Show discussing THE TARIFF thim THE fact that the inhabitants of a territory do not share in national elections nor national legislation is 18 the main reason why such questions as that of the tariff do not receive much attention from them heretofore such topics have not been much discus discussed in utah but for reasons not necessary to be recited here more consideration is being given to them of late thau than formerly A class of young men is growing up in this territory who take pleasure in investigating such subjects which is of course commendable but care should be taken to use only such methods in matting making such inquiries queries qu iries as will lead to the truth it were better to leave a subject entirely glone alone than to take a course coarse in dealing with it that will have the effect to fasten error upon the mind the debate upon free trade which took place in the fourteenth ward ard assembly rooms march an account of which is given elsewhere in this issue has suggested these reflections the speakers six in were all young men of exceptional ability and possessed of intellectual cabai capacity ity and attainments which promised much for the future career of elch each and they all seen seemed ried earnest an honest in advocating and supporting their respective views there were a goodly number of ladles ladies present but a glance glanc over tho the audience showed it to consist mainly of young men who have hitherto hither toD shown a taste for intellectual subjects auh me fhe character of the assemblage in this respect was marked to lay before such a gathering of eager and receptive minds arguments or data of a kind that would be misleading would be to dp injury that might be I 1 grave and irreparable A weighty responsibility rests upon the speakers upon such an occasion and if they fall fail to properly discharge it they become legitimate subjects of critical criticism M they are such in any cue case for the e reason that they invite the public to listen to and consider their views and arguments while much might be said in praise of the entertainment given to the audience listened to the debate last evening there were features connected with it which would have been difficult to eliminate from it but which should be guarded against as far as possible both by speakers and listeners the speakers in the affirmative laid before dorethe the audience statistics or alleged statistics in support of free trade which were obviously be the power of any human being to check that is to sustain or r refute by sound logic based upon sure premises and the defender ri of a protective tariff did the same thing among these statistics for example were figures which purported to represent the national wealth of this country at different periods prior to 1850 the champions of free trade had a lot of figures which went to show that the country prospered most moat under a low tariff and the advocates of protection had a lot of figures covering the same periods of time which went to show that the country prospered most u rider a protective tariff I 1 yow now these figures were worthless they were mostly fictitious prior to 1850 no method existed by which accurate statistics upon this subject were or could be collected or preserved to enable any person to conclusively show the relation between national prosperity and the tariff to tell for example the amount of our national wealth in the year 1820 with any degree of certainty iles beyond the power of man figures that purport to re present it may be far too large or much too small email there elii t oo no means of checking them hence a debater may make them what he pleases with the happy consciousness that so long as he remains within the bounds of reason no human being can convict him of error if an investigator makes a bookworm of himself and searches through the literature of the subject from remote dates till now he always finds the same conflict in figures and assertions of arguments and statistics and 11 he be both logical and conscientious he will reach the conclusion that the he tariff problem must be solved by lines of argument having some other basis than the alleged statistics which writers and speakers upon the sub eject use for when such figures are not downright forgeries fulger iee they are almost always too incomplete to be of any value As an illustration of this point we reproduce figures relative to the sugar industry which one of the speakers presented total value of toe tae product for the year 1887 total amount of wages paid fur for the labor producing that amount of sugar amount of the tariff on that quantity of sugar if it were imported at aj cents per pound amount which sugar manufacturers are ona enabled bled because of the tariff to steal from we the sum they ought to pay for wages these figures were laid before the audience on a blackboard but few if any persons present could give them proper analysis or consideration at the time now they mean that the labor which produces worth of sugar is paid only 4 this is preposterous 4 would not pay for the labor employed to haul the sugar cane from the field from these figu figures reff it would appear that the manufacturers pay their employee emp loyes 4 while stealing scaling 42 from them I 1 in n other words more than ten times as much to is stolen from employee emp loyes as is paid to ahm and but for the iniquities of the tariff the employee in the sugar ind industry astry would receive ten times as high wages as they now do without increasing the be price at which sugar is sold to the public we refrain from further comment upon or analysis of these figures ina in a dozen ways it cau can be shown that they have no necessary connection with or dependence upon each other and that they are absurd and impossible the mind of the speaker who put them forward was not trained to close and accurate reasoning though he possesses superior intelligence and made a concise and apparently strong argument in favor of free trade he declared the figures were taken from the united states census and was undoubtedly honest in the enthusiasm with which he pointed out and denounced the wrongs of a protective tariff but no sueh such figures were ever contained in a government publication and inquiry developed the explanation that those he gave were obtained from the new york world the object of this article is not to argue against free trade for the fallacy of some of the figures and logic presented in support of protection could be quite a 8 easily exposed as the figures and deductions on the other side above frosted upon our purpose is rather to show the ad 1 visibility vis ability of using in debate only such material as am is known or can be shown to be true while avoiding empty assertion and data that are fictitious or incapable of being either verified or refuted |