Los Angeles herald., 1910-08-07
A QUESTION ANSWERED
kkHT HAT is there in the Republi-
" can tariff to make a Califor-
mia man an insurgent?" asks


mia man an insurgent?" asks
the San Francisco Chronicle.
Well, let us take the case of Cali
fornia fruits. The defenders of the
Aldrich- Payne tariff seek to make the
fruit grower and canner of this region
believe that their very life depends on
the duty put on the fruit, when as a
matter of fact 1t not only does not
guarantee the American market to the
American production the imports of
citrus fruits from abroad We're larger
the past year than ever before-but it
actually puts a heavy burden on the
local industry.
The tariff law gives the orange
growers a cent a pound, which the rail-
roads proceed to gobble up. for the
citrus industry is not a great trust that
can force the railroads to do the right
thing. But the tariff law also puts
high tariff on sugar and on tin cans,
enabling the sugar trust and the steel
trust to shut out all foreign competi-
tion and charge what they please for
their products The Gamers hereabouts
must know that for % to 80 per cent
less than they must pay the sugar
trust they could buy under an open
market sugar not bleached but every
bit as pure and good for canning as the
Dutch standard test" product that
phrase in the tariff law being a joker
put there by the sugar trust to compel
every pound of sugar brought into the
country to be taken to the trust re-
fineries and sold through the trust
There is also a high tariff on tin
plate products, so high that no foreign
makers can sell here. Every dollar of
tariff paid on these things by the can
ners is tribute paid to the sugar and
steel trusts, and by so much as is ex-
cessive is a halter on the neck of the
canning and fruit raising industries,
for it is apparent that some of the
profit that ought to go to them is going
to the trusts, already rich beyond the
dreams of avarice," and some is per-
force put into the selling price OF the
canned goods, which by just so much
makes the goods less popular in price.
If canned fruits could be reduced in
retail price, say 25 per cent, there would
be a great impetus to the business by
reason of increased sales in this vast
country. They probably could be re-
duced that much if the prohbitive
tariff on the commodities entering into
the process of canning-lumber, solder,
tin, paper, sugar, flavoring extracts and
what not-should be reduced. The
Aldrich tariff gives a measly so-called
protection to the California man and
makes him pay dozen tributes to the
fat-necked captains of industry" in
the east-who are not, by the way, men
of industry but the tinanciers who have
financed the water into trust stocks
and out of the pockets of the masses.
"Oh, but he's a free trader!" shouts
the standpatter; "he would wreck our
sacred protection and tear down the
temple of American industry for the
sake of a few cents here and there on
foreign goods"
No, what we should do would be to
give an honest protection, but one that
would in case it were abused with ex-
tortionate prices, automatically let in
the foreign goods as a regulator. We
should see-that it became a real benefit
to the honest American manufacturer,
tradesman and worllingman, not a bull
Wark for trusts that import much of
their labor from southern Europe
If it can be shown that the protec-
ton afforded to fruit does not entitle
the Payne-Aldrich law to the gratitude
of Southern California, how much
worse it is in the case of other COM
modities on which California pays high
duties for the benefit of the east and
gets absolutely no concrete benefit in
return