Another Tariff Trust

The work of building up tariff trusts still goes on. One of the latest achievements in that line is tiras reported by The Iron Age, a leading protectionist trade paper: "The negotiations which have been in progress for some time between the nianufacturers of strap and T hinges have resulted in the formation of a strap and T hinge association, which consists of the following concerns: Stanley works, McKinley Manufacturing company, E. W. Gilmore & Co., Lindsay & McCutcheon, C. Hager & Sons Hinge company. A new list has been adopted. The new prices represent an advance on the goods generally ranging from 5 to 10 per cent. on strap hinges and something like 20 per cent. on T hinges." The old duty on these hinges was two and a half cents a ponnd, and was practically prohibitory, only $2,377 worth of bolts, rivets, hinges and hinge blanks having been imported last year. McKinley made the trifling reduction of a quarter of a cent per potmd, leaving the rate still substantially probibitory, as may be seen from the fact that this hinge trust is able to raise prices from 5 to 20 per cent. l hus one by one the industries of the country are combining to defeat the very competition which we are told that protection was designed to promote. An important trade paper has recently asserted that nine-tenths of the industries of this country are now con trolled by trusts and combinations. Most of these are of course made by the tariff. But let them go on and do their work. They are, as a Republican organ has said, "the deadly enemies of the protective system." These trusts are educating the people, as nothing else can, into a knowledge of protection and its beanties. Let the trusts multiply and proeper till the people rise in their inight and crush out the whole protective Bystem which fosters them.