductions had been made
pretty generally and in some cases remedying
crudities of the Wilson bill, the Senate COM
mittee in order to conciate necessary votes
had to go to making increases here and there,
until in quite number of cases the duties are
actually higher than those of the Mckinley
bill. This Is true of the duty of / 10 cents
pound OH some of the cheaper grades of tin
plate, and the average tin plate duty Is 40 per
cent. Perhaps moderate tin plate duty, how
ever wrong as a general principle, is justifa-
BILE since II start towards the industry has
been made under the encouragement of Nc
Kinleyism; but certainly there is no excuse
for worse than Mckinley duties on any class
of products. Boraic acid and starch, which |
the Senate would make dutiablc at two cents
a pound each, would also get higher protec-
ton under 1t, amounting to 80 and so per
cent. respectively, than under the McKin-
ley bill. All three of these articles
illustrate the evil and the deceptiveness of
specific duties. In the cases of boraic acid and
starch the Senate substituted the specific
duties for I'D calOrem ones of 20 and 80 per
cent. as fixed by the Wilson bill. Still worse
is the proposed Senate duty of Is cents per
pound on quart glass bottles where the Nc
Kinley duty is only one cent a pound.
Aside from the sugar trust iniquity, there
are many such glaring defects as these in the
Senate bill which must be corrected, if it is !,
not to be in large degree mockery of tariff
'eform, and the fact is coming to be generally !
and voiced by the Democratic :
,ress. Extreme expressions in this line are Q
hat by the New York Evening Post which G
,ronounces it ''coward's and corruption I
SITS BILL" the Louisville Courier-Journal :,
which characterizes it as ga mongrel piebald I
f patches and pusillanimity, grotesque =
odge-podge of pretence and pettifogging," q
nd the Baltimore Sun which affirms that the D.
assage of such bill would be sat once leg ct
lativc fiasco, party humiliation and ma - :;
onal misfortune The New York World te
cscrbes it as 'trust-begotten bil' and says Ill
nat ''no defence is possible" The Boston
Ierald says that the bill ''may be tariff reduc- E
on, but it isn't tariff reform by jug-full." re
These views may be somewhat eXtravagant, CT
specially when we remember what system
[cKinleyism is; but they sua6ce to show that a
such measure as the Senate bill is will ever N.
t.sfy the Democratic sentiment of the coun- dc
Y and to make it unavoidable that it will be in
ateriay amended in the House. ~ ~