The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-11-20
is THERE A TARIFF TAX
ON COAL?

To the Editor OIL IHe Jersey \ity
News'';-
The Jersey City Journal in its issue
of Friday contained the following;-"For
a newspaper of some pretensions the
New York Herald INDUCES in a good
deal of in~consequential and meaningless
gable. 1t talks of untaXed coal as a
boon to every household its idea be-
ing, of course. to boom its free trace
fad. But the Herald ought to know
that the kind of coal that is generally
used in the households, anthracite coal,
has been untaxed for more h twenty
years. No duty on anthracite coal was
imposed by the Mckinley tariff, neither
by the tariff of 1855. What then does
the Herald mean by Cabling about
untaxed coal?"
And yet, in spite of the sapient editor
of the Journal the Herald knows
perfectly well what it is talking about.
The tax on bftuminous coal is paid by
every of anthracite, n there
fore the removal of that tax would
be "a boon to every household" Let
us inquire just why this is so.
Anthracite coal is worth about 81 more
per ton than bituminous. When the duty
of seventy-five cents per ton upon BIZ
luminous coal is advanced as it is, you
are not going to obtain anthracite coal
for only twenty-five cents more when
its value is a dollar more. This ought
to be clear to my Republican friends.
And the proof of this is that the anthra-
cite mine owners are satisfied with these
duties, and make common cause with
the owners of bituminous mines for their
retention. And everybody who knows
anything at all about the subject knows
that the tax on bituminous coal is paid
by the consumers of the anthracite. Not
only is the Herald absolutely correct,
but the Journal is, as usual, abso-
lutely wrong in his statement, and also
in what follows it:-"The soft coal pro-
duction business is, in this country, a
very important industry, and as such
received a fair and due measure of pro-
lection under the Republican tariff, which
enabled the proprietors of the bituminous
coal mines and the soft coal miners to
compete with the product of the Cana
dian provinces, the Nova Scotia coal.
The Journal is mistaken. What en-
ables our mines to compete with the
Nova Scotia mines are 5su
1st. The superior quality of American
coal I'd. The fact that it is more cheap
ly produced here han in Canada.
This was the testimony of Galusha
A. Grow, now Republican Congressman
at-Large from the State of Pennsylvania,
before the Ways and Means Committee.
The reason for this, beyond the general
fact of the greater cheapness of Amer
lean labor, is that in Nova Scotia, Cape
Breton and elsewhere in Canada the
proportion of water that has to be pump
ed out before a ton of GOA can be pro-
duced is greater h anywhere in the
mines of this country.
The removal of the duty of 60 cents
a ton in Canada has long been talked
of in thai country, and has been opposed
by the Nova Scotia mine owners on
the ground of the superior quality of
American coal. A great deal was heard
during the recent campaign about the
Whitney Coal Syndicate. 1t is the
Henry M. Whitney syndicate which has
lately obtained control of the greater
part of the Nova Scotia mines. But
the Gorman-Elkins Syndicate, although
that is not the name under which the
firm does it's business, accomplished its
sinister purpose of retaining a duty on
coal while directing public attention to
the imaginary crimes of Mr.. VIM. Whit
ney, who had no connection with this
Nova Scotia syndicate. 1t was the old
game of the thief who, mingling with
the crowd, shouts at the top of his lungs,
stop thief!'
The tariff on coal should go at once.
Tha great organ of Republican thought
in the West, the Chicago Tribune" Ut
will be observed that L always quote
from Republican authorities when avail
able), said years ago that it ought to
go, and there is more reasons now for
it's abolition, since wages in coal mines
have been steadily falling since that
time. They are now below the RACES
of the English "pauper" miner; the con-
| dition of the latter is far less hopeless.
Down with the German tariff of 40
| cents a ton on bituminous coal, which is
| a tax of at least three times that amount
| on every ton of anthracite consumed
by the householder.
JOSEPH DANA MILLER.