The Tariff in Our Times

The Tariff in Our Times

It takes no extended examination of any period in the last fifty yearsthe term covered by the phrase Our Times in the title of this bookto convince an unprejudiced student that as far as the tariff is concerned public opinion has never been fairly embodied in the bills adopted. If the popular understanding of protection as expressed in our elections had been conscientiously followed, there would be to-day no duties on iron and steel products, on cheap cottons and cotton mixtures, and, certainly none on a great variety of raw materials probably including raw wool. That is, in these cases and in multitudes of similar ones, the purposes of protection had been realized, or it had been proved that they never could be realized; and in either case the dogma required the duty to be withdrawn. This volume is an attempt to tell in narrative form the story of this defeat of the popular will. The major part of the material in the volume has appeared at intervals in the last five years in the American Magazine. So many persons concerned in the making of our tariffs in the period covered have aided me directly or indirectly by documents, personal reminiscences, and explanations of points of view that I find it out of the question to attempt to enumerate them. In one case, however, my debt is so great that I must acknowledge it specifically, and that is to Mr. Horace White, who has read, either in manuscript or proofs, the bulk of this volume and who has been generous in his suggestions and criticisms. If there was any public question on which the minds of the people of the United States were made up fifty years ago, it was that of the tariff. They had not been made up in a day. On the contrary, it had taken nearly seventy years of experimenting to bring them where they wereseventy years in which all forms of taxation on imported goods had been tried, from the supposed 8 per cent of the first Congress to the 43 per cent of the tariff of abominations in 1828. Some of their experiments had been good and some bad, but out of them all they had struck a mean which was something like this: As a nation we intend to raise money to carry on our business by putting a duty on certain raw and manufactured goods brought from foreign countries. If we find we are getting too large a revenue we will cut down the duty, if too small we will raise it. In placing these duties we will do as Alexander Hamilton advisedthat is, if there is a young industry in the country trying to produce something which is essential to war or on which our daily living depends, we will protect it from foreign competition until it is establishedbut no longer. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 59763
Author: Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
Release Date: Jun 16, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English