DUTY ON WOOL AND SUGAR IN THE UNITED STATES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1530, 12 April 1887, Page 3

DUTY ON WOOL AND SUGAR IN THE UNITED STATES

Foreigners cannot imagine why thiß country should maintain the present tariff on BUgar, wool and a few other raw produots we are compelled to import — nor oan we We collected duty last year on $7,260 024 worth of fine combing and clothing wools, such as we cannot produce m the United States at an j thing like the low prioe at which wo must buy them, if at all, and on $3,486,057 worth of oarpet wools, which our manufacturers oan buy abroad for far less than our farmers can afford to sell them at. No amount of protection will enable them to compete with the foreign wool growers, any more than it would enable » ■ to raise oranges m tho pine foresta of Maine ; it is a matter of climate and other natural conditions. We paid out for manufactured woollen goods during thia same period no less than 841,421,319, and our manufacturers tell U3 that with the same free market that British, German and French mills enjoy, all these goods oonld have been made here. As it is, they are produced with the aid of just the wools our tariff prevents us from purchasing. It is the same with sugar. {We keep np the tariff, m spite of the proven fact that Cuba oan and doeß get fully 2 per sent, more sugar out of the same quantity of cane or off the same land than we cun obtain, do what we will; A few sugar planters m Louisiana, who supply bat a tithe of our annual demand, a few wool growers m the West, whose bci*n?as to injured far more than it oan be benefited by the high tariff on raw wool, are able to keep our legislature from doing simple justice to the country at large aad oon* ferring a great benefit on poor consumers as well as important commercial and m. duatrial interests. (Australasian and S. American,)