The Tariff Trap: How Washington’s Congressman Warned Against the 'Grasping Monopolies'

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY, SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1897.

TARIFF DEBATE. Representative Scott Finn of the West.

WASHINGTON, May 11.—After the usual business had been disposed of, the house went into a committee of the whole on the tariff bill, and Mr. Finn took the floor. He began his address with a defense of free trade and the advantages of its adoption. He asked whether this powerful country, sixty million strong, with inventive genius keener than any other on the globe, whose labor is more skilled than any other, should decline to compete for the markets of mankind and continue forever to trade among ourselves under the insane idea that we are growing rich by the process? The enemy said: 'You let us build a Chinese wall around this young and vigorous people... let us make it as nearly impervious as we can.' They were our Bourbonists and of the densest kind. Their faces were turned backward, not forward.

The bill was framed in the interest of the people. It was intended, in the first instance, to stay the mountain of surplus in the treasury... and secondly, to relieve as far as prudence would permit at this time, the overburdened treasuries of the country from excessive taxation, the proceeds of which do not pass into the treasury but go directly to the support of the grasping monopolies, which for the most part contained in utterly indefensible and atrocious, and oppressive trusts.

ACTUALLY INCREASING TAX Instead of reducing the taxation, this bill actually proposed to increase it. The majority of the committee on ways and means had sought first to relieve the industries by putting on the free list as far as possible such articles as were essentially necessary to them... Protection, so called, would not add a penny to the wage worker's pay or give one day's additional labor in the year, but it would rob him of an undue proportion of his earnings to purchase the necessaries of life and keep him a trembling dependent.

Since the recent history of this country showed that the tendency of protected industries was towards combinations in the form of trusts under which production was arbitrarily suspended raising prices to the consumer and throwing the workman out of his job. A monopoly more terrible, more dangerous to the liberties of the country, more oppressive to the laborer could not be imagined.

SUPREMACY OF THE FARMER Upon no class of people does the present fiscal burden fall so heavily as upon the farming class... Free materials, open markets around the globe, cheap food and cheap clothing.

In conclusion he said: 'We are here, sir, we the majority of the living and members of this house in defense of American industry. We alone offer it protection by liberating it from unnatural restrictions and allowing it the unrestricted and complete enjoyment of its own earnings.'

The resolution on docket 4 was adopted.

Mr. Hill, Iowa, in the debate... favored free trade and protected the interests of the manufacturer and laborer...