The Cordova daily times., 1922-06-09
TARIFF BILL IS
 "COLD BRICK,' SAYS SENATOR

WASHINGTON, June 9.-The tariff issue apparently has split the Senate Agricultural Bloc"
 Its Republican members, led by Senators Capper of Kansas and Me Nary, of Oregon, have gone over, tenn oraryily at least, to the Republican "Agriucultural-Tar Bloc," which is insisting upon the highest possible rates on food and other farm prod acts.
 Its Democratic members declare they see only higher prices and llV- ing costs in high tariff rates for the farmers themselves. Under the guise of being given protection" for the first time in the history of tariff tin kering, says Senator Simmons or North Caroline, the farmer is handed a "gold brick" in the new tariff bill which will undo any benefit he may have derived from the legislation fos- tered previously by the Agricultural Bloc"
 Most of the effective duties in the bill are applied to products Of universal consumption, which are produced by relatively small num- Der of farmers" Senator Simmons contends. "They are only produced by farmers in certain sections and in certain groups. Take sugar and wool, for instance. Sugar and wool are consumed by all the people. Sugar is produced in Louisiana and few Western States. While wool is produced in a good many states it is only produced in certain sections Of the country.
 "The number of farmers producing sugar and wool compared with the total number of agriculturalists is small, and yet as the farmers of this country purchase from forty to fifty per cent of all of the products con- sumed they will have to pay one-half of the duty on these products plus one-half of the increase in the price of woolens and refined sugar as a re- suit of the additional compensatory duties allowed the manufacturers or wooden goods and the refiners ot sugar.
 ESTIMATES OF EXPERTS
 "It is estimated by experts that the producers of wool stand to gain some thing like $45,OO0,000 for their wool but as a result of the increase in the rates of wool manufactured the addl- tional amount which the farmers or the country will have to pay for thelr. clothing and other Woolen purchases will be from three to four times as much as the wool growers gain. In other words. the American farmers as whole will be taxed four dollars, while 8 relatively few of their number who are engaged in the production Of wool will get one dollar. --'~S'"'
 American prosperity has been largely dependent for many years upon our finding foreign markets for our exportable surplus, as we have expanded ogr production of agricul- tural and manufactured products. This dependence has grown greater and greater. Owing to the expansion brought about by war conditions it is difficult to measure the present degree of dependence of American prosperity upon foreign markets.
 "No part of our population is more dependent upon foreign markets for the sale of their surplus products than the American farmer. It is true that we produce a number of farm products which are not exported, because the amount of them is unequal to the American demand for them, but the production of many of the staple agri- cultural products in this country is enormously in excess of the domestic demand.
 Our exports of cotton head the list. We produce under normal con- 2ditions more than twice as much cot ton as we need or can use in this country. If we cannot sell abroad that part of our cotton production it will become valueless, and the congestion which will follow in the American mar ket will so reduce the price of the half consumed product as to render it im- possible and unprofitable to continue its production.
 TOBACCO INCLUDED
 'The same is true of tobacco, al though not to so great an extent as