Show I WHO PAYS THE TAX I I i Whenever it is proposed to place a particularly iniquitous tax upon foreign for-eign goods imported into the country the protectionist papers start a discus siop of that old but neverexhausted question Who pays the tax And they always find that the foreigner pays the tax taxThe The New York Tribune has taken up the question and dismisses it at considerable con-siderable length chiefly as a restatement restate-ment oran article by ua canny Scot writing in the St James Gazelle It says this writer gets pretty close to tJ chart c-hart of the lariffisatax question The Tribune says that the canny Scot reminds his readers of the essential essen-tial difference between free trade Great Britain and protectionist countries This difference Is that the former levies ft a tax on what cannot produce and I the latter on what it can produce But if as this writer is convinced says I the Tribune when a duty paying import im-port has to meet the competition of a I domestic product the duty is paid not by the consumer but by the foreign producer or importer there is a vast difference between them If this latter lat-ter hypothesis be true the exporters of Great Britain are contributing enormous enor-mous sums to the revenues of other countries which contribute little or nothing in return to British revenues How particular our New York contemporary con-temporary is to premise its adhesion to this theory with an if If this latter hypothesis be true Thereby hangs a tale It is the whole question If the foreigner pays the tax no American Amer-ican in the world is going to object But how adroitly the Tribune puts the case as made out by the canny Scot A careless reader would get the impression impres-sion that it endorses what he says But it does not in reality It says This writer has challenged the Cobden Cob-den club to disprove the correctness of his argument but that discreet body nas declined the undertaking Failing that he has cqnducted extensive inqui riesamong British merchants He has asked representative exporters in the chief manufacturing districts whether they or the foreign consumers paid the duties levied by foreign countries upon their goods Of 531 thus asked 530 replied re-plied that they the British manufacturers manufac-turers and exporters had to pay them and only one replied the foreign consumers con-sumers Anti rhat on > solitary answer ame from the English branch house of an American bicycle factory and was coupled with the remark You Britishers are the biggest foqls in the world Why dont you put on tariffs The 530 manufacturers who declared that they and not the foreign consumers I consum-ers had to pay the tariff included lead Ing firms in the cotton wool silk iron cutlery and a dozen or more other important im-portant trades Those 530 British manufacturers should have their names published for when they die they will be entitled to sepulture in Westminster Abbey So distinguished an authority as Alexander Alexan-der Hamilton declared that the consumer con-sumer paid the tax And we know a gentleman who recently got some books from this same Great Britain where the foreigner pays the tax and Uncle Sam made him pay the tax over again |