The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1896-11-24

cheaply collected tax imposed by the
government
Fifth: 1t was tax which contrib
uted the largest custom house reve-
nues to the Government and the least
comparative incidental protection to
home producers.
When b;he Mckinley bill was re-
pealed in August, 1894, and the Will
son bill substituted therefor, the wild
est of the free trade doctrinaires, who
through some visitation of Divine
Providence had been placed in control
of our national legislation, thought
that they would lop away most of the
higher duties levied on other articles
by the Fifty-frst Congress to com
pensate the treasury for the loss of
its sugar revenues, and that they could
still leave sugar on the free list.
The long fight over the sugar feat
ure of the Wilson bill and the final
victory of the Treasury Department in
securing that 40 per cent. ad valorem
tax are now matters of ancient his
tory.
The Treasury Department provided,
as it thought, ways to pick up some
$45,000,000 year by putting its ad
valorem duty on an imported product
of widely and wildly shifting values,
and it fell nearly twenty millions
short in the fruition of it's calcula-
tions. For two or three years, with
the bulk of the sugar revenues thrown
cIamor of thousands of petty cross
roads demagogues and free trade
shriekers, the Government has been
staggering along, in financial sense,
getting deeper and deeper into debt,
issuing hundreds of millions of bonds
to stave off bankruptcy, ant appeal
ing in vain to its legislative branch
for some measure of relief that might
lead to the prompt restoration of its
lost revenues, when the imposition of
a graded import tax of " to 2 cents
a
relief needed and straighten out the
/ financial situation.
no cane-sugar planter of Louisiana
noi beet-sugar producer of Nebraska
or the far Pacific Slope expects or
hopes to see the sugar bounty re-
| stored That style of protection, with
/ inn ,in hat 1e
and jealouses of other industries,
with its blatant mouthings of hostile
| politicians against an honest Ameri-
can industry, with it's violated gov
elnmental faith and It's long, weary
and costly litigation, has sickened all
! American sugar growers and manu-
facturers with the bounty system, d
thing TO be butfeted up and down and
/ back and forth between our great ma
| tional parties as one or the other gets
into power.
That the Government cannot dis
pense with such a revenue as was
formerly received from taxing foreign
]
on the people in some other direction,
and without getting itself deeper and
deeper into debt, has been plainly
demonstrated by four or five years of
practical experience.
Therefore the Government should
restore the sugar tariff to reasonable
D. IL ii i
such Legislation would benefit the
cane planters of Louisiana or the beet
growers of Nebraska and California; ;
nor becPuse it would open new fields
velop great and growing American
industry, which promises in II short
time to supply our country's enor-
home the hundred and odd millions 1f
dollers now sent abroad to buy sugar;
nor because ii would oen up new fields
of profitable employment to millions
of farmers in the far West who have
been crowded out of profitable grain
production by other millions of wheat
growers in Russia and Argentina. Nor
in enacting such Legislation should
Congress consider at all that it would
set and keep in motion a vast inter
state commerce necessary TO the fu-
ture handling and transportation of
some 100000 tons of sugar on Amer
lean river boats and American rail-
roads. Nor in adopting such course
should our national Legislature be in
fluenced by the prospect of it's Great
ing and continuing business worth
many millions of dollars every year
to Northern iron factories and coal
miners in furnishing sugar machinery
and fuel to the for sugar-producing
states of our common country. Not
for any of these reasons. strong rs
they nnDpar 10 lac tn nj a.,o,t tba