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How The High Tarif Sentiment Is Fostered

How The High Tarif Sentiment Is Fostered image
Parent Issue
Day
1
Month
May
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

There is great rejoicing in the office of the American Protective Tariff League, in New York. It has compelled President Roosevelt to change front on the question of tariff revision and it is now boasting of its achievement. It is no exaggeration to say that the most powerful instrument in this country today for the moulding of public sentiment is the organization of manufacturers which bears that name. The American Protective Tariff League defeated the Cuban reciprocity legislation of the first session of the Fifty-seventh Congress, emasculated the Cuban reciprocity treaty ratified at the last session, and will attempt at the next session to further negative that treaty. It has thus far prevented the ratification of the reciprocity treaties negotiated by Mr. Kasson. It has combatted the "Iowa idea" so successfully that President Roosevelt, who started out with a declaration that he would "stand pat" on the McKinley policies, which included reciprocity, has now concluded to "stand pat" with the high tariff faction of his party. This league has a membership of 1,000 including some of the most prominent manufacturers of iron, steel, cotton goods, cutlery, Yankee notions, leather goods, hosiery, gloves, varnish, silks, etc., in the entire country.

The 1,000 members pay in years when important elections are on, a minimum annual assessment of $100 each. This minimum fund of $100,000 is swelled by additional contributions as the occasion demands. The object of the American Protective Tariff League is to create sentiment in this country favorable to the maintenance of the protective tariff and to prevent the abatement of existing tariff rates. It is the personification of the "stand pat" idea. It opposes the crossing of a "t", the dotting of an "i" or the changing of a punctuation mark in the existing tariff law. The league effects its purposes and accomplishes its object of molding public sentiment by working upon the readers of the country through a masterful system of newspaper syndicates. It boasts that the combined circulation per week of the newspapers using the editorials and other matter sent out by the league was 600,000. Approximately that represents 24,000,000 readers per week. All this matter is sent out in stereotyped form and free to the papers desiring to use it. Besides this the league publishes a weekly paper called the "American Economist" which is sent out to all the leading papers of the country and has a circulation of more than 14,000 per week. It voices the most intelligent thought on the tariff question from the standpoint of protection and its sophistries are reproduced as editorials in many of the leading papers of the nation. From the above can be gathered an idea of the immense engine used by the protective tariff interests of the country to keep the people fooled and believing that they are getting some benefit from the system of protection. If the people were getting the benefit and not the special interests, does any sane man suppose those interests would contribute $100,000 a year to keep up the protection wall? Is not this sufficient evidence to the people of the country that they are being bled and robbed by this set of men and special interests putting up the money to keep them hoodwinked by making them believe that protection is helping them and the country? What more do they want? The democratic party panders to no special interests and therefore it has no propaganda and no money to establish one by which its ideas of good government can be constantly pounded into the people. If the democratic party could have had even 1,000 papers for the past ten years exposing the fallacies of high protection, the farmers of the country who suffer most from this one-sided game, would be almost unanimous in their opposition to protection. It has no fountain of wealth filched from the pockets of the people from which to draw and therefore the people do not get the truth. They get only the honied sophistries from an organized band of public plunderers and go on "letting well enough alone" until the band is bursting with the boodle. When the members are gorged and get to quarreling among themselves as they are now doing then the people will begin to get a glimpse of the truth. It remains to be seen how much longer the people will stand for this sort of thing and be beguiled by this American Protective Tariff League. It got them to pass the McKinley and the Dingley bills with which to abstract money from their pockets, it defeated the Cuban reciprocity measure and now it has scared the President of the United States by threatening to defeat him unless he abandoned the "Iowa Idea" and stands for all they desire in the way of high protection. The people can stop it, but the probability is they won't until their bellies become empty.