Tariff Arguments

The foreigner saya the Yankee never undertakes to manufacture a thing without getting up a newer process. That Is true. You enact this duty upon tin plate and you will not see probably 100 pounds of it made as they make it in Europe now, by going around and clumsily dipping the plate into pickle two or three or four times. You will soon find a machine that will travel those plates through from one bath af ter another. You will ñnd it done by machinery. You will find the process improved and the price of your tin brought down. The Yankee contractor never undertakes to make 10,000 of anything in the world without having ten or fif teen or twenty workmen in the shop all the while studying as to how they can do it betterand cheaper. In the language of the Englishman, the American invents as the Greek sculptures or the Italian paints. It is genius, and we have had the great Btatesmanship and conjmon sense to foster all this by an admirable patent law, which has been as cheap as dirt compared with the patent laws of foreign countries. Now, give us a chance. Put up a fence for a time; keep out not a legitímate competition. I do not care if the margin is so close that some of the foreign goods get in, perhaps so much the better; but it is no fair fight when people are compelled to work for ten or fifteen or twenty cents a day in other countries. I hold it is worth while that we should establish those industries in this country. SENATOR PADDOCK. During the last decade the farmera of our state have more than doubled their wn wealth and the wealth of the state, ïhey have seen their farms appreciate In valué, often a hundred fold, and their erops find ready sale at remunerativo pnces, üverproduction, resulting from want of proper diversificaron, unwise haste in marketing the products of their farms, local partial failures of crops, due to caprices of nature over which neither they nor a protective tariff have any control, have at times decreased the returns of their labor and lessened the anQual rewards of their toil. But I affirm, with the confidence of Intímate personal knowledge, that no class engaged in building up its fortunes by personal labor has prospered in a fuller degree during the past decade than the western farmer; has been enabled to earn more, or to save more, or, ín proportion to capital invested, has íecured larger interest returns on its principal. However unremunerative agriculture may be in a section drained of its inhabitants through emigration from its worn out soil and stony huls to our rich western prairies, the mere fact of reduced populations in such portions of the east and south is the highest of tributes to the paramount and splendid advantages offered by the western farm. The well settled valleys and prosperous uplands of my own state, dotted with generous farm houses, to which hundreds of thousands of acres of corn wave welcome even in this year of universal drought and disaster in the corn belt; the hundreds of thriving villages and towns, the churchea, the handsome institutions of higher learning, and the thousand and one humbler little school houses on the hill tops - each and all the product of barely thirty years of settlement in an agricultural state - are a Buföcient denial of these extraordinary statements as to the desperate condition of Nebraska farmers. I repudiate them atterly on behalf of the agriculturist of the state which in part I have the honor to represent here. There can be no disaster in Nebraska as the result of a protective policy properly adjusted and applied. SENATOR STEWAKT. Mr. President, I think that of all countries on earth Canada should be the last to be favored by this country in our protective tariff. She discriminates against sverything that comes from our country. Take agricultural machinery. An import duty of 85 per cent. is levied by Canada on machinery from the United States, while all other machinery has to pay a duty of from 10 to 25 per cent. Canada puts a duty on coal oil especially high, 100 per cent. ; also on anthracite coal. We have no duty on anthracite coal, while they have a high duty on it, fifty-six cents a ton. And so on through the whole list, which I have not time in my five minutes to recite. When we come to lumber we have no duty on logs. If tea and coffee go from this country into Canada they have to pay a duty of 10 per cent. ad valorem. I have a long list of discriminating duties against the United States which I have not time to read, but I will come to the question of lumber. We have no duty on logs. They have a duty of $1.01 per thousand f eet. Senators will remember that two years ago last spring a raft of logs came into this country known as the Joggins raft, and it paid $3,030 export duty to Canada. They have another method of getting even with us on lumber. Most of the lands belong to the public, and they charge a stumpage of $5 per square mile and a royalty of 5 per cent. on all sales. Now, if you put lumber on the free list the Canadian government, according to its uniform practico, will add to this royalty and put on an export duty, so that you will get no gain whatever from it. You will injure the million people engaged in the business for the benefit of the Canadian people and the Canadian government. It is a square give away of the rights of the American people. It will benefit no one. It will not make lnmber one cent cheaper. You can trace it right through the whole list, and they will take advantage of every partiële of this tariff which you gire away. They will take it and give It to their people and to their government, and keep it there for the benefit of the Canadian people and the Canudian government as agalnst our people, who take this tariff off. It will not benefit the people of this country oue iota, because they will put on all the burden it will bear and come into our market, and if you take off any part of the burden they will put it on again, because they will put it at a point where they can compete with the American market. There is no use in oppressing our people for the benefit of strangers. SENATOR MITCHELL. Listening to some of the speeches made on the other side of the chamber, one not properly infonned, not conversant with the bill and its provisions as they really are, would naturally conclude the effect of the passage of this bill would be to largely increase taxation, advance customs rates all along the line, swell the annual revenue and oppress the people. If such were, in my judgment, to be the effect of the pending bill it never could receive my vote. Such, indeed, is not the pending measure. And in this connection it may be properly stated that never, perhaps, in the Mlstory of legislation has there been such studied, delibérate, persistent attempt to misrepresent any proposed legislation - its nature, character and probable effect - such detennined, yet poorly concealed, efforts to deceive and hoodwink the masses of the people as there has been in reference to the pending bill. The bill is precisely what it purports to be - a bill to reduce the revenue and equalize duties on imports- the effect of which will be, if enacted into law, most unquestionably to reduce the revenue to the extent of very many millions of dollars, and to equalize the duties on imports so as to opérate more equally and fairly in reference to all the industries of the country. SENATOR DOLPH. As I understand the constitution, when the thirteen original etates adopted it they agreed that we were to be one nation, and the right to regúlate foreign and interstate commerce was to be given to congress, to a body which was to exercise its authority over the whole country and over all the people, over every foot of soil and over every citizen. Therefore the duty of congress in legïsianng upon this questiou is to legislate for the good of the whole. It is a mistake to gay that what in jures Oregon does not injure Maine, or that what injures Maine does not injure Oregon, or that what injures Maine and Oregon does not injure Florida and Louisiana. You cannot injure one of the states of the Union or destroy an enterprise or a business in one of the States of this Union without in j uring the whole; and all the talk about whether the tariff on this or that will be beneficial to this Btate or that is foolishfiess. Sir, I am in favor of protecting every industry of the United States, and all alike, so far as I am able to judge of what is necessary. I am not ready to join the corps of sappers and miners in this body who are seeking to undermine the wall of protection which keeps out the cheap labor producís of other countries from this country. SENATOR 8POONER. I have sat nere day after day, week ifter week, voting fair protective duties upon articles in which my state and my people have no direct interest, keeping in mind the larger interest of the whole country and of ita labor, not limiting my view to the lines of the state which sent me here. The people of Wisconsin make, for example, no pottery, so far as I know, but that is a great industry in New Jersey, employing vast capital and labor. I have not been willing, Mr. President, that it should be overslaughed either as to that capital or as to the interest of that labor by throwing down the banier which alone prevents an influx of that product made by capital carrying a lower rate of interest and labor earning infinitely lesa in other lands. The people of Wisconsin have no direct interest in the duty on rice, but I voted for a duty to protect the rice farmer in the general interest in its relation to the system under which we have prospered, and in which I believe. If the p-rinciple is to be abandoned, however, by each one whose local interest doea not seem to bo directly subserved there will not long be much of it left.