They are now printing on their re
tail sugar bags the following: “The
tariff on sugar benefits nobody but the
Sugar Trust. Were it not for the
tariff and the trust, this package
would cost you 2 cents a pound less.
Urge your Congressman to vote for
the removal of the tariff on sugar. If
he doesn’t do it, don’t return him to
Congress. It isn’t our fault.”
“If the clothiers”, comments the
Baltimore Sun, “would attach a tag
to each suit, telling the buyer how
much tariff tax he is paying on his
clothes and how the trusts have in
creased the price, and the merchants
and modistes would tell every lady
how much the tariff increases the
cost of her dresses and hats, there
would be a storm against the high
tariff that would sweep away Aldrich
schedules and Taft vetoes as if they
were feathers.”
Realizing that his party has gone
tco far in its high tariff that makes
high prices, President McKinley in
his speech delivered in Buffalo just
before his death, advocated reciproc
ity. But the Kasson reciprocity
treaties that he had ordered negoti
ated were pigeonholed by the senate,
and for nearly eight years of Roose
velt’s presidency that formerly ardent
reformer said not one word as to the
tariff. Then in the campaign of 1908
people were evidently bent on tariff
reform because of the high tariff
prices that Mr. Taft, in order to get
elected and beat Bryan, had to prom
ise tariff revision downward.
That promise has never been kept.
