Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1897-09-24
Some Dead Men and the Tariff.

try. This license, on an average, is equal tC
half the value of the goods. In many and
many case, the license is double the value Of
the goods; in many others it is treble.
Whatever license the foreigner has to pay,
he, of course, adds to the price of the goods,
and WE pay the same back to the foreigner
when we buy his goods. The license fee is
called the tariff.
When merchant living in your town can
prevail on the town council to compel outsiders
to pay license fee before they can sell inside
the town, the merchant inside the town gets
the advantage of that arrangement, does he
not? 1t shuts off competition, to the extent of
the license fee, does it not? 1t gives the mer-
chant monopoly inside the town, to the ex-
tent of that license fee, does it not?
Suppose the butcher outside the town has to
pay license fee of five cents upon every pound
of beef he sells in the town, will not the
butcher inside the town get more for his Ceef
than he could get if the outsider did not have
to pay the license fee?
The butcher inside the town can sell beef at
cents per pound and pocket the whole sum as
his own.
If the butcher outside the town sells at 6
cents, he pockets only one cent, for cents
must 60 to pay the license fee.
But if the butcher outside sells beef at all,
runs up his price to sum that will afford him
profit AFTER paying the license fee.
The butcher inside the town runs up his
price, likewise: both butchers making profit,
and the customers being compelled to pay to
EACH higher price than they would pay to
EITHER were it not for the license fee.
Precisely SO does our tariff work. We charge
the foreigner license fee to sell: he adds it to
the price of his goods: we pay the license fee
when we buy the goods and the home manu-
facturer of the same class of goods gets all adj
vantage over the foreigner, and likewise over
US, to the extent of the license fee.
This being the case, it would seem to be
fact that these license fees, or tariffs, are ex-
acted for the benefit of the "butcher inside the
town'-for the home manufacturer.
For one hundred years we have been COM
polling the foreigners to pay high licenses for
the privilege of selling their goods here. SOME
BODY has been benefited by these laws, else the
privileged classes wouldn't clanor for them so.
Who is this somebody?
Most of the oldparty politicians say it is the
laborer They tell us that the government has
for hundred years been shutting out foreign
capital from competition with home capital for
the benefit of labor.
1t wasn't done for the benefit of the home
capitalist at all, it seems.
And during all these hundred years in which
foreign capital has been shut out, entirely or
partially, from competing with home capital,
foreign labor has been loudly, constantly and
urgently invited to come in and compete with
home labor.
This was for the benefit of the home laborer,
we are told.
The unemployed of all nations have been
brought here to compete against the employed
and unemployed of our own kth and kin.
This was done to enrich the home laborer, it
seems.
And what are the FRUITS of this strange tree?
SOMEBODY has grown marvelously rich on
these laws.
Is it the laborer?
Or is it the capitalist? Look and see.
Yonder is the capitalist with his palace for
summer and his palace for winter; his parlor
car for land travel and his yacht for the sea,
his 20, ooo-acre shooting ground in Scotland;
and his $40, 100000 bride to buy an English
ord with, as husband for his daughter.
That's one picture. The other is too hid
,ous for description. The homeless aborer,
lis wretched life, his squald family, his degrad-
ng surroundings, his pitiless task-masters, his