The sun., 1910-02-20
The TARIFF In LOUISIANA
BRYAN'S DEMAND FOR FREE
RAW MATERIALS OPPOSE


Complaints or the Cost OF Livtng-Less
Faith IN a High Protective Tariff
outside the Sugar and Timber In
terests Nova sample Experience.
NEW ORLEANS. Feb. 1s.--Adjoining
Texas is Louisiana, with its great staples
OF sugar and timber. and most OF tho
Louisiana business men openly or secretly
eympathize with the effort of Senator
Bailey to head of the Bryan demand
in the South for free raw materials.
New Orleans is growing enormously
and doing an immense commercial busi-
ness. Yet in spite of the apparent signs
of outward prosperity people here. as
everywhere throughout the country, are
heard wailing over the cost Of living.
An intelligent young mechanic learn
ing a new business in q local plant who
comes from a town in New York State,
where before coming here he married
girl OF good family. accustomed to whole
some home surroundings, was talked
with to-day. He earns s2I a week in New
Orleans. e..
The young couple pay $3.50 each
week for board and live in a fair second
class boarding house on Canal street.
The cost Of food and rent is SO high that
they cannot find decent board and a
clean place for less money. So they have
only 50 a week left for clothing. medicine.
carfare and other things.
BY dint Of hard economy they mana ge
to attend a vaudeville entertainment
once a month. which is looked forward
=.
young fellow has some sort OF notion
that the high cost Of living is due to the
tariff. The young wife hears the cause
is the trusts.
Whatever the cause, there are many thou-
sands like this pair troubled in the same
way; and while the business men here
seem to want a protective duty Of course
on all Louisiana products. and almost all
the business men are Democrats and voted
for Bryan Just because he is q Demo
crat and say they want a high tariff so
that Louisiana will get her share OF what
is handed around" through the tariff,
yet deep down among wage earners,
clerks, small storekeepers and profess
sional men there is a great lack OF faith
in the tariff as a system which helps to
reduce the cost Of living: and the tariff
is not so reverently regarded outside OF
the direct sugar and timber interests.
Senator Tiliman is fallen idol in Louisi-
ana since the South Carolina Senator
demanded a duty on tea for the purpose
Of developing the infant tea industry
Of his State Down here they want
tariff on the sugar that sweetens the tea,
but they don't grow tea in Louisiana OF
course and they are opposed to Tillmans
tar on tea from China and Japan.
When Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock
announced thirty years ago, in his Presi-
-,,eut4al cRmpaign of 1880. that the tariff
was largely a local issue. he was heaped
with ridicule and contumely; and yet
there remains much truth 70 this day in
that theory of the tariff. for every town
or State with a local protected industry
wants a high duty on the product OF that
particular industry. Anything to save
sugar has been the cry Of Louisiana Sena-
tors and Representatives in Congress.
At Chalmette, q suburb, is the gigantic
plant OF the American Sugar Refining
Company, but the revelations OF fraud
and dishonesty in the Brooklyn plant
of that company, first thoroughly ex-
posed by THE SUN. have caused many
friends OF the tariff here to doubt whether
the people OF the country should be asked
to submit any longer to high duties on
sugar.
Despite the high tariff sentiment in
New Orleans and in the Second Congress
district OF louisiana. known as the sugar
district there is a powerful low tarih
movement in other parts OF the State.
The sugar industry has greatly changed
OF late years. Formerly the rich planta-
tions we're owned by Southerners who
employed native help and the employers
and the employees were unit IN
their faith in sugar protective duties;
hut the change in the industry has caused
a turning over OF the large plantations
10 the great sugar corporations. with the
result that the individualism OF the old
time planter has largely ceased to exist.
The impersonal, systematic corporation
of foreign stockholders has taken its place.
Native labor is no longer employed.
Thousands Of Italian plantation lsborers
are imported. many OF whom remain in
the parishes for but brief period. seldom
become citizens. are OF itinerant or no.
unadic habits, wandering from plantation
to plantation, living cheaply. barely
existing for the time being. and finally
taking their savings back TO Italy.
This changed situation has caused the
Iouislanian to lose that feeling OF deep
personal sympathy with the individuals
engaged in the sugar industry which
formerly existed, and there Is no longer
potency In the cry OF Save our planters!'
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