Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-07-23
The Unjust Potash Tariff

The Unjust Potash 4 arm
| a MONG the divers inequties and dangers
| N of the Fordney tariff bill few would
work so grave an injustice upon pro-
ductive interests as the proposed import duty
of fifty dollars ton on potash, that vital
necessity of Southern agriculture
For the last quarter of a century potash
has been on the "free''list. The importance
of the farmers procuring it as cheaply as
| possible was recognized by even such no.
| torious instruments Of high "protec-
particular favoritism as the Dingley and the
| Payne-Aldrich acts To add unnecessarily
| TO the cost of so essential a crop as cotton
struck even the Old Guard Of the Republ1-
can party as unfair and unwise. But now
come the new spoilsmen, an-hungered by
eight years of Punishment from power, pro-
posing to levy on American agriculture
tax of ten million dollars year to the end
that a small group of potash producers may
| flourish in a luxuriance of gain.
The brunt of this burden would be borne
| by the Southeast, ana especially by Georgia
and the Carolinas. These three States con-
sumo more Of the fertilizer OF which potash
is an essential ingredient than do all the
others combined. Upon these three, then,
would be loaded the bulk Of the ten million
tax levied for the protection" of that lin
FAINT industry which produces not more than
one-third of the potash the country
requires. 1t was said during the days OF
Kaiserism that every German civilian was
compelled to bear two or more soldiers on
his back. Republican tariff-makers now pro-
pose with an arbitrarlneSs smacklng strongly
of Potsdam, that Southern farmers shall car
ry upon THEIR backs the American Potash
trust
cto tn IL Sh
at price that leaves the farmer fair mar
gin of profit for investment and labor, and
so, too, does Germany. But the Fordney
bill, with an suspicious eye for the potash
infant along with other favorites of the
G. o. P, intervenes and says, THAT will
never do; fifty dollars ton must be added
to cost of every cargo of imports in order
that our friends may not be disturbed by for
eign competition" If the common country
were called upon to share this imposition, it
still would be unjust, but how fagrantly I'M
fair does it become one section of States is
required to shoulder well-nigh alone the
whole ten million dollar levy in the interest
of special privilege.
While the world war ragged and foreign
sources of supply were cut off, our farmers
paid as cheerfully as they could the enorm-
Gus prices then charged for potash, and did
their patriotic best to produce abundant
harvests for the nations urgent needs. But
now that peace has returned and the general
scale of costs is revised downward, how I'M
reasonable to demand that the cotton grower
shall pay wartime prices for potash, when
his own product has sunk to a meager frac-
ton of its former value! Logically has it
been said that even were high import duties
on potash needful, still cit would be much
better business to pay the manufacturer a
bonus outright and be done with it, Ger
tainly there is no equity in shifting the bur-
den almost wholly to one RECON and to the
one group of agricultural producers who are
least able to bear it.