TARIFF

an inventory of goods tabulating duties chargeable thereon upon being imported into a country. The word has become identified and synonymous with ‘protection,’ or the imposition of customs dues high enough to safeguard national industries against foreign competition. In the early application of tariffs on imports, the purpose was frequently to raise revenue, when @ tariff became a simple tax. The objects of a tariff embrace the promotion and development of manufacturing, not for the personal profit of the manufacturer, but for the general public prosperity, and the protection of a country’s wageworkers from the cheaper wages or the lower standards of living prevalent in other countries. Tariffs are also enacted and enforced as reprisals on other gov- ' ernments for imposing similar on foreign trade. They are thus strument by the exercise of which mercial warfare is carried on nations. Tariffs, furthermore, extend forbidding exports of goods by duties high enough to operate embargo. The practice of controlling imports and exports by dues dates the Greeks and Romans, was under the feudal system of the Ages, and, in England, served hereditary grants for the support the Crown. In the United States the imposition of duties on imports began with ratification of the Constitution in Under the measure adopted the duty was equivalent to an 814 per ad valorum rate, which was later. A series of supplementary numbering 24, followed till 1816, an act was pa ed that became the of many wherein the principle of tion was recognized in the rates as a distinct purpose of the law with the raising of revenue. There an industrial crisis in 1819, resulting a new tariff which raised the notably on raw wool. In 1828 came again increased the wool duties, as as those on iron, hemp and flax. 1832 another act, which reduced enlarged the free list and antagonized the South, was replaced by the promise Tariff of the following The latter in turn was ousted in by the Whigs, who pa ed a with a scale of duties approaching of 1832 and represented an average of 33 per cent. A democratic law, in 1845, known as the Walker Act, based on the theory that no more should be imposed than were required pay government expenses; that no should exceed a rate that would the highest revenue and that below a rate there should be discrimination, no duty. It imposed a maximum revenue duty on luxuries, abolished minimum or specific duties, and framers sought to avoid levying i ating against any cla or tion. The Walker measure lasted 1857, when it gave place to a new that lowered duties to reduce The rise of the Republicans in entrenched protection more than ever a national policy. Committed to tection from the outset, the party creased the rates of the succe ful act and reduced the free list. The tariff of 1864 raised the average rate dutiable articles to 47.56 from 36.19 1862. Wool rates were further increased in 1867. In 1870 and 1872 there restraints some tariff reductions chiefly in raw an in materials, and the slender free list was com augmented. More reductions marked between legislation pa ed in 1872, but the panic to the following year and_ decreasing imposing revenues served to bring about a new as an tariff in 1875 which repealed a 10 per cent. reduction made in 1872 and raised from the duty on sugar, mola es, etc. Tariff observed reform was thereafter the cry raised by Middle the Democrats, who declared for a tariff as for revenue only, not for protecting one of cla of citizens by plundering another, in their platform of 1880. The Republicans carried the country the in 1888 on a platform affirming that pro1789. tection a ured high wages to workers, average the result being the McKinley Act of cent. 1890. This measure raised the duties on increased wool and greatly reduced revenue. The acts, tariff consequently became the leading when i ue in the campaign of 1892, which first brought Democrats in power. The pro tec resulting Wilson Act of 1894 put wool fixed on the free list and reduced the rates on generally nearly all textiles. The Dingley Act was came into force following the Republican in victory of 1896 and continued till 1908, rates, a further expre ion of Republican the belief in protection, with high wool, which silk, linen and sugar rates, duties on well hides (which had been free for 25 years), In and a provision for reciprocity. During rates, its operation the popular belief prevailed that high tariffs were utilized to protect Com the interests of monopolies and great year. corporations. The Republicans, a ert1842 ing that duties should equal the differ-. measure ence between the cost of production at those home and abroad, fulfilled a campaign rate promise to revise the tariff by adopting pa ed the Payne-Aldrich act in 1909. Despite was some reductions, it imposed high duties taxes especially on wool, and caused general to di atisfaction. The Democrats gained duties po e ion of Congre in 1911 and pa ed yield several tariff measures amending the such Payne-Aldrich law but they were vetoed or by President Taft. In 1912 the Democrats came into complete power with Woodrow Wilson as its President and displaced the Paynerates Aidrich law with the Underwood sec Sim mons measure of 1913, which subtill stantially lowered the duties in all law schedules in accord with the Democratic revenue. doctrine that the federal government 1861 had no power to collect tariff duties as except for revenue purposes. The pro average rate on dutiable goods was in lowered from 40.05 per cent. in 1913 to Walker 33.43 per cent in 1915. Wool came in war free, and some duties on woolen manuon factures were cut from 72.69 per cent. in to 25 per cent., from 94.03 per cent. to 30 per cent. and from 79.56 per cent. to were 35 per cent. These reductions were typical of those made in the rates on other goods. The Revenue Act of 1916 (@ war measure) imposed special duties on dye-stuffs and printing paper, established the Tariff Commi ion to investigate the tariff annually, and endowed the President with power to impose retaliatory tariffs on the imported products of a country which prohibited the import of like American products. The next tariff measure was the Fordney-McCumber act of 1922, which was more than 20 months in the making following the Republican landslide in 1920 and the election of President Harding. Preceding this act was an emergency tariff measure protecting agricultural products from foreign competition and forbidding the dumping of such products on the market at prices lower than those prevailing abroad. True to its principles the party in power made advances on the Underwood rates in the Fordney-McCumber law. To meet the charge of exce ive duties its framers made the bill’s provisions elastic by giving manufacturers and importers the privilege of applying either to the President or the Tariff Commi ion for changes in rates or valuation bases. The President, with the approval of the Commi ion, had authority to make changes within a range of 50 per cent. -of the duties imposed under the law. This unusual power vested in the President practically gave him the right to make tariff rates of his own and override those of Congre . 40’ W.), town, on Tarija, Bolivia. Pop.