Show THE EVERLASTING TARIFF MUDDLE There is every prospect of the tariff question precipitating a very long and acrimonious debate In the senate and possibly in the house after the Dingley bill is returned to that body The tariff is a veritable Pandoras box and every time it is opened everything islet is-let loose And what is the cause of this It is that the framing of a new tariff bill is always an invitation to every one in the country to come forward for-ward and take advantage of the opportunity op-portunity to use the taxing power of the government to enrich themselves The tariff as a legitimate means of raising revenue for the government has become a secondary consideration if not lost sight of entirely It has come to be regarded as a thing over which manufacturers and producers have the right of control and that the connection connec-tion of congress with it is merely for the purpose of doing their bidding Such being the case it Is inevitable that at some stage in the game of grab there will arise serious contentions among the grabbers as to whose rights are the greater and are entitled to precedence That time has arrived in the consideration of the Dingley bill The sugar schedule of the bill as amended by the senate finance committee com-mittee It is charged is made directly in the interest of the Sugar trust Nor is that all Such a charge implies that there is something rotten in Denmark When the McKinley bill changed the sugar schedule In favor of the trust it threw away many millions of revenue a year Not only did it do that but it went further and undertook to compensate com-pensate domestic producers for the loss of the duty with a bounty It was the policy of burning the candle at both ends The proper treatment of the sugar schedule as of all others is to make it a means for producing revenue for the government If the imposition of a revenue duty enables the Sugar trust or anyone else to raise the price of its product that is something incidental to the necessities of the government and is not a primary prim-ary object of it In the framing of a tariff law the fiscal needs of the government gov-ernment are the chief things to be considered They have come to be the last things to be considered This is inevitable where the policy of protection protec-tion is nothing but paternalism after all But while this is so still this paternalism has not excluded the practice of primogeniture It is this I same practice of primogeniture that is causing so much trouble now I It is certain that a great big tariff muddle is fast being created Nor is it at all probable that it will be confined con-fined to congress or that it will cease with the enactment of a tariff law The Republican party created just such a muddle for itself In 1S30 > thereby insuring in-suring its defeat in 1892 It Is not denied that Mr Clevelands tariff policy did something towards bringing about the defeat of the Democrats in 1894 But in Mr Clevelands case as in the case of Mr McKinley congress was convened in extra session to deal with a matter that had not been the leading issue in the campaigns that resulted in their election There is an important lesson in this fact the next president may profit by it And after a while it may be evident to political parties that the American people are wearied with tariff tinkering tinker-ing tariff tinkering merely for the sake of tinkering I |