1904.

REPUBLICAN.-Protection which guards and develops our industries is a cardinal policy of the Republican Party. The measure of Protection should always at least equal the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad. We insist upon the maintenance of the principle of protection, and, therefore, rates of duty should be readjusted only when conditions have so changed that the public interest demands their alteration, but this work cannot safely be committed to any other hands than those of the Republican Party. To intrust it to the Democratic Party is to invite disaster. Whether, as in 1892, the Democratic Party declares the protective tariff unconstitutional, or whether it demands tariff reform or tariff revision, its real object is always the destruction of the protective system. However specious the name, the purpose is ever the same. A Democratic tariff has always been followed by business adversity; a Republican tariff by business prosperity. To a Republican Congress and a Republican President this great question can be safely intrusted. When the only free-trade country among the great nations agitates a return to Protection the chief protective country should not falter in maintaining it.

We have extended widely our foreign markets, and we believe in the adoption of all practicable methods for their further extension, including commercial reciprocity wherever reciprocal arrangements can be effected consistent with the principles of Protection and without injury to American agriculture, American labor, or any American industry. DEMOCRATIC.-The Democratic Party has been, and will continue to be, the consistent opponent of that class of tariff legislation by which certain interests have been permitted, through Congressional favor, to draw a heavy tribute from the American people. This monstrous perversion of those equal opportunities which our political institutions were established to secure has caused what may once have been infant industries to become the greatest combinations of capital that the world has ever known. These especial favorites of the Government have, through trust methods, been converted into monopolies, thus bringing to an end domestic competition, which was the only alleged check upon the extravagant profits made possible by the protective system. These industrial combinations, by the financial assistance they can give, now control the policy of the Republican Party.

We denounce Protectionism as a robbery of the many to enrich the few, and we favor a tariff limited to the needs of the Government, economically, effectively, and constitutionally administered, and so levied as not to discriminate against any industry, class, or section to the end that the burdens of taxation shall be distributed as equally as possible.

We favor a revision and a gradual reduction of the tariff by the friends of the masses and for the common weal, and not by the friends of its abuses, its extortions, and its discriminations, keeping in view the ultimate end of "equality of burdens and equality of opportunities" and the constitutional purpose of raising a revenue by taxation, to wit, the support of the Federal government in all its integrity and virility, but in simplicity.

I believe that the protective system, which has now for something more than thirty years continuously prevailed in our legislation, has been a mighty instrument for the development of our national wealth and a most powerful agency in protecting the homes of our workingmen from the invasion of want. It cannot be a perversion of the Constitution to so legislate as to preserve in the homes of our working people the comfort, independence, loyalty and sense of interest in the Government which are so essential to good citizenship in peace and which will bring this stalwart throng, as in 1861, to the defence of the flag when it is assailed.-President Benjamin Harrison, Message to Congress, 1892.

OUR PRINCIPAL TARIFF LAWS.

Date of such act. Character of the bill and other remarks. 1789, July 4.....Specific and ad valorem rates, latter from 5 to 15 per cent.

1790, August 10..Specific and ad valorem rates, latter from 3 to 152 per cent.

1791, March 3....This act only affected "spirits” paying specific

duties.

1792, May 2......Specific and ad valorem rates, latter from 71 to 15 per cent,

1794, June 7.....Specific and ad valorem rates, latter from 10 to 20 per cent.

1795, January 29. This act affected but few articles paying specific and ad valorem rates.

1797, March 3....This act affected but few articles paying specific and ad valorem rates.

1797, July 8.

1800, May 13.

This act only affected salt paying a specific duty. .This act affected but few articles paying specific and ad valorem rates.

1804, March 26..This act, commonly called "Mediterranean fund," imposing an additional duty of 21 per cent. in addition to the duties now imposed by law.

1804, March 27.. This act affected but few articles paying specific rates.

1812, July 1..... This act imposed DOUBLE DUTIES, known as WAR DUTIES.

1813, July 29....This act only affected salt paying a specifie duty.

1816, February 5. This act continued the double duties to 30th of June, 1817.

1816, April 27....Specific minimum and ad valorem rates, latter from 7% to 30 per cent.

1818, April 20....This act affected but few articles paying specific

rates.

1819, March 3....This act only affected "wines" paying specific

rates.

1824, May 22....Specific, minimum, compound and ad valorem, latter from 12 to 50 per cent., the first really Protective Tariff. Results were most bene

1828, May 19...

ficial.

Known as the Tariff of Abominations.

Specific,

minimum, compound and ad valorem, latter from 20 to 50 per cent.

1828, May 24.... This act only affected "wines" paying specific

rates.

1830, May 20....This act only affected "coffee, tea and cocoa," paying specific rates, and reducing the

1830, May

1830, May

rates.

29....This act only affected "molasses" paying spe

cific rates.

29....This act only affected "salt" paying specific

rates.

1832, July 13....This act only affected "wines of France" paying specific rates.

1832, July 14....Specific, minimum, compound and ad valorem, the latter from 5 to 50 per cent. 2....Compromise act-looking to a reduction of duties to 20 per cent.

1833, March

1841, Sept. 11....Specific and ad valorem, latter from 12 to 20

1842, August

per cent.

30..Specific, minimum, compound and ad valorem, the latter from 1 to 50 per cent. 1846, July 30....The rates of duty imposed by this act were exclusively ad valorem, and arranged by schedules.

1857, March 3....A further reduction of rates which were exclu

sively ad valorem, arranged by schedules.

1861, March 2.... Went into effect April 12, 1861. Intended to

raise the necessary revenue for the Government expenditures and afford Protection to our labor and industries.

861, August 5...First of the war Tariffs, large increase in duties. 861, Dec. 24. Duties increased on sugar, tea and coffee.

....

....

862, July 14. Went into effect August 2, 1862. Further increase of rates.

March 15, 28...

1867, March

.Bills changing and generally increasing duties. 2... Rates increased on wool and woolens, giving great benefit to those industries.

1870, July 14, De

cember 20...... General changes. Free list largely reduced. Duty of $28 per ton on steel rails.

.Tea and coffee made free.

. Went into effect August 1, 1872. Reduction of Increased free list.

10 per cent.

1874, June 22.... Revised statute, with slight and unimportant

changes.

1875, February 8. Known as the "Little Tariff Bill." General

changes.

1875, March 3....Rates increased on sugar. Repeal of 10 per cent. reduction of act of June 6, 1872. .Quinine made free.

1879, July 1.

1880, July 14. A few unimportant changes.

1882, May 6 and

December 3....Repeals discriminating duty.

1883, March 3. . Went into effect July 1, 1883. Known as the Tariff Commission Bill. General revision, reduction and increased free list. Severe blow to wool industry.

1890, October 1.. Went into effect October 6, 1890. Known as the McKinley Bill. Changes from ad valorem

to specific rates. Enlarged free list. Sugar made free, a bounty being substituted. Reciprocity law.

1894, August 27..Known as the Gorman-Wilson Bill. Became a law without the President's signature. General reduction of duties. Wool put on free list. Results, both anticipatory and actual, were disastrous to all industry and labor. 1897, July 24.....Known as the Dingley Law and is still in operation unchanged. The most perfect and successful Tariff law ever enacted. Has brought and still maintains unprecedented prosperity.

CUSTOMS REVENUE.

Prominent free-traders who a few years ago were advocating the abolishment of all custom houses, now repudiate those declarations and insist that they are in favor of a Tariff for revenue only, and, yet under no low Tariff in our history, framed primarily for revenue purposes, have we had a surplus in our national treasury due to the operation of such law. On the other hand, protective Tariffs have always given us sufficient revenue to meet all necessary and normal expenditures.

Our first really protective Tariff was the law of 1824, supplemented by the law of 1828. From 1825 till 1836 we had an excess of receipts every year, but in 1836 our revenue felt the influence of the so-called compromise Tariff of 1833, and with but one exception, we had an excess of expenditures till 1844. During 1844-45-46, under the operation of the protective Tariff of 1842, we again had excess receipts, but for the three years following the Tariff of 1846 there came an excess of expenditures. Then for several years, due to large sales of public lands, our receipts were slightly in excess of our expenditures, but as soon

as the law of 1857 went into operation the excess of expendi tures were very large till the outbreak of the Civil War. Im mediately at the close of the war, however, under the operation of the Morrill Tariff and supplementary laws, we enjoyed an excess of receipts with the exception of a single year till 1890, our excess that year being $105,000,000. The McKinley law was framed with a view to reduce this large surplus, and the following year the excess receipts were only $37,000,000, dropping in 1892 to $10,000,000, and in 1893 to but a little more than $2,000,000. In 1894, owing to the anticipation of the Free Trade law which was to be enacted that year, our excess of expenditures amounted to $70,000,000, and every year under the operation of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff our expenditures largely exceeded our receipts. In 1898-99 the excess of expenditures was, of course, due to the Spanish War; but in 1900 we again had an excess of receipts amounting to $80,000,000, and for the three following years our excess of receipts amounting respectively to $78,000, 000, $91,000,000 and $54,000,000. In 1904, we would have had a surplus except for the Panama payments of $54,000,000, which gave us an excess of expenditure amounting to $42,000,000. In 1905, the excess of expenditure was $23,000,000, due in part to the large appropriations made on account of the rural free de livery service, and the loss of revenue from the Cuban Treaty and other abnormal excesses.

For the fiscal year just closed, however, we have gained an excess of receipts amounting to $25,693,459. The excess of receipts therefore under the Dingley law since the close of the Spanish War has amounted to over $250,000,000. This is a complete vindication of a protective Tariff in general, and the Dingley law in particular. A large surplus is no more desirable than a deficit, but a small, substantial excess of receipts over normal and ordinary expenditures is just what a successful Tariff law is supposed to produce. The increase of receipts since the enactment of the Dingley law has been some $200,000,000 in spite of large reduction in internal revenue taxation, and has fully met our increased expenditures, which have increased in keeping with our progress as a great nation. Since the begin ning of the Government in 1789, our receipts and expenditures have each aggregated about $20,000,000,000, and considerably more than half of these receipts have been from customs duties, a large part of which have been paid by foreigners for the privi lege of placing their goods in our markets. The expenditures have all gone into the hands of the people and been used to purchase the necessaries and luxuries of life. On the next four pages will be found a table showing our receipts and expenditures since the foundation of the Government. It will be seen that our excess of receipts correspond to the period of protec tive Tariffs, while our excess of expenditures correspond to the periods of low Tariffs. In other words, protective Tariffs have proved to be much better revenue-raisers than so-called revenue Tariffs. The reason is not hard to explain. Under protective Tariffs the people are prosperous and can buy largely of lux uries, increasing not only the internal revenue but the customs duties and imports. During low Tariffs or revenue Tariffs, or, what is the same thing, practically free trade, the people are compelled to be economical. The result is seen in the decreased internal revenue and decreased imports, principally of luxuries which bear the highest duties.

ditures, plus

Washington (April 30, 1789, to March 4, 1797).

1791

$4,409,951.19

$3,007,452.55

$1,312,498.64

1792

3,669,960.31

,269,860.75

$4,599,909.44

1793

4,652,823.14

3,846,929.90

805,993.24

1794

5,431,904.87

6,297,822.04

865,917.17

1795

6,114,534.59

7,309,600.78

1,105,066.19

1,749,004.82

Formulative period of
tariffs.

1803

11,064,097.63

7,952,286.60

3,111,811.03

1804

11,826,307.38

8,637,907.65

3,188,399.73

1805

13,560,693.20

9,014,348.84

4,546,344.36

1806

15,559,931.07

9,449,177.62

6,110,753.45

1807

16,398,019.26

8,354,151.37

8,043,867.89

1808

17,060,661.93

9,061,413.06

7,999,248.85

1809

7,773,473.12

10,280,747.04

2,507,273.92