Charlevoix county herald., 1907-05-11
EiONEY WELL SPENT
HAVE TARIFF BENEFITS BEEN
BOUGHT AND PAID FOR?
Estimated by the Tangible Value Of
Those Benefits the Workingmen,
the Farmers and the Manufacturers
Should Have Paid Congress Count
less Billions Of Dollars.

For a newspaper which is believed
TO have knowledge of concrete bene-
fits accruing from a liberal distribu-
ton in American literary circles Of
the leftover fund of the Golden club
it is quite natural to infer as a mat
ter of course that the concrete bene-
fits of protection in the United States
have been bought and paid for. Argu-
ment by analogy leads the New York
Evening Post to this conclusion. The
sum remaining in the treasury when
the Golden club went out of business
some years ago-money contributed
by British manufacturers and ship
owners to aid in extending the free
. trade propaganda throughout the
worlds said to have been $500, 600.
Much of this money is believed to
have found its way to the bank ac-
counts of various and sundry Ameri-
can free trade newspapers and writer's.
Some of it may have swelled the free
trade campaign fund of 1892. We are
not permitted to know the exact facts
and details of these disbursements,
but it is reasonable to suppose that
when foreign interests were conserved
at the expense Of American interests,
foreign money was on tap to pay for
labor performed and benefits received
So it is altogether natural for the
Evening Post to infer, along with Miss
Tarbell and other superior thinkers,
that when congress has adopted tariff
schedules designed to insure benefits
TO American producing interests, those
interests have paid money to congress
for doing it.
Here, again, precise facts and de-
! tails seem to be lacking; but if the
Golden fund contributors could afford
to spend 100000 to smash protection
in the United States, certainly our
own producing interests could afford
to spend many times 100000 to keep
| protection. Estimated according to
| the ratio of benefits they could afford
to pay congress $4,000, 100000. Grover
Cleveland's election in 1892 cost the
country more than double $S,000,000,-
! 900, and the election of William Nc
Kinley in 1896 has been worth to the
country much more than $4,000, 000,-
| 900.
The sum which American producing
interests, emulating the example of
the Golden club, might have paid out
in purchasing protective tariff legis-
lation from congress, staggers the
imagination. Then there remains to
be considered the enormous addition
to the corruption fund of protection
ism which might have come from the
wage earners of the country. They.
too. have been the beneficiaries of
tariff legislation to the extent of sew
eral billions of dollars in the past ten
years. Have they, too, Clipped in?'
! No; We don't suppose the Evening
Post would go so far as to assert that.
The wage earners have contributed in
other ways. They, together with their
co-beneticiaries, the farmers Of the
United States, have contributed the
votes at the polls whereby the party
of protection has been kept in control
of national legislation for almost all
of so consecutive years.
Was this contribution of votes by
wage earners and farmers also a cor
rupting element in our politics? Many
of our free trade purists think so.
They often tell us that it Is immoral
for any citizen TO vote according to
his own personal interest. But they
invariably spoil this beautiful doctrine
by asserting that everybody would be
much better off with free trade, and
that everybody should. therefore, vote
for free trade. Higher criticism in
economics has many troubles.