Eighteen
dollars would thus represent the increased price of the wool from
twenty-five sheep and $36 that from the wool of fifty sheep; and at
present values this addition would amount to about one-third of its
price. If upon its sale the farmer receives this or a less tariff
profit, the wool leaves his hands charged with precisely that sum, which
in all its changes will adhere to it until it reaches the consumer. When
manufactured into cloth and other goods and material for use, its cost
is not only increased to the extent of the farmer's tariff profit, but a
further sum has been added for the benefit of the manufacturer under the
operation of other tariff laws. In the meantime the day arrives when the
farmer finds it necessary to purchase woolen goods and material to
clothe himself and family for the winter. When he faces the tradesman
for that purpose, he discovers that he is obliged not only to return in
the way of increased prices his tariff profit on the wool he sold, and
which then perhaps lies before him in manufactured form, but that he
must add a considerable sum thereto to meet a further increase in cost
caused by a tariff duty on the manufacture. Thus in the end he is
aroused to the fact that he has paid upon a moderate purchase, as a
result of the tariff scheme, which when he sold his wool seemed so
profitable, an increase in price more than sufficient to sweep away all
the tariff profit he received upon the wool he produced and sold.
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