Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1903-11-17
TIE Tariff Injustice.

If the federal customs duties col
lected at the ports OF entry We're the
only tares On the goods the people
consume and the government needed
The 500, IA, 70S collected in 1902, the
largest sum ever before received, it
would still be great burden. But
the receipts from all sources in that
year exceeded the expenditures by
R91, 2S7,375.57 and will probably be
100000 for the present year. The
sash balance now in the treasury is
S225, 1T9, 705, so there is no present rea-
Eon to continue this excessive taxation,
through high tariff, for it is criminal
to tax the public more than the needs
Of the government demand, especially
wheI this surplus is loaned to favored
banks without any return in interest,
Or otherwise The Wall street bank
ers to whom a great portion of this
surplus is loaned and the other banks
that are similarly favored through
put the country, loan this money TO
their customers at the going rate of
interest, so that the tax payers of the
country are furnishing the capital to
the banks and paying the interest that
the banks demand ON it or if they are
not borrowers but have money of their
own to loan, they furnish the money
free to the banks to compete with their
own capital. This tax collected
through the custom houses is only a
small part of the tax that the Dingley
tariff imposes. Indirectly there is
much greater impost demanded by the
monopolists, combines and trusts that
We're called into council by the Re
publican leaders when the Dingley bill
was being secretly incubated at the
Arlington Hotel in the City of Wash
ington, D. c., in 1897. No Democratic
members of the Ways and Means Com
mittee was permitted to join in the
creation of the Dingley bill and SEN
ator Dolliver in a speech in the Sen
ate which is reported in the Congress
sional Record, acknowledged that the
tariff rate was purposely placed much
higher than was necessary to allow
margin for reduction under the trea-
ties for reciprocity with other coun-
tries, that the bill also provided for
but which have never been ratified.
AS Senator Dolliver was at the time
the Dingley bill was created a mem
Der of the Ways and Means Commit
tee this inside history of the enormity
of that bill is therefore at first hand,
by Republican who was present at
its preparation.
BY virtue of the extremely high
tariff the protected trusts and COM
bines are more extortionate than the
Dingley bill. Where that law provides
for the collection of over 90 per cent
on the average value of most of the
necessities of life, the trust tax gath
erer demands in many cases over 100
per cent of which the government re-
ceives nothing.
The Statisticians of the Bureau of
Labor of Massachusetts have figured
that in the boot and shoe industry the
average wages are $491.49 for work
eI's per year and allowing that two of
each family are employed the amount
that each family earns would be 1888
The tariff tax on the expenditures of
such a household is $13.75 and the tax
that the trusts and combines eXtort is
1925. Think of it, nearly seven times
more to the trusts under the Republi-
can protective system than the United
States government receives.
Congressman Littlefeld, a Republi-
can, gave a list of 800 trusts with a
capitalization of nearly $14,000000,0
which was printed in the Congressional
Record of February 90, 1903, to which
aggregation each family in the United
States contributed nearly $4,000, so
that the trusts can get rich and the
poor poorer.
1t matters not how poor or wretched
man may be- the protective tariff de-
mands and obtains tax from him.
The ways of the protectionists are pc
culiar, they pass laws to keep out for
eign goods and then pass another law
appropriating 100000 for an Expo
sition at s.. Louis and invite foreigners
10 eAHlDlI luelI pEOuuCllOlS sue Dy
side in competition with our domestic
products. They have established a
system of taxation, so remarkable
that a tramp chewing his quid of to-
bacco pays his taxes with the rest of
us and the poor man and the laborer
pays in far greater proportion than
the millionaire. And yet we are being
told by the Republican leaders that no
steps must be taken by the coming Con
gress to reform or revise this unequal
tax. That the prosperity of the conn
Try is bound up with the protective
tariff and we must ''let well enough
alone"