CHAPTER XXXI.

FREE TRADE SHOULD BE THE ULTIMATE END AND AIM OF TARIFF LEGISLATION.*

BY EX-PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD.

I

STAND now where I have always stood since I have been a member of this House. I take the liberty of quoting, from the Congressional Globe of 1866, the following remarks which I then made on the subject of the tariff:

"We have seen that one extreme school of economists would place the price of all manufactured articles in the hands of foreign producers by rendering it impossible for our manufacturers to compete with them; while the other extreme school, by making it impossible for the foreigner to sell his competing wares in our market, would give the people no immediate check upon the prices which our manufacturers might fix for their products. I disagree with both these extremes. I hold that a properly adjusted competition between home and foreign products is the best gauge by which to regulate international trade. Duties should be so high that our manufacturers can fairly compete with the foreign product, but not so high as to enable them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the trade, and regulate the price as they please. This is my doctrine of protection. If Congress pursues this line of policy steadily, we shall, year by year, approach more nearly to the basis of free trade, because we shall be more nearly able to compete

*U. S. House of Representatives, April 1, 1870.

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with other nations on equal terms. I am for a protection which leads to ultimate free trade. I am for that free trade which can only be achieved through a reasonable protection."

Mr. Chairman, examining thus the possibilities of the situation, I believe that the true course for the friends of protection to pursue is to reduce the rates on imports wherever we can justly and safely do so, and, accepting neither of the extreme doctrines urged on this floor, endeavor to establish a stable policy that will commend itself to all patriotic and thoughtful people.

Modern scholarship is on the side of free trade.

J

CHAPTER XXXII.

TARIFF REFORM.*

BY HON. WILLIAM R. MORRISON.

I

NFORMATION comes to us from the executive branch

of the Government that the people are burdened with unnecessary taxation, and contribute annually large sums to the public Treasury not necessary for public use. The Treasury estimate of annual surplus may be fairly stated at $50,000,000. Of this needless taxation and surplus, with their attendant aggravate evil, we cannot fail to relieve the people without flagrant disregard of public duty. It is not claimed that the bill reported by the committee will afford all the relief demanded by the people's representatives. It is but an advance toward and a promise of more complete revenue reform, to attain which a general revision of the tariff and a more equitable adjustment of rates on its long list of dutiable articles is essential. Such a revision and adjustment was believed to be unattainable at the present session of Congress. A bill was therefore reported, having for its chief purpose the reduction of taxes.

To protectionists any measure is without harmony and without merit which deprives the favorites of any bounty, though such measure but responds to the statement of the fiscal officers of the Government that "the question still presses, What legislation is necessary to relieve the people of unnecessary taxes?" A reduction "alike" or horizontal

* House of Representatives, April 15, 1884.

is not the most logical at best, but none other was prac ticable. The iate revision, after leaving the hands of the manufacturers and their tariff commission, was completed in a conference, of which three leading members were Messrs. Morrill, Kelley, and Sherman, who have made all the tariffs of the past twenty-five years. They are the chief architects of the present system, and it will not be lightly said by the friends of the system that the revision, as it came from such hands, was not consistent and harmonious. They laid some duties as low as ten, others as high as one hundred per cent. and higher. These are to be reduced twenty per cent., or to eight and eighty. Relatively they remain the same; to the people they will be a little lighter.

Gentlemen are disturbed lest revenues will increase under the bill. Professedly they are alarmed at the possibility of taking less of the people's earnings while putting more money in the people's treasury. The enactment of a law that would accomplish this should not be classed among national calamities.

The year 1860 was a time of plenty. The laborer for wages was, at least, as well, and the grower of grain better, paid than they are in this year (1884), and in that year (1860) of bounteous plenty, our importations of foreign goods were less to the person, or in proportion to population than in the years 1880-2.

ABUSES OF THE PRESENT TARIFF.

To the list of articles now imported free of duty, amounting to nearly one-third of all our importations, it is proposed to add salt, coal, wood, and lumber. Salt is already freed from tax for fishermen, also for the exporters of meats, to lessen the cost of food to the people of other countries —— not for our own. Coal is untaxed for use on vessels having by law the exclusive right to the coasting trade or engaged

in the foreign carrying trade, a privilege denied to persons engaged in other pursuits. The revenue from wood and lumber imported, and hereafter to be admitted free of duty, has in the ten years last past not much exceeded $10,000,000. The census returns show the domestic wooden products to exceed $500,000,000 per annum. If the average duty of twenty per cent. on the imported woods adds but ten per cent. to the price of that produced here its increased cost to the people has been $500,000,000 in ten years. these ten years, under the pretence of taxing this article to secure $10,000,000 of revenue, we have compelled the people to pay $500,000,000 in bounty to encourage the destruction of forests and the felling of trees, and in the same time we have given more than 18,000,000 acres of land under the Timber Culture Act as bounty to encourage the planting of other trees and other forests.

In

In the estimates made by a clerk of experience in the Bureau of Statistics, which actual payments on importations show to be but estimates, though based on official data, the bill would leave, it appears, in the cottons but two articles of cotton yarns, not the finest, dutiable above forty per cent.; in woolens but one-coarse carpet wool, which we do not produce-above sixty per cent., and in iron and steel but few above fifty per cent. These rates have been fixed as the limit, above which on these articles no duty shall be collected. The present rate on the finest cotton is forty per cent., and yet it is an unquestioned fact, as shown by invoices and payments made, that duties exceeding one hundred per cent. (exceeding the first cost), are exacted and paid on cotton goods, the duty upon which is in the esti mates referred to, stated to be less than twenty per cent. The same is true of iron and steel in different degrees. In the woolen schedule these abuses are more glaring. In all they result from enormities hidden and concealed, both in classification of articles and rates of duty. The limit of