TARIFF COSTS AGRICULTURE EIGHT MILLION
Miles, H. E.
TARIFF COSTS AGRICULTURE EIGHT MILLION Chairman of Fair Tariff League Writes of Farmers' Loss in Last Seven Years BY H. E. MILES, (Chairman Fair Tariff League) Our manufacturers are weathering...
...New York...
...except the...
...Agriculture's demand for "Equality with manufacturing in the tariff" was sound, but with one vicious delect...
...These increases bring the face value of the protection to these 19 products up to 3,640 million dollars or 41 per cent of the value of these products in 1928...
...slssippi Flwd...
...It was blood-letting for farmers and now is misery...
...An honest tariff, adequately but not excessively protected, will be as beneficent as sunlight, and infinitely bless us In our domestic and foreign relations...
...or the present crop f»"-\ lire because it is continuous...
...o( Amerlcal In January...
...They are now often twice this difference...
...Eliminate the graft, j The situation Is worse than the Mis...
...Taking a friend before the majority members of this committee, he said, "What is the matter with you fellows...
...An investment of $100 in the common stock of another company ithe Aluminum Co...
...Tariff Hearings...
...An extensive analysis of 62 highly protected industries by exceedingly capable experts, shows that the manufacturer's graft is not less tha.i two and one-half . billion dolbrs annually, amounting to five billion dolars in re-tai prices of which about one-fourth or...
...There seems no possible way out...
...as far as they can be added...
...Extremely careful studies of industries producing 24 billion dollars c! such product* as fill our stores and retail for 40 billion dollars, show why the six northeastern states that profit mo-: by the tariff, Massachusetts...
...They earned this, but were r.ot allowed to keep it...
...It is immoral at the core...
...farmers' original demand that they be equalized In the tariff, and that this equality shall be on the baas of the lowest tariff rates on manufactured products that will adequately and fairly protect them...
...Who don't you give this man what he wants, and ask him why afterward...
...1904, was worth, plus dividends, on Dec...
...1929...
...S Steeli are so excessive that lt« common stock, once all ,'ater and with a market value in 1901 as low as $5,080.-000, had a market value, plus dividends to date, in December...
...Said he...
...Nf Jersey and Pennsylvania, are so interested in prostituting the tariff...
...Connecticut...
...Farm leaders and others allowed such practices to determine the present tariff, and in return farmers got increases in the rates on 19 general farm products, including all the big ones, of $950,000,000...
...The lesson should be final and conclusive...
...The whole disgraceful procedure of tariff hearings and rate making, is indicated by two statements of Speaker Joseph Cannon who appointed the Ways and Means Committee in 1908...
...They dominate the Congressional Committees that frame the tariffs...
...Congress permits no competing imports to pay less in duties than their full share of this $5,000,000,000...
...One farm leader said to me, "We will not look at a manufacturer's tariff rate...
...Rhoc-Island...
...They control most nominations to congress and elections...
...It makes their present depression easy...
...An honest tariff could be enacted in stxt\ days...
...Sometimes five times...
...It Is the dishonesty in the tariff that lengthens tariff sessions to If months...
...Was there ever such deception, ever such betrayal of the vital interest* of one-fourth of our population, our farmers...
...Correct them and then give agriculture equality...
...The public could not stand this further strain...
...This, because our manufacturers dictated the tariff, made their rates extortionate, and added a large part of their tariff graft to their prices, and these additions were further Increased, and rightly, by wholesalers and retailers, to a cost to our farmers of this huge sum taken from them dishonestly...
...Ignorant of the extent of the manufactures' tariff graft, our farmers, in effect, demanded equality with 5 billions of tariff wealth dishonestly acquired...
...With five billion dollars of graft at stake, the tariff is as much a matter of business as shop management to many manufacturers...
...and dominated it for the evil purposes indicated...
...In 1913, $189,583,000 On Dec...
...They were actually worth In money, however, less than $25,000,000 or one thirty-fifth of their face value and so distributed as to cost, farmers far more than they will help them...
...TARIFF COSTS AGRICULTURE EIGHT MILLION Chairman of Fair Tariff League Writes of Farmers' Loss in Last Seven Years BY H. E. MILES, (Chairman Fair Tariff League) Our manufacturers are weathering their financial depression almost merrily because of their vast accumulations of profits...
...In fact, the cash values of the increases in these rates is only $12.-500,000, and the total value of the new rates is 103 million dollars, or one and one-fifth per cent of the value of the crops instead of the 3.640 million dollars that the rates seem to promise...
...13, 1929, $33,350...
...one and one fourth billon dollars was paid by our farmers In their purchases...
...Consequently they are bankrupt...
...This is nuts for the manufacturers...
...Agriculture earned net, $8,000,000,-000 more during the seven years of the last tariff than its balance sheets showed...
...The manufacturers' tariff rates must first be made honest by squaring them with the protective principles of the difference in the cost of production here and abroad, as the measure of each rate...
...These states have five of the 11 majority members of the Senate Finance Committee with the other six members subservient to these five...
...The tariff rates of one corporation cU...
...America is right in accepting the principle of protection, and cursed in failing to see the dishonesty with which the principle is applied...
...1929...
...Why, they are nothing but a grand stand play anyway...
...Never, probably, except in our tariff, has legislative dishonesty cost a people continuously $5,000,000,000 per ysar...
...What he wanted and got in the recent revision was about one and one-fourth billion dollars of increases in the face value of farm rates...
...In th< present tariff, Congress gives the manufacturers of these states, legal righ...
...including dividends of all sorts, it was $2,924,738,300...
...after the* stock slump, of $3,019,231,275.1 The common stock of another company (The General Electric l was...
...and protection in adding $5,000,000.00' to the retail prices of their product...
...It seems • impossible that the publie will treat the present crop failure as a passing calamity and leave this tariff dishonesty to plague us further...
...In consideration of this mess of pottage, our manufacturers were allowed a continuance of their old rates with incidental additions of thr worst sort...
Vol. 1 • September 1930 • No. 43
