Sentence Examples:
The tariff, labor questions, and other propositions are always discussed, and of late years the most interesting issues have been the appropriation of money for national defense, the increase of the term of military service from ninety to three hundred and sixty days for every citizen, the modification of the electoral law, and the regulations of the forests.
Originally he had been something of a thinker upon international politics, an authority upon tariffs and strategy, and a valued contributor to various of the higher organs of public opinion, but the atomic bombs had taken him by surprise, and he had still to recover completely from his pre-atomic opinions and the silencing effect of those sustained explosives.
On the contrary, although many have participated in public affairs, have held high office, and have shown ability therein, capitalists have not unusually, however unjustly, been suspected of having ulterior objects in view, unconnected with the public welfare, such as tariffs or land grants.
It is to be remarked, however, that the views he took on questions of political economy are now endorsed by many able college professors and some American manufacturers who are leading public opinion in opposition to tariffs for protection and in the direction of free trade.
Webster's stands unanswered, notwithstanding the opposite views he himself maintained four years afterwards, when he spoke again on the tariff, but representing manufacturing interests rather than those of shipping and commerce, advocating expediency rather than abstract principles the truth of which cannot be gainsaid.
Doubtless these effects are in a great degree exaggerated, and may be ascribed to a mistaken view of the considerations which led to the adoption of the tariff system; but they are nevertheless important in enabling us to review the subject with a more thorough knowledge of all its bearings upon the great interests of the Republic, and with a determination to dispose of it so that none can with justice complain.
"The measure of legislation," he says, "which you have to employ at this crisis is the precise amount of such enactments as may be necessary to render it utterly impossible to collect within our limits the duties imposed by the protective tariffs thus nullified."
From the best information that I have been able to obtain it appears that our manufactures, though depressed immediately after the peace, have considerably increased, and are still increasing, under the encouragement given them by the tariff of 1816 and by subsequent laws.
It is this paper system of extravagant expansion, raising the nominal price of every article far beyond its real value when compared with the cost of similar articles in countries whose circulation is wisely regulated, which has prevented us from competing in our own markets with foreign manufacturers, has produced extravagant importations, and has counteracted the effect of the large incidental protection afforded to our domestic manufactures by the present revenue tariff.
The great caution, advisable at all times, of limiting appropriations to the wants of the public service is rendered necessary at present by the prospective and rapid reduction of the tariff, while the vigilant jealousy evidently excited among the people by the occurrences of the last few years assures us that they expect from their representatives, and will sustain them in the exercise of, the most rigid economy.
The second of the above-mentioned objects, that of the reduction of the tariff, is of great importance, and the plan suggested by the Secretary of the Treasury, which is to reduce the duties on certain articles and to add to the free list many articles now taxed, and especially such as enter into manufactures and are not largely, or at all, produced in the country, is commended to your candid and careful consideration.
Barnwell Smith, said, in the debates in the Convention on the proposition to accept the Tariff Compromise of 1833, that he hated the star-spangled banner; and unquestionably he expressed the feelings of many of his contemporaries, who deemed submission prudent, but who were consoled by the reflection that slavery would afford them a far better means for breaking up the Union than it was possible to get through the existence of any tariff, no matter how protective it might be.
When thus, by the depreciation in consequence of the quantity of paper in circulation, wages as well as prices become exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in prices.
It is well known that most of the slaveholders now insist, that all protecting duties are unconstitutional, and that on account of the tariff the Union was nearly rent by the very men who are now horrified by the danger to which it is exposed by these petitions!
It will be but the elementary common sense of the situation for all the Allies to plan tariffs, exclusions, special laws against German shipping and shareholders and immigrants for so long a period as every German remains a potential servant of that system.
It is the most momentous possibility of our times, because it opens the way to an alternative state of affairs that may supersede the armed watching and systematic war of tariffs, prohibitions, and exclusions against the Central Empires that must quite unavoidably be the future attitude of the Pledged Allies to any survival of the Hohenzollern empire.
The haughty slave-holding masters of the great confederacy have from the beginning chosen the Presidents, and the high officers of state, and have controlled the policy of the Government, from a question of peace or war, to the establishment of a tariff or a bank.
Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency.
Contending as his main theme that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel.
Louisiana certainly would hardly urge this as the reason of her secession; and if the Rebel States could succeed in establishing their independence, they would find more difficulty in raising a national revenue by direct taxes than the North, and would be driven probably to a tariff more stringent than that of the present United States.
How long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day bear witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the difficulty in procuring an international copyright act will show.
How much, and on what articles these duties shall be levied, is the question upon which the Republican and Democratic parties differ; the former favoring high, and the latter low rates, that is to say merely enough to support the Government, or, as it is termed, "a tariff for revenue only."
Free speech was not tolerated by our frantic greenback opponents, and stale eggs with decayed cabbages hurled at the heads of Republican orators were the strongest arguments used by the General's admirers to combat our appeals for protective tariff and sound money.
This probably is because the industries favored by protective tariffs in America are those most fully within the circle affected by crises; whereas most of the consumers adversely affected by a rise of tariff rates are outside the commercial circles where short-time credit is common and where the rapid readjustment of investment leads to a financial crisis.
At once appears a group of "protected industries," the owners of which are dependent for the safety and profits of their investments, and the workmen in which are dependent for the security of their present jobs (possibly for the chance to continue the pursuit of highly skilled trades) on the continuance, if not the increase, of the existing tariff rates.
As long as a tariff rate is too low to exclude every unit of the foreign product its importation is conclusive proof that for some home producers the tariff rates fall short of the "true principle" (better proof, indeed, than the most elaborate investigation by any tariff board could be).
The extent of these prohibitions and restrictions, almost unparalleled even by the arbitrary tariff of Russia, may be estimated in part by the following extract from a pamphlet, published last year by Mr James Henderson, formerly consul-general to the Republic of New Granada, entitled "A Review of the Commercial Code and Tariffs of Spain;" a writer, by the way, guilty of much exaggeration of fact and opinion when not quoting from, or supported by, official documents.
You are therefore instructed to examine the existing Mexican tariff of duties and report to me a schedule of articles of trade to be admitted at such ports or places as may be at any time in our military possession, with such rates of duty on them and also on tonnage as will be likely to produce the greatest amount of revenue.
Without changing or modifying the present tariff of duties, so great has been the increase of our commerce under its benign operation that the revenue derived from that source and from the sales of the public lands will, it is confidently believed, enable the Government to discharge annually several millions of the debt and at the same time possess the means of meeting necessary appropriations for all other proper objects.
To enrich neighborhoods by spending within them the moneys of the nation will be the aim and boast of those who prize their local interests above the good of the nation, and millions upon millions will be abstracted by tariffs and taxes from the earnings of the whole people to foster speculation and subserve the objects of private ambition.
Mackenzie was opposed to the principle of protection, and announced the determination of the government to adhere to a revenue tariff instead of resorting to any protectionist policy, which would, in his opinion, largely increase the burdens of the people under the pretence of stimulating manufactures.
Now, however, he considered himself "an avowed Clay man," and besides the internal improvement system he spoke also for a national bank and a high protective tariff; probably he knew very little about either, but his partisanship was perfect, for if there was any distinguishing badge of an anti-Jackson Whig, it certainly was advocacy of a national bank.
My method of getting votes for the tariff was to take young Democrats from the mill and transport them to Democratic rallies in the far corner of the county where they heard their Democratic orators saying that the mill was a sham put up to fool voters and that it was not manufacturing any tin.
However unjustly the American people may treat its own self in respect of tariffs and other issues deeply affecting its welfare, it may be taken for granted, and is so taken here, that in foreign relations the desire of the people is to do what is right.
With the revenue stamp dispensed by postmasters in every community, a tax upon liquors of all sorts and tobacco in all its forms, and by a wise adjustment of the tariff, which will put a duty only upon those articles which we could dispense with, known as luxuries, and on those which we use more of than we produce, revenue enough may be raised after a few years of peace and consequent reduction of indebtedness to fulfill all our obligations.
In readjusting the tariff I suggest that a careful estimate be made of the amount of surplus revenue collected under the present laws, after providing for the current expenses of the Government, the interest account, and a sinking fund, and that this surplus be reduced in such a manner as to afford the greatest relief to the greatest number.
Before passing from the subject of the new tariff, let us observe, that the suddenness and vastness of its changes (some of which we consider to be of questionable propriety) for a time unavoidably deranged mercantile operations; and in doing so, as necessarily produced many cases of individual dissatisfaction and distress.
The main burden of his editorials was the greatness of Henry Clay, and the beauties of a protective tariff, his material being largely drawn from a book he had published some years before; and, on account of the usual form of his arguments, he was generally referred to, in the offhand Western way, as ''Old Statistics.''
There is certainly nothing in the condition of trade, foreign or domestic, there is certainly nothing in the condition of our people of any class, to suggest that the existing tariff and revenue legislation bears oppressively upon the people or retards the commercial development of the nation.
It is matter of regret that this work must be delayed for at least three months, for the threat of great tariff changes introduces so much uncertainty that an amount, not easily estimated, of business inaction and of diminished production will necessarily result.
Williams, one of the signatories of the Joint Manifesto, subsequently well known as the author of "Made in Germany," and in some sense the real founder of the Tariff Reform movement; but the members by a decisive vote upheld the action of their Executive.
The construction subsidies were again declared to be given as "compensation for the charges imposed on shipbuilders by the customs tariff"; the navigation bounties, "by way of compensation for the burden imposed on the merchant marine as an instrument for recruiting the military marine."
I soon found that however much the great parties of my adopted country differed upon banks, tariffs and land questions, in one thing they agreed, in trying which could stoop the lowest to gain the favor of the most cursed system of slavery that ever swayed an iron rod over any nation, the Moloch which they had set up, to which they offered as human sacrifice millions of the children of toil.
His own notion about commerce was that he could "make it maneuver like a regiment"; and this military conception of trade led him to entertain the fond hope that exchequers benefited by confiscation and prohibitive tariffs, that a "national commerce" could be speedily built up by cutting off imports, and that the burden of loss in the present commercial war fell on England and not on the continental consumer.
After the potato blight of 1845, the procuring of sound, and if possible of foreign seed, for planting in Ireland was of the utmost importance, and indeed Sir Robert Peel had included, in his new tariff, the admission of foreign potatoes free, in the hope of securing good seed for the planting of 1846; but as the Corn and Customs' Bill did not become law until the end of June, this provision could be of no avail for that year.
It had its political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890.
My very distinguished friend, Senator Gore, of Oklahoma, made this interesting proposal: that we should pass a law that every piece of goods sold in the United States should have on it a label bearing the price at which it sells under the tariff and the price at which it would sell if there were no tariff, and then the Senator suggests that we have a very easy solution for the tariff question.
The Roosevelt plan is that there shall be an industrial commission charged with the supervision of the great monopolistic combinations which have been formed under the protection of the tariff, and that the government of the United States shall see to it that these gentlemen who have conquered labor shall be kind to labor.
At the present time it was possible for English machinists to secure contracts for the whole of the machinery in an American mill, and inclusive of freight charges and high tariff, deliver and erect it in America at a lower cost than American engineers with all the advantages of their immeasurably superior tools were able to do.
Whatever may have been the original ideal of the Conservative Protectionists, however highly they may once have valued the protection of agriculture, irresistible political forces have driven them in the direction of a tariff framed mainly to secure the adhesion of the great manufacturing towns.
The motives for this reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of permissions.
This confines the state like a stockade, fixing the territorial limits of its administrative functions; but for the subjects of the state it is an imaginary line, powerless to check the range of their activities, except when a military or tariff war is going on.
The faith of South Carolina is strengthened by opposition, and she now not only sees, but resolves, that the tariff is palpably unconstitutional, oppressive, and dangerous; but Pennsylvania, not to be behind her neighbors, and equally willing to strengthen her own faith by a confident asseveration resolves, also, and gives to every warm affirmative of South Carolina, a plain, downright, Pennsylvania negative.
Hand in hand with the policy of constructing the internal framework of transportation, which is the skeleton of the economic and social life of a nation, went the policy of maintaining a national tariff to clothe that skeleton with the flesh and blood of production and exchange, and, as far as possible, to clothe it evenly.
If this were accompanied by a tariff system which would secure a preference for home-grown cereals such as oats and barley, a direct effect in stimulating agriculture, and an indirect effect in increasing winter dairying, cattle feeding and poultry rearing, would be produced.
The old loyalists and royalists who had become the Federalists under Hamilton, who were now the Whigs with the same banking scheme, the same old tariff, the same old hatred of democratic government, the same hypocrisy, the same disingenuous and devious policies.
Viewed broadly, it is a most welcome as well as significant fact that a prominent and influential advocate of protection, a leader of the party committed to its support, a keen reader of the signs of the times and of the drift of opinion, has identified himself with a line of policy which looks to nothing less than such modifications of the tariff as may expand the commerce of the United States to all quarters of the globe.
Calm, dignified, and scholarly, it discusses with consummate ability the issues that to-day are engaging the attention of the American people, and whether it be the tariff question or our foreign policy, he shows a familiarity with the subject that at once stamps him as a man of remarkable versatility and rare accomplishments.
If restrictions prevail, and a war of tariffs is introduced, the agriculture of the old state, and with it its national strength, is preserved, but its export of manufactures to the adjoining states is checked, and they establish growing fabrics for themselves.
The matter is one of moment, for the clerks who serve carry the weight of the work of the accountancy; and as they cannot be maintained with the fees of the tariff, they charge additional fees, which parties give them in order to facilitate their business.
It was devoted entirely to a denunciation of the high tariff laws, a subject on which the Democratic leaders had deemed it prudent to maintain a discreet silence since the preceding election, and which many of them hoped would be forgotten by the public.
She may not establish any tax discrimination against the ports of allied or associated powers; must grant the latter's seaports all factors and reduced tariffs granted her own or other nationals, and afford the allied and associated powers equal rights with those of her own nationals in her ports and waterways, save that she is free to open or close her maritime coasting trade.
The onerous burdens of the tariff naturally fall heaviest upon those who are large consumers of protected articles and produce only the great staples, grain and cotton, which form the basis of our export trade, and which can, from their very nature in this country, receive no protection from a tariff.
Possibly because it was late or, it may be, he did not wish to further antagonize Colonel Harris with whom he hoped in the morning to drive a good bargain, and it may be that he hoped some time in America to operate mills himself and make money under a protective tariff.
They purchased Louisiana from France, they waged a war for commercial independence against England, they created a second United States Bank, they enacted the protective tariff of 1816, they declared that Congress had power to abolish slavery north of the Missouri Compromise line, and they spread the shield of the Monroe Doctrine between the Western Hemisphere and Europe.
The protective tariff, under which the textile industry of New England, the iron mills of Pennsylvania, and the wool, flax, and hemp farms of the West had flourished, had received a severe blow in the compromise of 1833 which promised a steady reduction of duties.
I say that the next readjustment of Parties, and the time is not far ahead, will be on the tariff question, and I believe that the controversy on this matter, when once the country has laid hold of it, will be the greatest political event of this century.
He has tested with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of vibration of infinitesimal waves in a hypothetical ether.
Tariff wars, which are the natural outcome of the protective system, have been of frequent occurrence, and, although I am not at all prepared to admit that under no circumstances is a policy of retaliation justifiable, it is certain that that policy, carried to excess, has at times endangered European peace.
Aside from the duties laid upon articles which we do not, and probably cannot, produce, therefore, and the duties laid upon luxuries and merely for the sake of the revenues they yield, the object of the tariff duties henceforth laid must be effective competition, the whetting of American wits by contest with the wits of the rest of the world.
Would the convention have been impartial or consistent, if they had rejected the slaves from the list of inhabitants, when the shares of representation were to be calculated, and inserted them on the lists when the tariff of contributions was to be adjusted?
Where international boundaries in Europe bristle with forts and cannon, international boundaries in America are a shuttle of traffic back and forth of great migrations of population, of great waves of friendship and good feeling which all the trade rivalries and hostile tariffs of a half century have failed to stem.
They would be irremovable, because fixed by treaty with self-governing Dominions scattered about all over the world, and in return for those duties we should have received concessions in Colonial tariffs on the basis of which their industries would have grown up tier upon tier through a long period of time.
Although I am quite ready to admit that, by sudden and unexpected alterations of the tariff, temporary advantage might be gained, and some share of the wealth of other people and other countries might be netted for this or that set of traders within your own border, in the long run the whole yield of any tax, export or import, will come home to the people of that country by whom it is imposed.
A new tariff may produce certain economic conditions; I do not care a peppercorn whether it does or not, but this is a thing which we have been tinkering and dickering with time out of mind, and in spite of the tinkering and dickering this situation has arisen.
Our merchants will be rejoiced to learn that at last the vexatious customs regulations, or rather the absence of them, will be replaced by a regular tariff, which our minister has practically only to draw up for it to be sanctioned by the Moorish Government.
America possesses such an astonishing genius for inventing and combining labor-saving machinery, that we could now supply the world with many of its choicest products, in the teeth of native competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which double the cost of producing.
If her family believed she was to grow up into a responsible citizen who would later control by her vote all sorts of weighty questions that affect taxes and tariffs and things, they would have to devote more thought to making her intelligent, because it would have an effect upon their individual interests.
Parent had fully enlightened him as to who he was, who the outfit were, the destination of the herd, the names of both buyer and seller, and, on my riding in, was delivering a voluble dissertation on the tariff and the possible effect on the state of putting hides on the free list.
Since the increase and the reduction of duties have been accompanied by results so different from what had been expected, a fall of prices frequently succeeding the increase of the tariff, and a rise sometimes following a reduction of duties, it has become necessary for political economy to attempt the explanation of a phenomenon which so overthrows received ideas; for, whatever may be said, science is simply a faithful exposition and a true explanation of facts.
If, then, the scarcity of wheat has a tendency to increase the price by reason of the diminution of the supply, the scarcity of all other products for which wheat is exchanged has likewise a tendency to depreciate the value of wheat on account of a falling off of the demand; so that it is by no means certain that wheat will be a mill dearer under a protective tariff than under a system of free trade.
Latterly I have noticed in the speeches and votes of this gentleman (who is, I think, one of the most conscientious, as he is one of the most amiable, men in public life), a reluctance to follow to their logical conclusion the principles embodied in the "Morrill tariff" of 1861.
"I most certainly will," she replied, adding as the audience cheered her wildly, "for I would surely choose to ask votes for the party which stood for the principle of justice to women, though wrong on financial theories, rather than for the party which was sound on questions of money and tariff, and silent on the pending amendment to secure political equality to half of the people."
The host and hostess must be alert to turn the conversation from channels that threaten to lead to antagonisms of opinion; and each guest should feel that it is more important just now to make other people happy than to gratify his impulse to "floor" them on the tariff question.
The multiplicity of classifications made it difficult for shippers or purchasers to ascertain in advance what the charges on consignments would be; there was a constant tendency to increase the number of commodity tariffs, and unjust personal and local discriminations were in consequence made more numerous.
I have never thought so much about the tariff as since I have been here, and I am now convinced that we ought to give suitable encouragement to all kinds of manufactures in our country, and so afford a regular market for the products of the agriculturist.
National surveillance and regulation of business traffic in these countries hitherto, ever since and in so far as the modern democratic order of things has taken effect, has uniformly been of the nature of interference with trade and investment in behalf of the nation's mercantile community at large, as seen in port and shipping regulations and in the consular service, or in behalf of particular favored groups or classes of business concerns, as in protective tariffs and subsidies.
It would still be a reasonable expectation that discrimination between pecuniary classes should fall away under this projected alien tutelage; more particularly all such discrimination as is designed to benefit any given class or interest at the cost of the whole, as, e.g., protective tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engrossing of particular lines of material resources, and the like.
The infatuation of the Americans with their protective tariff and other businesslike discriminations is a sufficiently serious matter in this connection, and it is always possible that their inability to give up this superstition might lead to their not adhering to this projected neutral league.
The impending reorganization of governments to protect the smaller capitalists from the large (through better control over the banks, railroads, trusts, tariffs, and natural resources) will furnish the first condition, the natural exhaustion or artificial restriction of immigration now imminent together with the introduction of "scientific management," the second.
In fact some free traders blithely tell us that once you get rid of tariffs, living becomes so cheap that people naturally flock to the free trade country, and industry is bound to follow the people; therefore free trade will give us factories as we need them.
Later in the year the gifted exponent of this revolutionary program entered upon a vigorous speaking campaign in defense of his proposals, and there was set up a large and representative tariff commission which was charged with the task of framing, after due investigation, a tariff system which would meet the needs alleged to exist.
Walker was not Secretary of War or Secretary of State, and he was unwilling to sit quietly down and collect the revenue under a tariff imposed by a Whig Congress, against which he had voted, while Buchanan in directing our foreign relations, and Marcy in conducting a successful war, would far outstrip him in public observation and in acquiring the elements of popularity adapted to the ambition which all three alike shared.
He resisted the passage of the tariff of 1846, stood firmly and consistently for the industrial interests of his State, cultivated an alliance with the Whigs in the Senate, and by their aid thwarted all the attempts of the Polk administration to interfere with his plans and purposes in Pennsylvania.
The principles embodied in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not only among the people but among the protective economists, and even among the manufacturers to a large extent.
They admit that the low scale of duties in the new tariff perhaps may have added to the distress, by the very rapid increase of importations which it invited; but they declare that its period of operation was entirely too brief to create a result so decided, if all the elements of disaster had not been in existence, and in rapid development, at the time the Act was passed.
Rather than submit to the burdensome embargo and the more burdensome second war with England, most New England men of property seem to have preferred the dissolution of a union which was formed for commercial purposes; and we have seen how Webster urged resistance to the national tariff in 1820 even to the point of advising secession.
There were questions of tariff, of duties, of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers the South American question.
The author has purposely refrained, as far as possible, from reference to the relation of the tariff to monopolies; for the question has been so hotly fought over, and the real facts concerning it have been so garbled and distorted, that people are not yet ready to consider it in an unprejudiced way.
Another cause of the destruction of this equilibrium was our system of revenue (the tariff), the duties falling mainly upon the Southern portion of the Union, as being the greatest exporting States, while more than a due proportion of the revenue had been disbursed at the North.