| OCR Text |
Show ON A FALSE SCENT The National Republic (Washington) (Washing-ton) declares that those politicians who are trying to induce the farmers farm-ers to fight the protective tariff policy pol-icy a:e leading- them on a false scent. It calls attention to the fact that our total imports for 1925 were $4,227,995,000. Of this total there came in under the free list commodities com-modities to the value of $2,652,020,-000; $2,652,020,-000; 62.7 per cent of the total imports im-ports paid no tariff. The total of dutiable goods was $1,575,975,000, or 37.3 per cent of the total. Of the total of dutiable goods there was $280,048,000 in luxuries and non-essentials, practically all of which may be deleted from the dutiable total because of no necessary interest to either the agricultural or industrial populations. Of the remainder of dutiable goods there were agricultural agricul-tural products subjected to tariff in protection of the farmer aggregating aggregat-ing in value $735,166,000. Other important im-portant commodities protected in behalf be-half of industries other than agriculture agri-culture totaled $560,761,000. The farmer's interest as a consumer does not appear directly in the tariff on more than 13.2 per cent of total imports, im-ports, and in view of the fact that as a consumer he is not able to buy imported articles at the foreign price, but gets them through importers import-ers and middlemen who increase the price to the domestic level, the "burden" "bur-den" upon him from the tariff as a consumer is ncglible, while the benefit ben-efit to his as a producer directly and indirectly is great. |
