He then proceeded to a criticism of the committee bill as follows:
A declared purpose of this bill is to secure “free raw materials to stimulate manufactories.”
In execution of this idea, the bill places on the free list a large number of articles which are really manufactured articles, such as salt, sawed and dressed lumber, glue, various oils and chemicals, china, clay, etc. These constitute the products of large and useful industries throughout the United States in which many millions of capital are invested, and employing many thousands of working people. At the same time the bill leaves or puts upon the dutiable list, lead, iron, zinc and nickel ores, and coal, which might be called raw materials. Further than this, the bill not only makes so-called “raw materials” free, but places on the free list the manufactured products of these materials. Thus the manufacture of such articles is made impossible in this country, except by reducing American labor to a worse condition than that of labor in Europe. It goes even further, and places or leaves dutiable certain so-called raw materials, such as iron ore, lead, coal, paper, paints, etc., while placing on the free list articles made from these materials, such as hoop iron and cotton ties, tin plates, machinery, books and pamphlets, etc.
In other words, the bill leaves or makes dutiable the raw material and puts on the free list the articles manufactured from it; thus not only placing an insurmountable barrier in the way of making such articles here, but actually protecting the foreign manufacturer and laborer against our own, and imposing for their benefit a burden upon the consumer in this country. Again, the bill places lower rates on some manufactured articles than on the raw materials used in making them. For instance, type metal, 15 per cent.; pig lead, 44 per cent.; carpets, 30 per cent.; yarns used in their manufacture, 40 per cent.
It leaves an internal revenue tax of more than 100 per cent. on alcohol used in the arts, amounting to as much as the entire amount of duty collected on raw wool. This article enters as a material into a vast number of important and needful articles which the committee have either made free or have so reduced the rates thereon that the duty would be less than the tax on the alcohol consumed in their manufacture.
In some cases, the difference between the duty imposed by the bill on the so called raw materials and the articles made from them is so small as to destroy these industries, except upon the condition of levelling the wages of home labor to that of Europe. This was so in the case of pig lead and red lead, which is made from it, and of pig iron and steel blooms and steel rails.
Such legislation would leave the ore in the mines, or the pig lead in the smelting works, or the pig iron to rust at the furnaces, while foreigners would supply our markets with these manufactured products. In a large number of articles throughout the schedules the reductions proposed by the bill are so large that the effect must be to destroy or restrict home production and increase enormously foreign importations, thus largely increasing customs revenue instead of reducing it, as claimed by the advocates of the bill. Particular mention in this connection is made of earthen and chinaware, glass, leaf tobacco, manufactures of cotton, flax, hemp, and jute, carpets, brushes, leather, gloves, manufactures of India rubber, and pipes.
Mr. Randall asserted that instead of the bill reducing customs revenues $64,000,000, as was claimed, it would be fair to estimate that its effect would be to largely increase the revenue, instead of reducing it, while the amount of material wealth it would destroy is incalculable.
Those supporting the bill, he said, hold themselves out as the champions of the farmer, while they take from him the protection duties on his wool, hemp, flax, meats, vegetables, etc. And what do they give him in return. They profess to give the manufacturer better rates than he now has. If this be so, how is the farmer to be benefited, or where does he get compensation for the loss of his protective duties?
Much has been said about removing taxes on necessaries and imposing them upon luxuries. What does this bill propose? It gives olive oil to the epicure and taxes castor oil 95 per cent.; it gives free tin plates to the Standard Oil Company and to the great meat-canning monopolies, and imposes a duty of 100 per cent. on rice; it gives the sugar trust free bone-black and proposes prohibitory duties on grocery grades of sugar; it imposes a duty of 40 per cent. on the “poor man’s” blanket and only 30 per cent. on the Axminster carpet of the rich; it admits free of duty the fine animals imported by the gentlemen of the turf, makes free the paintings and statuary of the railway millionaire and coal baron.