Mexican And M'kinley Tariffs

In the so called "farmers' tariff" in the McKinley law a duty of $30 a head is levied on horees. Mexican ponies are ■worth in Mexico abont $10 each, which makes the dnty equal to 300 per cent. ad valorem. Thia is done under the pretense of helping our farmers, yet it is principally the farmers themseives who bny these mustangs. On the New Mañean 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 conree they are seized by the ever vigilant custom house officers. The mustangs are then sold at anction, 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 apiece extra for 10 mustangs, while the Mexican government makes its people pay only $ apiece as duty on all the horses and mules we sell them, ho wever fine they may be. The diiference between the Mexican und the McKinley ideas of tariffs may be seen from the following figures of duties on live animáis: McKinley doubtless thought he was doing ourselves a great deal of good and the Mexicans mnch harm by putting a dnty on silver lead orea, bnt the result seems to have been precisely the opposite. The Mexican minister to Washington says: "The exclusión of ores has, so far, been advantageous to us, because several reduction works are being buili in Mexico f or the treatment of the same, which nsed to be done in the United States when -crude ores carne in free of duty in the shape of raw material. Such ores as cannot be worked profitably in Mexico wili 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 srcielting; the price of lead has been made higher, and has fluctnated 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 resmelted, and some of it flnds its way back into this country to pay two cents a pound dnty. Tariff obstructions thns cause our people needless expense, and nobody is benefited except a handf ui of carbonate lead mine owners in Colorado.