Newspaper Page Text
PAGE TWELVE
A POLITICAL PLATFORM FOR 1908.
(Continued from Page Nine.)
weakest link —why do we always forget that?
While we shout to the ignorant or timid or
sluggish citizen, “Come Forward,” let us shout
to the advance-guard, “Wait!”
Battles are lost by the rash, as often as by
the cowards.
Let us cultivate the spirit of co-operation.
Excluding extremes, let us try to strike some
general average upon which all reformers can
harmonize for that campaign.
R R R
The British Tariff And Ours.
In these latter days, the American Tariff
is again coming under fire. Unless weather
signals deceive, the stand-patters are going to
get caught in a storm. The custom house,
which was built with public funds for the pur
pose of protecting the American manufacturer
from the foreigner, is now being used by said
manufacturer as a fort, with whose guns he
can compel the American consumers to fall
at his feet, while he lavishly betstows upon the
foreigner the benefits of our Protective system.
In other words, our manufacturers are sell
ing goods to the outside world at a lower price
than we home folks are allowed to have. You
and I are compelled to purchase our supplies
in a market ruled by Trusts. It is the Tariff
wall, shutting out the competition of foreign
capital, which enables the manfacturers to
form the Trust. Therefore it is the Tariff wall
which bottles us up, and which leaves us at the
mercy of the Trust; whereas the Trust, itself,
can go outside the wall and sell its goods to
the foreign world, upon its own terms.
But in the foreign-market there is no Trust.
Our manufactured goods have to compete with
the manufacturers of other countries. Conse
quently, the foreigner who buys American
goods gets them at a lower rate than is given
us. Tn short, our tariff, levied for our benefit,
*at a tremendous expense to us, burdens us with
the yoke of Monopoly, while it carries to the
foreigners the benefits of competition.
The general result, the ruinous fact, is that
THE TARIFF HAS BECOME A COLOS
SAL TRAP, in which the Trust holds the
American consumer, while it imports cheap
foreign labor, uses it to combat American la
bor, and thus compelling the American CON
SUMER TO PAY TWO PRICES, is enabled
to go abroad and undersell the European man
ufacturer in his own market.
THE HISTORY OF MANKIND HAS
NEVER PRESENTED SUCH A FRIGHT
FUL SCENE OF CAPITALISTIC EXPLOI
TATION.
Under our Tariff system, duties are laid upon
several thousand articles of home consump
tion ; these .duties are laid to increase the price,
and thereby protect the Americans who manu
facture those articles. Great Britain does not
put one dollar of duty upon any article for the
purpose of protecting the man who makes it.
The two hundred and sixty million dollars
which our Government collected on imports
during the fiscal year of 1904 had to come out
of the pockets of the American consumer, be
cause the import duty was added to the price,
and the consumer paid the duty when he
bought the goods.
But that is not all of it—not by a Jug
ful.
Upon the huge quantity of home-made goods
sold to the home-folks, during the same year,
the American manufacturer was able to in
crease the price to the extent of the import du
ty. Thus, at the same time that the Govern
ment collected from you on foreign goods, the
American manufacturer collected from you oa
domestic goods. And it is estimated that the
American manufacturer collects five dollars out
of you on domestic goods where the Govern
ment collects one dollar on foreign goods.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
Therefore, during the fiscal year, when the
Government pulled you for $261,000,000, the
American manufacturer pulled you for five
times that amount, or $1,305,000,000!
Add the two sums, and you have $1,566,000,-
000. Divide this among 80,000,000 people,
and you have each man, woman, and child pay
ing, annually, almost twenty dollars apiece to
keep up our blessed protective system, which,
as I have already shown, PROTECTS THE
FOREIGN CONSUMER.
Great Britain collected, in the same year,
$169,000,000 at the custom houses—BUT
WHAT ARTICLES PAID THESE DU
TIES?
About a dozen commodities pay import du
ties to Great Britain, whereas more than three
thousand commodities pay import duties to the
United States.
And of the dozen which England taxes at
the port of entry not one is among the necessa
ries of life.
Not a shred of clothing is tariff-taxed in
Great Britain. Every shred of clothing is tar
iff-taxed in the United States. The same thing
is true of other necessaries of life, of build
ing materials, of household and kitchen furni
ture, of tools to work with, and of hundreds
of other articles which we are compelled to
have, and which cost us two prices—and some
times more—on account of the Protective Tar
iff.
In Great Britain, what articles bear the im
port duties which aggregate the large sum of
$ 169,000,000 Wines, rum, brandy, tobacco,
tea and coffee, fruits and other such articles of
luxury as no man is necessarily to
buy. When the Government collects the du
ties on these luxuries, there’s the end of it.
No British manufacturer comes along and lev
ies a tribute five times greater than that of the
Government. No “Infant” wine industry is
fostered at the expense of the tax-payer. No
British rum maker is pampered at the public
cost.
The hundreds of articles made of iron and
steel are not “protected” in Egland from for
eign competition in order that a Steel Trust
shall earn $119,000,000 net profit per year.
There are no Sugar Trust incubated by the
British Tariff, no Lumber Trust, no Standard
Oil monopoly, no Paper Trust to trample on
the laws, rob the people, and defy the Chief
Executive. In short, the British tariff is laid
for revenue only; and it is laid, not upon the
necessaries of life, which the common people
must have in order to live, but upon luxuries,
which it is optional with every citizen whether
he buys or not.
In England no citizen needs pay one dollar
of the import duties if he feels unwilling to
do so; IN THE UNITED STATES THERE
IS NO POSSIBLE ESCAPE FOR HIM UN
LESS HE IS ABLE TO LIVE ON
BRANCH-WATER, GO NAKED, AND
ROOST IN A TREE.
R R R
Not to Speak at Dalton During Tair.
Publication has been made, far and wide, of
an announcement that I had promised to ad
dress the people in Dalton during the prog
ress of the Fair.
No promise to that effect has been made.
Don’t pay the slightest attention to announce
ments of that kind UNLESS YOU SEE IT IN
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
R R R
'Editorial TNotes.
We are glad to see Capt. R. H. Milledge
in the race for Prison Commissioner. A golden
hearted gentleman he is; and he comes as
near to being an ideal man for the place as any
bodv that we know.
R
Brother Tibbles of The Investigator has the,
eye of a lynx and nothing escapes his vigil
ance. Listen to this:
“The Burlington road has just declared an
extra 6 per cent dividend after paying the
regular 8 per cent one. The Burlington is
still before the'courts declaring that the 2-cent
passenger fare is confiscatory.”
A suggestion to the Attorneys-General who
have to struggle against “Confiscatory” pleas:
Gentlemen, why don’t you institute criminal
prosecutions for False Swearing, against these
railroad officials?
They swear to one statement of facts in
those absurd “Confiscatory” pleas, and they
swear to a different statement of facts when
they make their Tax Returns; why then don’t
you nab these shifty criminals with a warrant?
Are we never to have enough pluck to go
after the big rascals ? Are we forever going to
be content with taking up all the time of the
court trying niggers for selling liquor and
throwing craps?
Why not go after these high-handed rail
road men who swear two different ways on
the question of valuation? In one case or the
other, they swear falsely; why don’t you test
the matter with a criminal prosecution, and
find out which time they were guilty of False
Swearing?
»
“It turns out that the recent prohibitory law.
passed by Georgia will send every bishop, min
ister, deacon or elder to jail who hands out
wine at sacramental services. That fact has
created a sensation in the state and no one
knows what to do about it.”
Sshhh!—Brother Tibbles.
The brethren are going to sip sacramental
wine, just the same as ever.
No jury would convict a good Christian for
a sip-—you know.
Besides there’s that old rule of construction,
laid down in Blackstone. The legislative intent
must be regarded, and not even a state Legis
lature is supposed to be capable of enacting
a law which is ridiculous.
For instance, saith Blackstone, the law which
in Italy severely punished all “blood-letting
in the street.” was held not to apply to the
surgeon and his lancet.
I have, myself, grave doubts whether those
medical surgeons should have been held ex
empt from the penalties of the law. They were
so fond of bleeding people that they keep the
undertakers busy.
The Press Agent of the Standard Oil band
of free-booters is going at a lively gait these
days. He has all the newspapers publishing
accounts of the terrible losses of poor H. H.
Rogers. “Lost $40,000,000 in the Tidewater
Railroads, and is in bed, worse off every day,”
and so forth.
This is published for effect. The people are
expected to “let up” on a man who is in such
a bad way as poor Rogers is.
Now the actual fact is that H. H. Rogers has
not lost a. dollar on the Tidewater Rail
road, and is not sick, excepting on the days
when the old rascal is wanted in court.
The Tidewater Railroad is still on the earth,
and it belongs to Rogers, and it is a good
piece of property. How did he lose any $40,-
000,000 on it? Nonsense.
As to his health he sailed out in his auto
mobile with Mark Twain, as soon as the fool
Judge continued the case against him; and he
was doubtless laughing at the court as inso
lently as when, in New York, he told Attorney-
General Hadley that it didn’t matteri to him
what the Supreme Court of Missouri decided.
He, the great Rogers, didn’t care for so trifling
a concern as the highest court of a state.