The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1910-05-19
PRACTICAL TARIFF TALKS.

In the various tariff speeches
which the president has made in de-
tense of that Payne-Aldrich bill, he
has included billion and a quarter
dollars of items in the metal sched-
ule in which there has been a de-
crease in duties. If the task were
not an endless and perhaps weari-,
some one to the reader, careful
picking apart of this schedule would
show the hollowness of the pretense
conveyed The people demand re-
duction because they wanted the
prices of over-protected goods re-
duced. Mr.. Taft says to them,
pointing with pride to the new law,
here is our pledge redeemed. Take
the wire nail schedule as an eX-
ample 1t is only one of many that
could be utilized from this schedule
alone. The wire nail is in universal
use. The production of wire nails
annually is about $27, 100000. These
nails sell in the American wholesale
market on an average of 2 cents
pound-the smaller sizes. The tariff
on these under the Dingley law was
half a cent a pound, or $40 ton.
The house cut this duty in two, but
the senate restored it. In conference
the duty was placed at four-tenths
of a cent pound, or IS ton.
Here is the point: There was a
reduction in this one item, and
therefore, wire nails went into the
presidents list of articles of con-
sumption upon which the tariff had
been reduced. Assume that the pro-
duction is S27,000,000 year, that
sum would be added to the presi-
dents array of beneficences under
the law The rate was reduced but
a tenth of cent pound, or 50 a
ton, reduction So small as to abso-
lutely cut no figure in the price OF
nails, even if that price was not
fixed now by the steel trust. The
proof of this is shown by the fact
that under the Dingley law the i'm
ports were $3,2SS in 1907, while the
steel trust exported 100000 worth
which it sold abroad at a less price
than was charged the consumer at
home The small imports and the
large exports prove conclusively that
the Dingley rate was a prohibitive
one, and that reduction of tenth
of cent pound meant no perman-
ent price relief to the nail user. A
reduction of a tenth of a cent a
pound is so ridiculously small that it
could never reach half of the people
who use nails, and as it amounts to
but 10 cents key the contractor is
unlikely to profit either. AS a mat
ter of fact an inspection of price
lists for the last nine months shows
the same price range as before.
And yet these SGT, 100000 produc-
ton of nails is complacently included
BIZ ta aEEsSdlaant IS tas hst 81 i eas Ct
senfy7four years control OF the
hAsNe market has allowed these 5sa-
ssss.ss - s1o..s so large that we nov
export 600 times as much as we i'm
port. At the same time that they
get this big duty on wire nails they
ask for and receive a duty of $50,
.Y25 and $35 ton upon the wire out
of which these nails are manufact-
ured. AS the steel trust makes the
most of the wire from which these
nails are made, it compels any man
who desires to go into the manu-
facture of wire nails to either erect
wire-making plant in addition or
else buy his wire from it. When a
manufacturer is at the mercy of his
competitor for his raw material he
is not very powerful as price-maker
or a price-cutter-C. @. D. in the
Commoner.