The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1899-05-19
THE TARIFF AND TRUSTS
Combines the Outgrowth of
Competition and Low Prices
Caused by Protection
New York Tribune)

of industrial combinations is mainl
due to the tariff. One can compre
I bend why demagogue without hon
esty or conscience should imagin
that such assertions might impos
upon the large body ofignorant vot
ers who never read and and rarely
talk to anybody who does. Blu
why the editor of any journal, ever
if he has Free Trade leanings, should
elect to be considered an ass by his
own readers it is difficult to see,
Presumably they have followed the
daily dispatches which have told OF
the formation ofindustrial combina
tons in almost everything, protect
ed or not protected, and have OBJ
served that an oil trust, without any
duty whatever to prompt or help it,
has been more profitable and power
full than any of the concerns which
deal with protected articles.
Reading people also know that
such combinations have multiplied
in Great Britain, without any duties
to aid them, even more rapidly than
in this country. A recent series of
articles by "The London Econom-
ist," not inteded to cover anything
ia. me ali ii the corporations Of indust-
rial character, but only those which
have been in active operation, have
paid dividends in some of the last
five years and have securities quot
ed in the market, included one hun
dred and eighty-three combinations,
but with all the energy of the pro-
moters and sensational rumor manu-
facturers in this country there are
only about one hundred and forty,
actual or Imaginary, mature, born
or only partly born, included in the
lists of American combinations. Nor
is it so much question of number
as of variety, for the British list in
cludes hotels and sweetme at deal |
ers, clothiers from Redfern to Bak-
err, warehouses and stores of all
sorts, the Armstrong Iron Works,
the great shipbuilders, the carriage
and car makers, bolt and nut makers
and coal mines, manufacturers of
thread, like Coates, of cartridges,
like Eley, of Pears soap, jam and
dog biscuit.
Combinations have been suficien-
thy varied in this country also to
make it absurd to suppose the Tariff
the author of their being. A host
of them are in gas works and street
railway for cities, which can have
no foreign competition; in electric
road and heat and power plants; in
breweries of many cities which are
not even exposed to competition
from other towns in this country,
but do ship beer to Europe; in ele-
vators, which no foreigner offers to
import; in ice, which is frozen as
cheaply in American water as any,
where; in milk supplies for various
cities, oyster beds, peanuts and vine
gar. But if combinations are found
desirable in scores of such cases
where no foreign competition exists
or is possible, what sense is there IN
imagining that others formed in the
manufacture of many protected ar
ticleS are caused by the tariff?
The story of a cole combination,
referring to anthracite only, excites
one innocent to say that it is a re-
suit of the duty on bitumiuous coal,
there being none on anthracite,
which is largely exported to Canada.
The brick combination moves some
body to imagine that their might
actually be food of foreign brick
but for the tariff. The tin plate
is called by somebody
a child of the Dingley duty, whereas
it was formed when American tin
plates were under that duty being
largely exported to England. The
rail combination was formed by men
who were then and are now export
ing steel rails, and the structural