Mexican And M'kinley Tariffs

Comparative Duties on Live Animals in Mexico and the United States.

In the so called "farmers tariff" in the McKinley law a duty of $30 a head is levied on horses. Mexican ponies are worth in Mexico about $10 each, which makes the duty equal to 300 percent ad valorem. This is done under the pretense of helping our farmers, yet it is principally the farmers themselves who buy these mustangs.

On the New Mexican frontier, however, the people have learned a new way to evade the McKinley duty and get their prices. They buy them in Mexico, and drive them across into New Mexico, where of course they are seized by the ever vigilant custom house officers. The mustangs are then sold at auction, and are bought up by their owners at about the market price of $10 each. In this way the ranchmen get their ponies for only two prices instead of four, as McKinley would have them do.

We boast of our civilization, and are inclined to look down upon  the Mexican people as far below us in the scale of progress, yet we make our people pay $30 a piece extra for $10 mustangs, while the Mexican government makes its people pay only $2 a piece as duty on all the horses and mules we sell them, however fine they may be.

The difference between the Mexican and the McKinley ideas of tariffs may be seen from the following figures of duties on live animals:

Sheep... Mexican Duty: $0.35; McKinley Duty: $1.50.

Lambs... Mexican Duty: $0.05; McKinley Duty: $1.50.

Hogs... Mexican Duty: $2.25; McKinley Duty: $1.50.

Cattle... Mexican Duty: $3.00; McKinley Duty: $10.00

Mule... Mexican Duty: $2.00; McKinley Duty: $30.00

Horses... Mexican Duty: $2.00; McKinley Duty: $30.00

McKinley doubtless thought he was doing ourselves a great deal of good and the Mexicans much harm by putting a duty  on silver lead ores, but the result seems to have been precisely the opposite. The Mexican minister to Washington says : "The exclusion of ores has, so far, been advantageous to us, because several reduction works are being built in Mexico for the treatment of the same, which used to be done in the United States when crude ores came in free of duty in the shape of raw material. Such ores as cannot be worked profitably in Mexico will be sent to Europe for treatment since the doors of the United States have been shut to us."

These ores, too, were made dutiable under the pretense of helping our own people; but where is the gain to us? Our miners have been compelled to pay higher charges for smelting; the price of lead has been made higher, and has fluctuated greatly since the McKinley bill was put on. Many lead using industries have been injured by the higher prices as well as by the fluctuations in prices. The Mexicans are now shipping their lead  through our territory to Europe, where it is smelted or re-smelted, and some of it finds its way back into this country to pay two cents a pound duty. Tariff obstructions thus cause our people needless expense, and nobody is benefited except a handful of carbonate lead mine owners in Colorado.