El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-05-18
THE TARIFF AND THE TRUSTS.
perniCious Industrial Com binations
Are Not Connected In Any
Way With A Protective Tariff.

| are NOT connected In ANY
Way With A Protective Tariff.
New York Tribune.
1t Is pitia BILE to see public journals
presums oily intended for the use of in
teliigent people, reiterating the asser-
ton that the multiplication.Of indus
trial com binations is mainly due to
the tariff. One can comprehend VIII 2
q demagogue without honesty or con-
science should imagine that such as
sertions might impose upon the large
body of ignorant voters who never
read and rarely talk to any body who
does. But why the editor of any jour-
nal, even if he has free trade lean
ings, 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 of industrial COM
| binatiOns in almost everything pro-
| tected or not protected, and have OBJ
served that an oil trust, without any
duty whatever to prompt or help 1t,
has been more profitable and power
full than any of the concerns which deal
with protected articles.
Reading people also know that such
com binatlons have multiplied in Great
Britain, without any duties to aid them.
even more rapidly than in this country.
A recent series of articles by 1.-The
London Economist" not intended to
cover any thing like all the corpora
tions of industrial character, but only
those which have been in active opera
ton, have paid dividends in some of
the last five years and have securities
quoted in the market included one
hundr edand eighty three com binations;
but with all the energy of the promo
tiers and sensational rumor manufact-
urers in this country there are only
about one hundred and forty, actual
or imaginary, mature, born, or only
partly born, included in the list of
American comb inatious. Nor isjit So
much a question of number as of va
riety, for the British list includes
hotels and sweetmeat dealers, clothiers
from Redfern to Baker, 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, manufact-
urers of thread, like Coates, of car
tridges, like Eley, of Pears soap, jam
and dog biscuit.
Com binations have been sufficiently
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 rail ways for cities,
which can have no foreign competitions;
plants; in breweries of many cities
which are not even exposed to compe
titiOn from other towns In this cOun-
try, but do ship beer to Europe; in
elevators, 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 il combinations are found
desirable in scores of such cases where
no foreign competition exists or is pos
sible, what sense is there in imagining
tn at others formed in the manufacture
of many protected articles are caused
by the tariff?
The story of coal com bination, re-
innocent to cay that 1t Is result of the
duty on bituminous coal, there being
none on anthracite, which is largely ex-
ported to Canada. The brick com bina-
ton moves somebody to imagine that
there might actually be flood of for
eign bricks but for the tariff. The tin |
plate com bination is called by some |
body child of the Dingley duty, where
as it was formed when American tin |
plates we're under that duty being
largely exported to England. The rail
was formed by men who
we're then and are now exporting steel
.ails, and the structural steel com bina-
ion by men who were exporting struc-
,ural beams and angles, and others in
he iron and steel industry were form
I'd under like conditions. The main
,suse in most of these cases was the
extreme depression of prices re-
ulting from competition among
he home producers. Wheth-
n they take q wise way to
heck that competition or not remains
o be seen, but the fact is that under
he operation of the tariff their prices
ave been SO reduced that the product
Ould be exported at profit. The
lain truth is that numerically large
hare of the new com binatlons have
een created for no better reason than
q order to manufacture securities
7hich could be sold at a profit. But
be more substantial and solid, which
ave an economic reason for being,
anne into existence almost without ex-
option because home competition I'M
er protective duties had become so
reat that the competitors themselves
ried to limit it by combinations.