Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1909-05-28
without which our deliberations art
a humbug and a fraud.
A Scale of Duties 20 Years Old.

Turning now to the duties on yarn.
and woven and knit fabrics of wool.
desire to call the attention of the sen
ate to the abuses which have grown in
to the schedules, many of them with
out the knowledge or consent of tn,
finance committee of the senate.
spoke the other day about the diff
Guilty Of understanding these SEIZED
ules and alluded to evidence now al
everybody's hand that they we're Sc
complex and unintelligible that only
one man on the committee was able
! to comprehend them. Nv friend
from Rhode Island was instantly on
his feet to say that it was not the
WOODEN schedule but the duty on tops
that bewildered the late Senator Al.
hson and the late Senator Platt of
Connecticut, two trained and alert
students Of our practical affairs,
whose names do not suffer by compar-
isOn with the greatest statesmen who
have illustrated the intellectual dig
nifty OF American public life. In the
name of sense, if these men could not
understand the top question, what ex-
crse is there for seeking to belittlc
the efforts of others who in TRYING IN
serve their own day and generation
are engaged in exposing the trickeries
that in the course Of a half century
have found hiding places through
the wooden schedules9
The chief fault to be found with
this schedule of the pending bill lies
IN the fact that it adopts a scale of
duties twenty years old without the
slightest effort to readjust them so as
to mitigate the inequalities which
they have imposed upon more than
one department of the wooden indus
try Of the United States.
Another Joker.
l desire now to speak of some of
the morbid and abnormal influences
which have gone out from schedule K
to vitiate the tariff system of the
United States. The high rates i'm
posed throughout the schedule have
been peculiarly attractive to laborers
IN other departments of the textile
vineyard, and it is easy to trace the
movements of greed in more than one
schedule framed to protect these in
dustries. Manufacturers in other tex
tile departments have been persist
ent In their efforts to get the ad-
vantage of the rates on wooden goods.
Makers of silks, of cOttons, of furs.
not satisfied with their own rates,
have sought shelter among the slippery
provisions of the wool tariff. We
have already seen how Hospitality
the manufacturers of cotton have
been been received. It takes only a
slight investigation of the silk sched-
ules to see how easily that product
puts itself into partnership with the
enterprise.
The manufacturers of fur garments
not content to gracefully accept the
modest 30 per cent accorded them bv
the present law, have been able to Sc
cure here the increase of their rate to
5O per cent, provided they contain no
wool. | do not know whether thew
are entitled to that or not, but I do
know that they ought not to be allow
ed on account of the presence of wool
IN the lining or elsewhere in the gar
ment to pass over to the wool schedule
where, in addition to the 60 per cent
ad valOrem, they will enjoy a bogus
compensatory of A cents per pound
on the weight of the whole garment.
The root of this abuse lies in sched-
ule X, where all sorts of manufac-
lures, whether clothes or clothing or
anything else containing a trace of
wool, must be weighed up under its
benign provisions. If it operated
merely to afix excessive rates 70 ar
tlcles not entitled to them, it would
be bad enough; but it operates also to
bring our protective tariff system into
rldlcule and contempt. Why should
a fur coat witb.a cotton lining or no
lining at all, be assessed 50 per cent
ad valOrem, while with $500 worth
of wool lining it takes "A cents per
pound and 60 per cent ad valorem?
But that is not an extreme case. I
spoke the other day of a cotton blank
ct with fringe of wool to prevent
mraveling, received Hospitality at the
customs house and solemnly charged
up with the specific compensatory
calculated a generation ago for
wooden goods, but that is not an ex-
IRENE case.
Rubber Boots as Wool.
We have in the United States an
interesting institution enpaced in tho
manufacture of rubber goods, adver-
tlslng in the Boston newspapers that
1t absolutely controls the business, as
a sign of good credit, so that people
in dealing with it will have confidence
and persons who are purchasing stock
will not be without faith in the enter
prise. l notice that in this bill thew
have enjoyed a slight accretion of
duty from 30 per cent to So per cent.
But | am not going to complain about
that, because l have not gone into
the practical aspect of the subieet