Communications
362 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 COMMUNICATIONS WITH AN EYE ON THE TARIFF Des Moines, Ia. o the Editor :--A great many people have only a vague idea of what the tariff is effecting...
...o the Editor :--A great many people have only a vague idea of what the tariff is effecting for us...
...SKETCH OF A CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE Wilson, Pa...
...Carter says...
...I learned their language and spent hours among them...
...So far," says Mr...
...I wonder where he looks for them...
...This enabled all the bureaucrats to be raging radicals...
...There were not enough priests and they were too confined to the cities...
...They are not especially welcome in some American congregations...
...Oh, how I like to see her enthusiasm," murmured the old lady...
...One night he was telling them about a wonderful celebration in honor of the Sacred Heart in Guadalajara, when all Mexico was dedicated to the Saviour...
...I repeat that no one has a deeper or more fervent devotion than the average poor Mexican...
...Carter, "not even the most far-sighted of foreign observers has suggested the very simple and obvious conclusion that we do not want these investments repaid, either in goods or in cash...
...But did they...
...I followed her eyes, and they rested upon a fine, tall young priest who walked backward as he swung the censer before the Most Holy...
...Besides fostering a growing industry, the tariff often keeps a threatened industry alive...
...Chamberlain lost out...
...In England, some years ago, when wheat-growing and flour-milling were being strangled by competition with the products of our United States and elsewhere, Mr...
...When a tax was put upon a foreign-manufactured commodity, the price of that commodity went up at once by so much, indeed by something more, too...
...He paid that in its entirety, with the margin of profit referred to above, and he paid as well a corresponding amount on the home-manufactured product...
...because the goods in payment cannot be brought to this country...
...We are now supposed to have a high tariff, "although two-thirds of our imports come in duty free," as Mr...
...Of course there are numbers of Mexicans who are not practical Catholics if judged by their attendance at Sunday Mass...
...Put a tariff on the great bulk of present free imports, and then the capitalists will not finance foreign investments because they cannot be "refinanced...
...Infant industries always have a period of struggle on account (perhaps) of limited capital, of insufficient experience, the slowness of users to buy the product of a new industry and the consequent difficulty of finding a market...
...Of course, when an industry gets on its feet, it should be able to take care of itself without any tariff...
...F. REYNOLDS...
...Indeed, the consumer paid much more than the revenue secured by the tariff...
...It is only on the pretense that we insist on payment of Europe's debt to us that the annual robbery in the guise of "a favorable balance of trade" is carried on...
...The European war debts are made up by the same nefarious process of robbing the workers of the United States...
...Does he go to the specially Mexican churches which Bishop Cantwell has so liberally provided for them ? For all that has been provided there are still not enough accommodations for the multitudes...
...The percentage the various merchants added to ,'over expenses and profits was calculated upon the amount paid as tariff, as well as upon the original cost of the commodity...
...With us there was also a young enthusiastic American girl who had come from Redondo Beach...
...I was a Protestant once, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, who went out to convert them and returned converted...
...Accordingly, a charge is made at the port of entry on all manufactured goods, and then, though the foreign manufacturer may sacrifice his profits, the tariff will raise his prices so far above first cost that the home industry will be able to sell its products as cheaply as the foreign one does, and still make gains...
...Of course my experiences were mostly confined to the homes...
...They know in a general way that we have a tariff, and that it has contributed considerably to our commercial prosperity...
...But I am quite sure from forty years contact with them (not the so-called better classes, for whom I shall not attempt to speak but the masses, the common people) that no people love or care more for their August 7, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 363 religion than they...
...362 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 COMMUNICATIONS WITH AN EYE ON THE TARIFF Des Moines, Ia...
...Working-men in this country are led to believe that the tariff is a great boon to them...
...Beyond that he was able to see that Chamberlain was somewhat sparing of the truth...
...OUR ORPHANED INVESTMENTS Providence, R. I. the Editor :--Our Orphaned Investments, by JohnO Carter, in The Commonweal for July zo, I929, presents a transparent apologia for our continued "favorable balance of trade" of approximately a billion dollars a year, which trade balance, plus interest, represents our foreign investments...
...He was under the influence...
...Nor did he omit to pay his respects to the victims of "experiment" tragedies...
...The glance of his restless eye in which lurked a curious blend of defiance and fear, the antics of his mental processes which revealed agility sans logic, together with an instant readiness to take umbrage, to catch up and distort plain meanings, all betrayed his abject thraldom to a very potent narcotic...
...And for several minutes I was lectured...
...Sometimes an established industry catering for the same market will reduce prices for a period, sacrificing its own gains in the expectation that a corresponding reduction in prices for the new industry will wipe out its profits or even more, and consequently kill it and so destroy competition...
...I am far from clear on some points connected with it...
...and he heartily endorsed federal exoneration of these agents...
...We marched in the streets up hill and down dale...
...There are thus possibilities of the abuse of the tariff...
...however, from mutual friends I gather that he is a "good scout," that his locker at the club is never bare, that he is bent on wresting from life its last bit of material comfort and pleasure...
...Then the home manufacturer producing a similar commodity boosted his prices so as to make them equal to those of the foreign manufacturer...
...that it has been the cause of their high wages, comfortable living and general prosperity...
...I brought him up...
...secondly, they protected and fostered budding industries...
...On June 2, I took part in the great Corpus Christi procession in the Belvedere district of Los Angeles from the Church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe to Our Lady of Soledad, a distance of a mile...
...ANNA F. RUTH...
...Some ironical comments of mine published in a local journal anent the ineptness and stupid cruelty marking current efforts at dry law enforcement seemingly impelled him to address me...
...This was, I think, about six years ago...
...A recent writer has suggested that the tariff helps to stabilize the home market, that a suitable tariff would have been a preventive to the economic disturbances of I92o-I92I, which the writer asserted were caused by overproduction and flooded markets followed by the shutting down of many mills and widespread unemployment...
...The second llne of defense appears to be on better ground...
...The people were crowded on the sidewalks and on the roofs...
...My contacts with this gentleman are never more than casual...
...As we pressed nearer to the Blessed Sacrament, I heard her uttering over and over, "Es Porflrio, Es Porfirio...
...MR...
...The tariff increases prices, and when the cost of living increases notably, wages must go upward too...
...The English working-man is a slow thinker, and very hard to convince...
...besides, he was bred under free trade and feared the innovation...
...There is always a good attendance of men and women...
...O the Editor:--I have an acquaintance who is a minor superintendent in a plant subsidiary to a large industrial corporation...
...The wages of an ordinary workman here are indeed higher than those paid for similar work in most other countries, and this no doubt is due to the tariff...
...To my mind, the British working-man with his lower wages and lower cost of living, is more comfortable than the corresponding American workman...
...Recently he accosted me, and his first half-dozen words unmistakably warned of his condition...
...I confess I am unable to see the connection, and I should be pleased if some skilled economist would elucidate it...
...At present our foreign investments are like putting money in a bank: we do not intend to withdraw any great amount, rather we hope to add to our deposits...
...Why doesn't John Carter, as one associated with the State Department in Washington, make the direct statement that we do not want these investments repaid ? Because if the American people were so informed they would put an end to the continued foreign investment of a billion dollars a year, which means the robbery of the workers of this country of that amount of value of their annual product...
...In appearance he is ordinary: physically and mentally inclined to obesity but neat in attire, a member of a nearby country club where he plays golf because it is the thing to do, a dabbler in the stock market because it is the thing he prefers to do him, one who affects a modernistic attitude toward the great simple facts of life, an attitude which is the expression of his gleanings from the more popular of the quasi-serious magazines...
...She seems like a genuine Catholic...
...Chamberlain, who was then a very prominent English politician, advocated a duty on imported flour and wheat, and assured the workman that a small duty would not affect the price of bread...
...She was bent on capturing some flowers from a garden near the beginning of the march...
...Up in the Mexican Chapel of Our Lady of Guadeloupe in Pasadena, I often have the delight of assisting at the nightly (not weekly) rosary...
...The consumer paid all, and the foreign manufacturer took away his original, full, first price...
...Father Huerta of Guadalajara always reads some spiritual comment for them...
...This last, I gathered, was to him the unpardonable sln...
...Your correspondent says he deals with Mexicans of the "better" class who say they do not miss the clergy...
...I shall be glad if my letter initiates a discussion upon tariffs, so that your readers, including myself, may acquire clearer ideas upon the subject...
...The great free llst of imports permits the deception that we are in a position to be paid for our surplus exports, so we continue to invest abroad, every dollar of such investment representing robbery of the workers in this country...
...and darkly he hinted, "where there's smoke there's fire, you know...
...M. P. CONNERY...
...Also he says that in Los Angeles the Mexicans are all Catholics "but here there are not enough of them who go to church to make a good congregation...
...His remarks included fulsome approval of our "noble experiment," laudation of the agents culpable in recent slaughters of the innocents mistaken for rum runners...
...Thus the tariff protects the struggling industry against unfair foreign competition...
...He said that the whole city took part in this celebration, and it seemed to mark the outburst of Satan's rage, for it was a national dedication...
...At last I asked who Porfirio was...
...There is little possibility of dealing with this unfairness between domestic industries, but everyone feels that a foreign industry should not be allowed to influence prices this way...
...All around me were fervent men and women "of the better classes...
...The Blessed Sacrament was escorted by a goodly number of Knights of Columbus (Mexican...
...Now this was an extraordinary occasion, of course...
...If Mr...
...It is the priest who was driven out of Nogales...
...BIXEL AGAIN South Pasadena, Cal...
...If I might be allowed to give what was the root difficulty in Mexico, I should say it was lack of organization among the Catholics, induced by discouragement...
...I believe his campaign would have been successful had he put the alternative clearly: a small tariff would save the industry, and it would be better to have bread a little more costly with many more having wages to pay for it, than keep bread at its previous price and have many thrown out of work and starving...
...I timidly suggested that abstinence on the part of himself...
...Under the first heading, many wiseacres rejoiced in the idea of making foreign manufacturers pay our taxes...
...The oration wound up with a sulphurous attack on "these wop" bootleggers who supply "our men" with "hooch...
...As he quaintly phrased it, "you never can tell about these birds...
...This is, of course, unfair...
...the Editor :--This is re W. A. Bixel's scattering shot O in your issue of June Iz and also re Mexicans in Los Angeles...
...Tariffs used to be defended for two chief reasons: first, they made revenue...
...Indeed, it is a question if the higher wages the workman has been able to secure here are sufficient to offset the higher cost of living in this country...
...A tariff as an assistance to an established industry only enables the home manufacturers to extract prices from their patrons that will enrich them rapidly...
...Bixel could hear some of the comments of the Mexican Catholics on our coldness, he might be astonished to learn that this deluded race imagines that they are really better Catholics than we...
...One family with whom I marched consisting of an old lady and two young women and two young men, had come some forty miles (from Ontario, California) to be present...
...The tariff then causes an all-around increase in the prices of manufactured goods affected by it, whether home or foreign, and only a fraction of the increase goes toward revenue...
...How can the workers stop the robbery...
...But it must be remembered that, of the net gains secured to an industry by the tariff, the lion's share does not always go to the workers engaged therein...
...In short: a bon viveur...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 14
