XXXV—THE TARIFF UNMASKED
Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.
Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible. In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isinglass. Take isinglass alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?
The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on "blues, in pulp, dried, etc." If this will serve to reduce the amount of "Those [pg 183]Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues" and "I've Got the Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues" with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff bill as it stands.