WOOLEN SCHEDULE.

The substitute not only retains a duty on raw wool, but increases the duty from 10 to 11 cents a pound on clothing and combing wool, and the existing duty is retained on carpet wools, which all parties agree are not produced in this country, and the changes made in the manufactures of wool increases the taxation, and to that extent increases the cost of the manufactured article, and especially the cheaper grades-the clothing of the poor.

To illustrate, take this example: The cheapest woolen dress goods, costing only 15 cents a square yard, is taxed by the substitute 6 cents a square yard and 40 per cent. ad valorem, making the whole tax thus imposed 80 per cent.

On dress goods wholly of wool the duty is increased from 9 cents a square yard and 40 per cent. ad valorem to 11 cents per square yard and 40 per cent. ad valorem, making an increase of taxation on this single article upon the basis of the importations of the fiscal year 1887, when 31,136,149 yards were imported, of $622,722.

And as these goods only cost an average of 21 cents a yard in the foreign market and under existing law are taxed 82.96 per cent. ad valorem, they are by the substitute increased to 92 per cent ad valorem.

Of this class of goods we imported in the fiscal year 1887, $6,522,568 worth, upon which we collected $5,411,280, with many times that amount extorted from consumers in the form of bounty to the manufacturers.

But the people will better understand the effect of this change when they see that they are paying in the form of taxation about 193 cents upon a square yard of goods that cost in the foreign market only 21 cents a yard, making the cost to the consumer 40 cents a yard.

While it is impossible for the minority to state the exact amount of the increase of the revenue resulting from these changes, it is confidently expected that there will be an increase of revenue upon these three schedules of at least ten millions of dollars per annum.

LUMBER.

The duty on lumber is practically left undisturbed, and an aggravated tax thus continued on the whole people, and more particularly upon the distant farmers and settlers whose shelter must be brought from great distances, and the tax thus retained inures to the benefit of but a few individuals to the distress of millions.

SALT.

Bulk salt, which is now dutiable at nearly 80 per cent., is continued in the substitute at the same rate. Salt is a product of the sea and earth, which nature's God bestowed upon man for his use. So free is it in nature's plan that a little sea-water exposed to the sun-heat and the air, nature's own factory, and the residuum is salt. Wherever found we employ the great forces of steam and electricity instead of manual labor in preparing it for use. Why a tax should be imposed on an

article so easy of production and of such prime necessity and universal use is not shown. The existing law gives free salt to the fishery interests of New England and taxes salt to the farmer and dairyman. The House bill makes salt free of tax to all.

PROVISIONS.

Macaroni and vermicelli, put upon the free list long ago for the benefit of the poor, are now taken from the free list and burdened with a tax of 2 cents per pound, over 35 per cent. ad valorem.

Animals, live, are made dutiable at specific rates, at $20 per head for horses and mules.

Animals for breeding purposes are now free, and over two and a quarter million dollars worth of breeding horses were imported in the year 1887 for the purpose of improving the stock of this country, and on this importation alone the farmers of the country would pay under the proposed substitute over $300,000 more tax than now.

And other animals now paying 20 per cent. are taxed at the same rate as the more valuable breeding animals. None are benefited but the wealthy. A $10,000 coaching team of six, which costs $2,000 to import under the present law, may come in under the substitute at only $120, while six bronchos from across our southern border, worth $10 a head, which would now come in for $24, must, under the proposed substitute, pay 200 per cent.

TRUSTS.

The present tariff is the nursing mother of trusts. It is the wall behind which these combinations are formed, by which the people are plundered. Tariffs keep out the foreign competition and the combination suppresses the domestic, and the whole people are at their mercy and must pay whatever is demanded. Language is inadequate to describe the iniquity of these corporations against the rights of the people, or to depict their disastrous effects upon the general welfare. As the tariffs, which render trusts possible, are established and maintained at the special instance of those who form them, it would seem but simple justice as well as good policy to tear down as much as possible of their covert and refuse to longer aid them in wrong-doing. They are not "private affairs," as has been asserted, but public evils of the gravest character, affecting the price of every article which contributes to the comfort and support of the people. The provisions of the substitute favor them greatly, and will serve to encourage their formation in still other branches of manufacture. Many of those belonging to trusts appeared before the Finance Committee, clamorous for such legislation as would promote their interests. They are all opposed to the House bill, which should commend it to all who condemn their methods. It is bad enough to permit those who are most interestedmanufacturers-to appear before our committees and suggest the legislation they wish, but surely we should not listen to the trusts and aid them to rob with both hands.

The minority can not pass by in silence the absurd accusation that the House bill means "free trade," "the ruin of industry," and the "degradation of American labor." These charges are as false as they are misleading. How the flow of surplus money into the Treasury can be stopped without reducing the taxes which produce it no man can devise; how these taxes can be reduced without taking off from the top toward the bottom no imagination can conceive. Therefore, it would seem, no man can propose to cut off excessive taxation without subjecting himself to the charge of "free trade," because any reduction whatever "looks toward free trade." True, Government revenues might be reduced by making duties so high as to prohibit importations altogether; but that is the other end of the road, which increases the taxes paid to private persons. If the first method of reduction leads to free trade the other leads to free plunder, which is worse.

Republican Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury for years past have warned Congress of the accumulating surplus and advised the reduction of taxes. Were they all free-traders, advising the destruction of industry and the degradation of labor? The Tariff Commission of 1882, composed of nine men, eight of whom, at least, were protectionists, after perambulating all the country east of the Rocky Mountains, admitted the urgent necessity of reduction, and reported a bill which they said would lower taxes 25 per cent. They said:

Any amelioration of the unnecessarily burdensome restrictions bearing upon the importations, provided the duties required for the equalization of the different conditions of capital and labor here and abroad are preserved, is a boon not only to commerce considered as a separate national interest, but to production.

That which, with them, was "a boon to production," when offered by the House bill becomes free trade and the ruin of production. They were not accused of free trade or hostility to labor; on the contrary their report was welcomed and applauded by the entire body of protectionists in this chamber. The Finance Committee based its bill, which is the present law, upon it, and announced that it would reduce duties at least 20 per cent. ; yet all advocates of the House bill, which reduces only 5 per cent., are free-traders, so denounced by those who in 1883 proposed a cut in duties four times as great. It is safe to say that there is not a Senator in this body, or a man in any way prominent in the councils of the Republican party in the United States, who, at one time or another, has not admitted the necessity of reducing taxes in order to stop the surplus. They are, therefore, free-traders, and desire the ruin of industry and the degradation of labor.

The minority respectfully submit that those are the enemies of industry who so enhance the cost of the raw material as to restrict its production and limit its markets; and those are its true friends who cheapen its material and enlarge its production and its markets. They further submit that those are the enemies of American labor who supplant it with the labor of unnaturalized foreigners, whenever that can S. Rep. 2332-7

be obtained cheapest, and who receive by the law 47 per cent. from the consumer in trust for the American labor which makes their products, and fraudulently withhold more than half that trust fund from its owners, and who also lessen and restrict the amount of labor by limiting production and markets by tariffs and trusts; and that those are its true friends who seek to shut off unnatural and heathen competition, enlarge its products and markets, and to lessen for it the cost of the necessities of life.

THE WAGE SCARE.

In a country like our own, where the direction of legislation is determined by the general suffrage, it is only possible for the favored few to secure their bounties by an appeal to the multitude of wage workers, and the enlistment of their sympathies through their interests, real or imaginary.

So far has this been done in support of the present system that the bread-winners have loaded themselves down with unnecessary and extravagant taxes in hope of fancied returns in better wages and more work, until at last it has become apparent to many at least that taxation does not enrich the man who pays the taxes, and it only needs intelligent comparison of the effects of past legislation to convince any fair-minded man of the beneficial results to be expected from a reduction of the burdens of the people.

Cotton was long ago placed upon the free list. Did that make freetraders of those who voted for that measure? Did it reduce the wages of operatives in cotton or close the cotton mills, or did it destroy the cotton plantations? On the contrary, we have grown more cotton than ever since that legislation; we have exported more cotton than ever. Our cotton mills are more profitable to-day than any other, and our cotton operatives have steadier work and better wages than those who work in other mills; and we export their finished products by the hundred million yards, while protected wool has stopped one-fourth of the woolen machinery and thrown 25 per cent. of the woolen operatives out of employment.

More than a decade and a half ago hides were placed upon the free list. Did that destroy the leather industry in this country? On the contrary we lead the world in its manufacture, save in a few minor branches, and, with a largely increased population, our importations of leather have decreased and our exportations of finished products have increased.

We do import more hides than formerly because our own supply is insufficient, but this raw material furnishes labor to many hands and adds to our national wealth. We imported last year upwards of twentyfour million dollars' worth of hides free. Does that make free traders of those who made hides free; and if $24,000,000 of free hides does not make oue free-trader, does two-thirds as much free wool make free. traders of half our people?

What has happened with cotton and with hides it is confidently believed and promised will happen with free wool. Our production of wool will increase, our manufactories will revive, our woolen operatives will have steadier work and therefore better wages. Our products of woolen goods will increase and as well our exportations of woolen goods to foreign countries. Not ten years ago quinine was placed upon the free list against protests louder and more vehement than are heard now about the wanton destruction of an honorable industry-with what result? With immensely increased production in this country, without one cent loss of wages to operatives; but, on the contrary, to their great gain, for as we now make two and a quarter million ounces it can not but mean steadier work to more employés, and the shivering consumer reaps a benefit measured not by cents but by dollars per ounce, and the only destruction which followed in the wake of this reduction was of what was then the most formidable trust in existence. The monopoly went down and legitimate manufacture prospered.

Here is a case where with benefit both to the employé and the consumer, the placing upon the free list of a finished article was immediately followed by a wonderful cheapening of that product, and it is quite as just to claim the decline in price was entirely due to the removal of the duty as that other claim so often made, that the imposition of duty reduces prices by competition, and in proof of which is cited the general decline of prices in this country, due, as is claimed, to the tariff, ignoring the discovery of new supplies and improvements in methods of manufacture and the supplanting of manual labor in every department of life with inanimate machinery operated by natural forces intelligently controlled..

Take the agriculturist, for example, and note the fearful decline in his returns in a half dozen years. In 1886 nearly 18,500,000 acres more land was cultivated and planted in cereal crops than in 1881 and more than three-fourths of a billion more bushels of grain were raised and sold; yet, instead of receiving nearly $400,000,000 more for the extra outlay of labor and capital on lands poorer on the average than those already occupied, the farmers of the country suffered a loss in values on those grain crops alone of over $600,000,000 on that year's harvest as compared with the values of 1881.

Everything declines save the taxes, and these same farmers, who mast send their surplus abroad to find a market, found, on bringing the reduced returns of their crops home, that notwithstanding they were enabled to buy foreign products slightly cheaper than before, their taxes bad been increased in that period, and that they were compelled in 1886 to pay more than $2.30 customs dues on each $100 worth imported, more than they did for like importations in 1881; and to-day those taxes are nearly $4 more per $100 worth than in 1881.

And when, in view of the above cited facts of a decline of about 33 per cent, in the value of his crops in 1886 below the values of 1881, he