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The President's Tariff Argument

The President's Tariff Argument image
Parent Issue
Day
26
Month
September
Year
1902
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Mr. Editor:

The president's argument that trusts are not sheltered by the wings of the tariff is unanswerable if you admit his premises. He says that the tariff furnishes the same protection to the person who is manufacturing and selling in competition with the trust as it does to the trust and therefore any reduction in the tariff which would cripple the trust would have a like effect upon his competitor. His premise is not sound. The tariff does not protect the independent manufacturer who competes with the trust, but as a matter of fact the tariff is a weapon in the hands of the trust with which the independent manufacturer is assaulted. The trust not only controls the manufacture of the finished product, but also all the raw material and all the manufactured products created in the process of the evolution of manufacture. The steel trust, for instance, controls the manufacture of steel by controlling the mines which produce iron ore, the facilities by which that ore is transported to the furnace, and each step in the process of the manufacture of steel. The independent manufacture of structural steel cannot compete with the steel trust because he must buy his raw material at a price which the trust is enabled to dictate by the aid and assistance of the tariff.

We have an illustration of this condition here in Michigan. An independent manufacturer was making barbed wire at Adrian. He refused to sell out to the trust. As a consequence he was driven to the wall. The barbed wire trust was not only manufacturing barbed wire, but it manufactured or controlled all the material necessary to its manufacture. The barbed wire trust did not lower the price of barbed wire. On the contrary, it advanced the price. That ought to have helped the Adrian concern, and would have done so, if it could have purchased material in competition with the trust. That it could not do, for all such material, in this country. was under the control of the trust. The Adrian concern could not purchase outside the country because the foreign manufacturer could not make wire any cheaper, if as cheap, as the American manufacturer could, and to such cost must be added our tariff. If the Adrian concern could have purchased wire abroad and continued the manufacture of barbed wire, it is plain that while the tariff would have helped the trust it would have to some extent injured its competitor, and therefore a repeal of the tariff on the raw material out of which barbed wire is manufactured would not have harmed the independent manufacturer, but would have helped him.

It is noteworthy that the president's whole argument is devoted to the trust and the independent manufacturer - its competitor. He has no one word to say about the consumer. The cost of all the necessaries of life have been increased by the trusts to the great injury of the people. And while the people are being robbed all help coming from competition is being crushed.

The tariff in many instances, we do not say all, helps the trust and injures its competitor. In no other way can you account for the fact that while prices are advancing competition is being destroyed.

B. M. THOMPSON.