The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-12-04
PAID A BIG PRICE.


An evening journal says that Demo-
cratic papers are not saying anything
about tin plate nowadays, though after
the passage of the Mckinley act they
made 1t their principal butt" ''The
laugh is on the other side, now, and
they prefer to keep silent" 1t might
be retorted that the Republican pa
pers, after lauding the tax of % cents
a pound on imports of tin plate as be-
ing absolutely necessary for the pro-
lection of that youngest of the infants,
without which it could not live, much
less thrive, failed to comment on the
great increase Of tin plate manufac-
lures and mills after the tax had been
reduced to IL cents a pound In fact
the marked increase in the output of
domestic mills has only taken place
since the tax was reduced This should
suggest some other reason than the %
cents pound tax, and if our contem-
porary was not too jealous or inert it
would find that the cause lay in the
diminished cost of the black sheets I'M
der reduction Of their protection.
But no Democratic paper ever said
that tin plate could not be made in
this country if consumers were taxed
sufficiently high. They said oranges
could be raised in Minnesota if the in
dustry were adequately protected. The
principal butt of the ridicule referred
hQ 70 Of
on tin, laid to foster" the bunco games
being played on foreign investors in the
Black Hills and California, by which
they were led to invest their good
money in Tin" mines. A tax high
enough might make tin plates profit
able business, but no tax could put tin
in the earth in paying quantities. What
they did contend was that it was not
worth while to make the consumers of
Tin IN this country pay % cents a
pound additional for the tin plate they
used in order that a few mills
might be established in a profitable
business. They said that it was neither
right nor polite to thus use the taxing
power Of government.
They further asserted that consumers
would have to pay for this protection
because the domestic makers would add
the tariff to their prices, thus making
the price dependent on a tax and not
on normal market conditions. We have
shown from the market reports how
true this was, both after the Mckinley
rise became effective and after the re-
duction in 1894 took effect We have
additional confirmation of this in the
recent conference Of the tin plate COM
binaticn at Pittsburg, where the gen
demen's agreement" not to cut prices
$ was revived and the list was advanced
10 cents a box. This advance EQUALS
the selling price of foreign plate" the
domestic price having been a little be-
low that for some time" The SELLING
price" of foreign plate is the price in
New York, freight and duty paid. The
conference thus agreed to take all the
protection there is in the present rate
by making the consumers pay Just
what they would pay for the foreign
plate.
The only demonstration that has been
made is that all that was needed to
make tin plate making profitable
enough here to warrant engaging in it
was the reduction of the tax on the
black sheets. 1t is interesting to know
how much it cost this country to make
this very simple demonstration Our
imports of plate, after the % cent tax
fell on July 1, 1891, were, in round num-
bers, 1, 41460O,OOO pounds, the increase of
tax on which, IL cents a pound,
amounted to SIG, 1915, 200 From 1892 to
1894 the domestic product was 265, 900, 900
pounds. increased in cost by virtue of
the tax on imports IL cents pound,
or $3.1S0,000, making a total of $40, 1885,
200 paid by the tin users of this country
to find out that the tax on imports of
black sheets was too high to permit tin
plate to be made here. AS our con-
temporary 80 remarks, these figures
speak for themselves" But what they