The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-04-20
THE Y
f.

The author of that hybrid bill. or
reported it, and that bears his name,
is better in attack than in creating and
constructing. Mr.. Wilson has been
writing a series of articles in The New
York Herald, a paper that has lost it's
grip upon the country, critisizing in
c~isively and justly the many shortcom-
ings, wrOngdoings, enOrmities and alb
surdities of the new McKinley-Ding-
ley juggernaut-the most UNANIMOUSLY
unfair and the most savagely oppres-
sive tax machine that cunning enginery
ever constructed. He attacks the vile
bill in many ways, and makes his
points well. He is now showing up
the wool tax-the most Internal tax,
taken altogether, thai greed ever de-
manded. Referring to the long reign
Of a drastic tax on wool and woollens
and the way the people were made to
suffer, Wilson says this, and it is we'll
worth thinking over:
There is no actuary in the country
wOh can compute the amount of boun-
ties which. during the twcnty-seVen
years following the tariff of 1867, were
eXacted from Of WOOllen and
partly wOollen goods for the benefit Of
wool-grOwers and manufacturers nor
the number Of those who fell as victims
to consumption, pneumonia, grip, and
like diseases, or whose earning power
was lessened because of their inability
to supply themselves with genuine and
| needful WOOllen clothing, by reason of
the immense increase, through tariff.
Yet, with all these untold bounties, with
these un~numbered victims of death and
disease, as the annual tribute exacted
from the American people,, we never
succeeded in producing more than one
half of the wool needed for
ton in the United States.'
To make the clothing and the blank
cts of the people higher, and to so tax
the poorer classes as to practically shut
them out from ~f1annels and woollens is
not only most Ubiquitous oppression, but
is a positive crime against suffering hu-
mainly. So impressed are we with his
evil and this crime that we can but be-
lieve that the devil is at the bottom of
it and that the whole remOrseless
SClICIl - VI SdldIIlC SuSScStlOH dIlu III
fanny. A bill that oppresses, afflicts
and robs the poor can only be an inspi-
| ration of the evil one.
The republican bill is aimed more
at the poor than even the well-to-do
middle class. The rich do not feel it.
It cannot hurt them. But the poor
mans necessaries and comforts are
struck at all through. We say this
because it put a tax on "foor-mattings,
| plain, fancy, or figured, manufactured
from straw, round or split, or other
vegetable substance, including what
are known as Chinese, Japanese, and
India straw mattings." The duty on
these mattings, valued at not exceed
ing 10 cents per square yard, is s cents
per square yard, and upon mattings
exceeding 10 cents per square yard it
is the same as to specific schedule, and
% per cent ad valorem. 1t will be seen
from this that the duty on 10-cent mat
| tings will amount to nearly 100 per
cent, and on cheaper grades to more.
On 11-cent mattings it will amount to
over 81 per cent; on 12-cent mattings it
will figure UP over so per cent, etc. The
operation is, therefore, this: The cheap
er the grade OF mating in either class
a mans circumstances restrict him to,
the more sacrifice in the way of per
cent. he will have to make to the tariff
Moloch. This bill strikes at the poor
householders in their sugar for coffee
and pies and cakes; at their clothing
as we have seen above in the wool tax;
at their scissors and knives and forks;
the tax on lower grade scissors being
225 per cent; and so on wherever rob-
berry AID oppression can be applied.
P, The Mckinley bill that the people re-
! pudiated and superseded did not tax
the floor mattings. but let them in free
Of all duty.
The bill even proposes to tax the
books in the colleges and schools, as
well as scientific apparatus. Dingley