The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-08-19
DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO TAR
IFFs AND BOUNTIES.


The opposition of the Democrats to
protective tariffs and to bounties is
two fold. First, that they are eco
nomically unsound, and, second, that
they are not constitutional.
first. Tariffs are put on to enable
the producer to charge a higher price
for his products than the foreign arti-
Gle would sell for admitted duty free.
This higher price is of course paid by
granted upon the admission and plea
that the protected industry would be a
money losing concern if brought into
competition on equal terms with other
producers. The question at is
sue. is, therefore, does it pay
"a nation to support money
losing concern? Suppose that a
farmer owned a paying farm near a
Body of timber in which he had placed
saw mill which did not pay. Suppose
the farmer had demonstrated that the
maintenance of his mill would require
the sacrifice of his agricultural profits
either in whole or part How long
losing business? Not long. No spe-
cious pleas concerning the furnishing
of labor, ETC., would justify him in
pursuing a course which must inevita-
bly, result either in his impoverishment
or in his financial injury Rather
would he seek to increase his agricul-
tural business or to undertake new en-
terprises in which his capital might
he profitably invested and labor be
Furnished with remunerative employ
ment. SO with the nation; it is a ruin
ous policy for any people to sustain in
dustries that must draw support from
other industries. Far better that the
improbable should be abandoned for
the profitable. Happily, the resources,
enterprise and intelligence of this
great country furnish countless oppor-
tunities for such investments, and
there is absolutely no excuse for our
taxing the consuming masses to sup
port the industries of the favored
classes.
/ The Republican argument that pro-
lection is desired only as a means of
assisting infant industries to their feet,
! is, of course, absurd in view of the
| history of that party, which has not
only protected some of these infants
for more than century, but has in
creased the percentage almost to the
verge of prohibition. What, you ask,
| do you not believe that a little help in
the beginning will put a new indus
try out of the danger of destruction
Wy older concerns, and that in such
eases help ought to be furnished with
advantage to the community? Yes, we
believe that new industries are beset
with dangers which might be avoided
by judicious assistance, and we believe
that many such would prove to be val
liable resources to a community when
once established and might prof1tably
be temporarily assisted But by in
| dividual bounty and not by the state
aid and never permanently.
And this suggests the second objec-
ton to governmental protective tariffs
and bounties. They are opposed to
every principle of justice since they
take from one class Of the people in
order to bestow upon another class:
they take from Peter to pay Paul. And
this is obviously opposed to a consti-
/ tuition which is designed to secure to
all people equal civil rights. Bounties
have been declared to be unconstitu-
'tional by the United States Supreme
Court, which says they are none the
less robbery though disguised under
the form of law and called taxation, -
and by nearly every state in the ma
ton. Tariffs levied for protective pur-
poses are equally Objectionable and
for precisely the same reason, that
they make class favoritism possible
and destroy that equality before the
law without which freedom is but an
uncertain heritage and government
of, by and for the people, an institu-
ton designed to tax the many for the
enrichment of the few.