Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1907-05-16
MONEY 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 newspaper which is believed
70 have knowledge of concrete bene
fits accruing from a liberal distribu
tion in American literary circles of
the leftover fund of the Golden club
it is quite natural to infer as 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 100000.
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
aid details of these disbursements,
but * is reasonable 20 suppose that
when foreign interests We're 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, ,000.0 900. Grover
Clevelands 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 $S,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 tC
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, ''chipped 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 theil
co-benefciaries, the farmers of the
| United States, have contributed the
votes at the polls whereby the party
Of protection has been kept in contro
of national legislation for almost al
| 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 immora
| for any citizen to vote according tC
his own personal interest. But they
invariably spoil this beautiful doctrine
by asserting that everybody would be
much better off with free trade, anG
that everybody should therefore vote
for free trade. Higher criticism in
economics has many troubles.