Tarifa

“ A tariff, then, may be regarded in the same light as a marsh, a rut, an obstruction, a steep declivity—in a word, it is an obstacle, the effect of which is to augment the difference between the price which the producer of a commodity receives, and the price which the consumer pays for it. ”

“ If upon its sale the farmer receives this or a less tariff profit, the wool leaves his hands charged with precisely that sum, which in all its changes will adhere to it, until it reaches the consumer. When manufactured into cloth and other goods and material for use, its cost is not only increased to the extent of the farmer’s tariff profit, but a further sum has been added for the benefit of the manufacturer under the operation of other tariff laws. ”

“ But practically everybody but the beneficiaries were for cleaning up the tariff. The evils inherent in it—and nobody of intelligence ever denied that they were many—were big, easily seen:
Enormous profits to the few; steadily increasing prices to the many; one-sided development of the country; factories growing like gourds and no ships of our own to carry the goods in; the country sacrificed to the city, the peace of God to the blare and the roar of the steel furnace. These ungrateful children of protection had grown until they threatened to crush us. ”

“ The duties on Exports and Imports, in all the ports of Mexico, are founded upon a Tariff, established by the Junta Suprema Gubernativa, (or First Independent Government,) in January 1822, but modified in some points, by subsequent acts of Congress.
According to this Tariff, a customs duty of twenty-five per cent, was made payable on all kinds of goods from all countries; which duty was to be paid upon a value assigned to each separate article by the Tariff, calculated upon the prices that had existed during the monopoly of the Mother-country. ”

“ Such is the Tariff which has subsisted during the last six years, more from the difficulty of agreeing upon a better, than from any peculiar excellence in the present system, the defects of which are but too apparent, and have led to a great deal of disagreeable discussion.
It is not of the amount of the duties that foreign merchants complain, so much as of the absurd scale of valuations, upon which these duties are paid. ”

“ Those who buy commodities are interested in getting them to the various markets cheaply and in abundance. They wish the charge for transport to be small—they wish it to be small even if the distance from which the goods are conveyed be great, because their sources of supply are thereby increased. To the consumer the ideally perfect state of things would be a tariff for the conveyance of merchandise based on the same principle as the Penny Post; commodities would be conveyed at a low price, and producers over an immense area would be able to send them to market. ”

“ We believe in the tariff because it gives skilled labor good pay. We believe in the tariff because it allows the laboring man to have something to eat. We believe in the tariff because it keeps the hands of the producer close to the mouth of the devourer. We believe in the tariff because it developed American brain; because it builds up our towns and cities; because it makes Americans self-supporting; because it makes us an independent Nation. ”

“ In the meantime the day arrives when the farmer finds it necessary to purchase woollen goods and material to clothe himself and family for the winter. When he faces the tradesman for that purpose he discovers that he is obliged not only to return, in the way of increased prices, his tariff profit on the wool he sold, and which then perhaps lies before him in manufactured form, but that he must add a considerable sum thereto to meet a further increase in cost caused by a tariff duty on the manufacture. ”

“ Bonar Law (U., Lancs., Bootle) quoted a Consular Report of 1909 to show that wages in Germany had more than kept pace with the rise in prices; maintained that a system similar to that proposed existed in Belgium, and was approached by the new American tariff; and declared that, while the tariff might slightly raise the prices of goods used by the farmer, the revenue resulting would be used to relieve the unfair burdens on agriculture. The plan would bring in at least 10,000,000l. of additional revenue, the average of 10 per cent. being got by putting a higher rate on articles of luxury ”

“ In the first case the tax or duty goes to the government, in the other case to the domestic manufacturer. “It is said that the increase in the price of domestic manufactures resulting from the present tariff is necessary in order that higher wages may be paid to our working-men employed in manufactories, than are paid for what is called the pauper labor of Europe.” Now out of a population of 50,155,783, 2,623,089 persons are employed in such manufacturing industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high tariff. ”

“ The labor cost is $10.00. The tariff fixes several rates for bar-iron and gives the lowest rate $17.92. One ton of foundry iron costs $11.00; the labor costs $1.64; the tariff is $6.72. None of these tariffs go to the laborer. The road is blocked up. They cannot pass the pocket of the manufacturers. This “great American” system that is intended to secure high wages for our laborers is so perverted that all its beneficence intended for the poor workingman stops in the pockets of his employer and the laborer only gets what he can command in the open market for his work.” ”

“ If a tariff of forty per cent is paid upon the imported article, when it is sold, the purchaser must re-pay this per cent to the importer, but the manufacturer can advance the price of his goods so as to realize forty per cent, or the amount of the tariff over his former prices, and still compete with the importer. The tariff protects him at the rate of forty per cent, which must be eventually paid by the consumer. ”

“ In 1906 the Tariff Reform Committee of New York City issued a pamphlet made up from discount sheets by Byron W. Holt. It is a beautiful study in gratitude! Mr. Holt names over 250 different articles on which at that date discounts of from 10 to 66 per cent lower were quoted to foreign than to home buyers! An American dealer paid $5.50 for potato hoes which a foreigner could get for $4.75. All farm tools, indeed, were sold abroad far lower than at home, thanks to the Farm Tools Trust. He paid $16.00 a dozen for wooden wheelbarrows for which the foreigner paid $14.50. ”

“ Now a freight tariff starts youthfully out to be the most scientific thing in the world, but it ends by being the most utterly unscientific document that ever was put together. The longer a tariff lives, the more depraved it becomes. The S. F. & E. P. tariffs were very old, but not, therefore, honorable.
John turned to the shelf that contained them and scowled again, a double scowl, as black as his blond Viking brows could manage. ”

“ In arriving at the dutiable value of an import, Customs officials are bound by the Tariff Act, which lays down the rules under which they calculate the true value of an article. This system of appraisal is complex and varies from category to category. Congress has proclaimed that duty on certain items shall be fixed on the foreign value—that is, the selling price in the country of production. Some items are appraised on their export value—the price which the exporter pays for them. ”

“ A recurring note in the hearings held in Washington, before the Payne-Aldrich Bill, was contempt for the suggestion that this or that duty made an article cost a cent or two more at retail. What was a cent to a consumer! This was particularly noticeable in the argument of the wool interests. What if the tariff did make the cloth for a suit of clothes a few cents dearer a yard—it did not add a large amount to the price of the cheap suit. It was not worth considering.
What is a cent to a consumer? ”

“ The Government permits (1) the exploitation for private gain of resources that belong naturally to the whole people. It undertakes (2 and 3) to assure a "fair" rate of return not only upon actual money investment but also upon values donated (as in the case of land grants to the railroads) or created by the people. And to certain manufacturers (4) it grants a tariff far in excess of any rates conceivably needed for "protection"; this tariff is a subsidy which the public pays for the benefit of a favored few. ”

“ On a calm day, when the wind is light or offshore, there is naturally no trouble, and the boatmen have never seemed to me rapacious or insolent, but quite ready to abide by the very reasonable tariff charge for the round trip. In bad weather, as is not unnatural, it often happens that the men request a gratuity over and above the established franc-and-a-half rate, on the plea that the trip has been "molto cattivo" and the labor consequently out of all proportion to the tariff charge—which is true. ”

“ When, therefore, you attempt to carry out the new tariff, which contains rates, I think, of fifty per cent., and some of one hundred per cent., and some even above one hundred per cent., you cannot collect those rates at Boston and New York and Philadelphia, while the men who want to consume the goods can get them by paying a duty of one-third as much. That is impossible. I presume the Senator from Rhode Island, and those who acted with him, did not intend the tariff, which has lately passed, to be a mere farce, a mere thing on paper, not to be acted out. ”

“ If competition reduced the manufacturers' profit, the first reduction of expenses was always in the laborer's pay. The recognition of these truths brought about the further reduction of duties until 1842, in which year the tariff was once more raised. It was not until 1846 that we enjoyed a tariff which sought to eliminate the protective features. It is significant that a period of greater profit and stability among our business men, but especially among our farmers, was then inaugurated. ”

“ No tariff reformer indeed could have asked a better platform than that on which the Commissioners claimed they had worked. Early in their deliberations, they said, they had come to the conclusion that a substantial reduction was demanded—that it was necessary for general industrial prosperity. “No rates of defensive duties,” declared the commission, “except for the establishment of new industries which more than equalize the conditions of labor and capital with those of foreign competitors, can be justified. ”

“ Class rates were at the foundation of the railroad rate structure at the time of the enactment of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887. Such rates are applied to traffic through two separate tariffs. One tariff, the 'classification,' assigns each of the many thousand commodities carried by rail to one of presently some 30 categories or classes, based upon the commodity's particular characteristics. [2] A companion tariff specifies the rate at which each class of freight will be carried. ”

“ The second board was composed of economists and others well versed in matters relating to the tariff and Internal Revenue, who, broadly speaking, were instructed to work out a tariff law which would contemplate the abolishment of the theory of protection as a governmental policy. A tariff was to be imposed mainly as a supplement to the other taxes, the revenue from which, it was thought, would be almost sufficient for the needs of the Government, considering the economies that were being made. ”

“ We raise about £20,000,000 of our annual revenue by means of customs' duties on the foreign commodities which we import, and this fact is sometimes adduced by the advocates for protection, without any explanation, leaving their readers to infer that ours is not, as it really is, a free-trade tariff. ”

“ Effect of the tariff on industrial development.—What effect did the tariff policy have upon the industries and the commerce of the country? To this question the only safe answer is that the effect of the tariff was much less, for good or for bad, than has commonly been stated by writers on either side of the controversy between protection and free trade. The country has grown rich from the wealth of its natural resources and the character of its people. ”

“ I propose to accomplish the necessary reduction through the agency of the Tariff Commission.
One of the most deplorable features of tariff legislation is the log-rolling by which it has been effected in the past. Perfectly indefensible rates are introduced through an understanding usually implied rather than understood among members of Congress, each of whom is interested in one or more of such. It is a case of you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. This evil must be recognised by even the most ardent supporter of the theory of protection. ”

“ A government investigation of the wages in about 4000 establishments, employing 334,000 persons, engaged in manufacturing and mechanical industries, the kind of establishments where, of course, the forces which raise wages act most freely and successfully, shows that in 1906 the weekly wages of the 334,000 were 19.1 per cent higher than in 1896, while, as said, the cost of all commodities was 35 per cent higher. ”

“ If there is a tariff, we will say of fifty cents on a pair of shoes, and this tariff is so low that the foreign article can afford to pay it, then that tariff, of course, must be paid by the consumer. But suppose the tariff was five dollars on a pair of shoes—that is to say, absolutely prohibitory—does any man in his senses say that five dollars would be added to each pair of American shoes? ”

“ Mills illustrated it in this way. “Suppose,” he said, “that a laborer who is earning a dollar a day by his work finds a suit of woollen clothes he can buy for $10.00 without the tariff. Then the suit can be procured for 10 days’ work, but 162the manufacturer goes to Congress and says, ‘I must be protected against the man buying this cheap suit of clothes,’ And Congress protects him by putting on a duty of 100 per cent, or $10.00. Now it will require the laborer to work twenty days to get this suit of clothes. Now tell me if 10 days of his labor have not been annihilated?” ”