Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1894-05-03
PUBLIC OPINION.
THREE OPPOSING POLICIES.

THREE OPPOSING POLICIES.
New York Tribune.
There are in principle three parties.
The Eastern Democrats would tax con-
sumption of the people. The Populists
would tax the rich. The Republicans
would tax imports, and thus encourage
home industry. Experience proves that
labor finds greater demand and better
return under the Protective policy than
under any other ever tried, whether here
or in any other country. 1t proves,
further, that large, though not def
nitely ascertainable, part of the revenue
thus raised is in effect paid by foreigners
for the privilege of selling in this market.
That the Republican reasoning meets
the hearty approval of great majority
in Northern States recent elections dem
onstrate. The attempt to frame hostile
policy which will succeed, though it has
new been prosecuted with desperate
earnestness for more than a year, has
not made any visible progress. The
takers of consumers and the takers of
the rich are as far from agreement in
principle and purpose as they have been
at any time, and the chance of any
agreement resulting in success appears
more remote.
The consumption taxes are not ap-
proved by the Populists. Some have
even declared that they would not vote
for the pending whisky and sugar bill if
| the income tax were not added as a
species of compensation. But if they
| were not to such an extent mere theo-
| rists, if they were more competent to
measure the influence of different taxes
upon popular feeling and action, they
| would fatty refuse their assent to the
whisky and sugar taxes on any terms.
They would realize that the addition of
an extra cent on every pound of sugar
an article which enters into the expenses
of every family, however poor-would
be felt and resented more than almost
any other tax that could be imposed.
When the Mckinley bill took off 2 cents
from the price of sugar, thus saving
about Sc yearly for every family, it
made greater definite and clearly ap-
preciable change in the cost of living
than had been made by any other mod
ification of taxes since the Civil War,
and one which has been heartily appre-
ciated.
The choice of the people, between a
tax on sugar and tax on imports which
the working millions do not consume, is
plainly manifested by recent elections.
The Populists, and the Democrats who
have morally surrendered to the Popu-
lists already, indulge the hope that a
satisfaction of spiteful feeling toward
the rich may so far sweeten the sugar
tax that it can be upheld in Western
and Southern States. Their blunder is
that they have not framed the tax TO
reach the rich only, for it would fall in
part upon all who have interests, however
small, in corporations or the profits real
lied or the salaries paid by corporations.
They also forget that such taxes are to
great extent distributed, through rents
for the use of property, through interest
for the use of money, through charges
for the services of corporations and pro-
fessional men, and in a thousand other
ways, so that the millions would feel an
income tax as burden, perhaps even
more than the men of wealth. But at
present the difficulty is that the income
| takers and the men who want to tax
consumption find no ground for agree
ment.