E. S. Gilbert is close to ninety years old but uncommonly well preserved, having been interested in every Presidential campaign since he was a boy of sixteen, and has acquired a vast fund of political knowledge, of which he still has a firm grasp. He has seen and remembers nearly every President from Andy Jackson down—nineteen of them—and talks interestingly. He says as he sees things now the political situation is just as it was in the early fifties. Then two minor parties were dying, and the leading party—the Democratic—was undergoing disintegration. Today, as he sees it, Democracy and Populism are dying, and the Republican party is undergoing disintegration. The Republican Party sprang up in the fifties, and he looks for a new, strong party to come out of the present chaos in a few years. Following is a thoughtful article, from Mr. Gilbert’s pen, which recently appeared in the Lincoln Independent:
Editor Independent: Here are a few figures for men who think.
In the year 1901 there was manufactured in the United States thirteen billions of dollars’ worth of goods. Authority, Secretary Shaw.
The average rate of duties upon imported merchandise is 52 per cent. Authority, Walter Wellman.
Now, fifty-two per cent of thirteen billions of dollars is $6,770,000,000, which the present tariff of duties authorizes the manufacturers to collect of the American people each year, if they can. It actually enables them to collect a large portion of it—but not all. The probabilities are they collect about two-thirds. They collect nothing for goods exported.
There is honest competition on some classes of goods, such as flour and the cheaper cotton fabrics, and perhaps some others, that prevents them from collecting it of the people. So, in order to be fair, we will cut this sum in halves.
We then have the sum of $3,385,000,000, which is considerably less than is probably collected. In order not only to be fair, but to be absolutely safe, we will cut off the $385,000,000, and we have the sum of three billions of dollars—three thousand millions—collected by the manufacturers and paid by the people as the result of the Dingley tariff bill.
Bear in mind, that this is over and above what is collected in duties for the support of government. Bear in mind, this money is paid to the manufacturers, the capitalist and not to the laborers. Bear in mind that if this three billions of dollars were divided among the employees of the manufacturers, it would give to them something less than six millions of laborers a little over $500 apiece. Bear in mind, that this would pay the entire labor bill of all the manufacturers of the United States.
Then ask yourselves: Is this state of things the result of the intelligence or genius of the people? Or is it the result of misinformation or stultification?
E. S. Gilber.