The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1908-03-21
THEORY ALL WRONG
REPUBLICAN IDEAS BASED ON
FALLACIES.
Excessive Tariff Rates Have Simply
Resulted in the Building Up of
Enormous Fortunes for the
Comparative Few.

The Republican theory of trade
both domestic and foreign. is based
on fallacies. They believe that if our
manufacturers are protected by tariff
rates high enough to prevent or re
tard impOrtations from foreign coun
tries. the home market will con
sumo all our factories can produce.
For some little time this theory
seemed to work to their satisfaction,
but the manufacturers discovered that
the high prices produced by this lack
of foreign competition also had the
effect of producing more manufacture
ers at home to take advantage of the
large profits. This increased compe-
titiOn between manufacturers led to
the formation of trusts and combines;
so that high tariff became the
mother Of trusts" These trusts
combined or purchased as many of
business as could be induced to sell
or participate, and at Once increased
prices to the point just below where
foreign competitors could export their
products to compete with the prod
ucts of the trusts. So the price of
trust and tariff protected products was
increased both by the limitation of COM
petition at home and by the prOhibi
ton of competition from abroad.
Hence we have had the rise in
prices since the present tariff law was
in operation. The trusts and COM
bines, however, finding their profits
50 large, were induced to manufacture
more than the American people could
consume at the high prices they
charged, SO they began to look for for
eign markets abroad. But high prices
had naturally produced increased cost
of manufacture and to find customers
abroad they were compelled to sell
there cheaper than to our own people.
For SOmG time the Republicans de-
MED that American goods were sold
cheaper abroad than here, but the
Democrats produced evidence that
proved it was being done. Then the
Republicans changed their ground and
declared that the tariff protected trusts
were merely ~"dump,ng' some Of their
ShOp-wOrn and Out-Of-Style products on
the foreigners at bargain prices. Again
the Democrats produced the evidence,
in their campaign book of 1902, that
hundreds Of articles, exactly the same
as those sold here, were being offered
and sold by exporters for large dis
counts from the price in this coun-
try.
The trusts selling abroad cheaper
than at home very naturally led to re-
prisals by foreign governments, and
nearly every country but England has
increased its tariff rates TO prevent
trusts from competing with their
manufacturers. Notably. Russia,
Germany and France have enacted pro-
hibitive tariffs. and the conservative
party in England was led to make the
increase of the tariff an issue, but the
people Of England, when the election
came around, stuck to the tariff for
revenue, under which England has
prospered and become the greatest
manufacturing nation.
The tariff and trust era in this
country has produced extravaganza
and built up enormous fortunes, by
taxing the many for the benefit Of the
few, and although it has thus pro-
duced prosperity for the few, it has
also helped to cause a panic that has
shaken the foundations of the finan-
cial and business affairs of the coun-
try.
The Republicans now face a demand
for tariff reform in their W ranks
from the manufacturers who are not
in trusts or combines who find that
the steel trust, the coal trust, the pa
per trust, the leather trust and other
trusts have so increased prices of
the partly manufactured articles they
produce, that those who use such in
their business, like the manufacturers
of steel into implements and the fac
tories that use coal, and the newspa-
per publishers and shoe manufacture
ers, are combining for tariff reform.
The Republican program of stand
ing pat is therefore in such danger
of defeat that there is a panic In the
ranks of the protectiOnists.