CHAPTER XXXII.

TARIFF REFORM.*

BY HON. WILLIAM R. MORRISON.

NFORMATION comes to us from the executive branch

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 late 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 har monious. 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 countriesnot 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. In 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 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 estimates 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

forty, fifty, and sixty per cent. on the cotton, metal, and woolen schedules is intended to expose and remedy these hidden enormities.

Those really desirous of affording some relief from existing abuses will not fail to find their opportunity in removing taxes yielding $8,000,000 on sugar, as much on cotton and woolen goods, and $14,000,000 on other articles used in every home.

DECEPTIVE CHARACTER OF THE LATE REVISION.

The insufficient, not to say deceptive character of the late revision, the manner of making it, and the circumstances attending its adoption, alike forbid that it should be perma nent. When it was being forced upon the country with assumptions and assurances which have not been verified, I warned its authors it would give no contentment to the public mind and no rest from agitation, because it did not afford the relief admitted to be a measure of justice by the commission packed to perpetuate existing abuses. I said then that its authors, in and out of Congress, but deceived themselves if they expected from this measure so much as a temporary settlement. In a speech made in January last at Columbus, Ohio, Delano, a protectionist, long a member of Congress and a member of President Grant's Cabinet, said substantially that of his own personal knowledge the Tariff Commission was secured by the manufacturers, whose salaried agent they caused to be made its president, and, as their agent here, after his and his employers' commission had made its report (his own report), he secured many changes in it, greatly to the advantage of manufacturers. I hardly need say that a revision procured through such agencies and methods is entitled to no respect whatever.

It is correctly said that a tariff too low necessitates change to obtain needed revenue. It is equally true that when too high, as ours now is, change is necessary to avoid a surplus

from imports in which the duty is not prohibitory. The only security from agitation and change, therefore, is to confine the taxing power to its rightful purpose by obtaining revenue limited to the necessities of the Government. When no more revenue is needed by the Government of the people it has attained the limit of its power to tax the people.

Estimates based on the census statistics show that as many as 18,000,000 of our people do some work or are occupied in some business, and that the average earnings of at least 16,000,000 of these do not much exceed three hundred dol lars, and is wholly consumed in means of daily subsistence. They, too, are the millions who in shop and field strike the blows of all production. All the accumulation of and boasted additions to our national and individual wealth go to one-tenth of those who earn it, and of these a few appropriate the great mass of the savings of the people, and are enriched by the profits of the labor of other men. Like estimates will show that the few who profit most from the labor of all contribute little under this system of unequal taxation—not more than two per cent. of their savings — while the great mass of the workers, including the dependent poor, pay the bulk of taxes, all of which is subtracted from their too scanty means of comfortable living.

Ours is a very free country of very free men, both very freely taxed. In the same sense that we are free men in a free country, freely taxed, we may be correctly named free traders when we insist that the trade and commerce of the country and the necessities of comfortable living shall be freed from all taxes not essential to the Government for public uses.

The amount required from customs is dependent upon what may be received from internal revenue. The abolition of internal revenue means free and cheaper liquors, but with heavier taxed and higher priced sugar and other