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tion at the present time, because it assumes that revision will be made on the basis of the existing long hours, low wages, and child and woman labor of many protected industries. The actual cost of labor is lower than it would be if the hours, wages, and conditions were fair and reasonable. The people of this country will gladly support a tariff high enough to pay, not merely the existing wages, but better and even ideal wages. They do not ask that the tariff be reduced to the present labor cost. In some cases, like pig iron, that cost is probably less than it is in England, but in England the blast furnace workers are on the eight-hour day, while here their day is twelve hours, seven days a week. The people willingly protect labor, but they would like to see the tariff actually passed along to the wage earner. If, therefore, a tariff commission investigates the comparative cost of labor in this and competing countries, it should inquire whether the wages and hours are actually reasonable, and what would be the cost if they were made reasonable. It is on this ideal basis and not the actual basis that the tariff should be revised. If this is done, then the only serious difficulty of the plan, that of investigation, is already provided for. Such a tariff commission would necessarily be a permanent one, and naturally it would be a bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

A permanent bureau of this kind would receive general instructions from Congress as to what, from the standpoint of a reasonable American standard of life, should be the condition of labor. This might provide for all workers at least fifty-two full days of rest each year. It might provide that all continuous operations should be divided into three shifts of eight hours instead of two shifts of twelve hours. It might provide the eight-hour day in non-continuous operations for women workers and possibly for men. It might set the minimum age of child labor at fourteen. Other provisions, such as minimum rate of pay, might be more general and be left to the commission under general instructions to ascertain what is reasonable under the conditions. If upon investigation. and inspection the bureau or commission finds that a given manufacturer is granting to his employees these reasonable conditions, a certificate to that effect would be the warrant of the internal revenue commissioner to remit the internal revenue tax. All the machinery for imposing such a discriminating tax is already in existence in the administration of the oleomargarine tax which

imposes a tax of ten cents per pound on artificially colored oleomargarine and one-fourth of one cent per pound on uncolored oleomargarine. This tax and its administrative machinery have been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States as being not in contravention of the Constitution.2. The only additional machinery required is that which is already widely proposed in the form of a permanent tariff commission. Such a commission, I believe, is favored by the National Association of Manufacturers, and their bill only needs the addition of a clause giving the commission power to issue and revoke these certificates of character, in order to make it an effective instrument of labor protection. This would of course require a force of inspectors or agents, and considerable expense, but the expense would be met by the added

revenue.

2McCray v. U. S., 195 U. S. 27.

TARIFF RELATIONS WITH CUBA-ACTUAL AND

DESIRABLE

BY EDWIN F. ATKINS,

Of E. Atkins & Co., Boston, Mass.

Cuba's political disturbances have in the past followed economic conditions that have caused discontent and encouraged revolution; such was the case in the ten-year insurrection and again in the insurrection of 1895, which preceded the Spanish-American War.

Previous to 1868 the tariff laws for Cuba were framed with the object of giving its trade to Spain, and for this purpose four different rates of duty were enforced, the first and lowest rate being upon Spanish merchandise in Spanish vessels, the second rate upon Spanish merchandise in foreign vessels, the third rate upon foreign merchandise in Spanish vessels, and the fourth rate upon foreign merchandise in foreign vessels. A duty was in force in Spain against Cuban sugar as a protection for the cane sugar produced in its southern provinces.

As long as the European countries were dependent upon the West Indies for the greater part of their sugar supply, and Cuba was producing with slave labor and had the buyers of Europe competing with those of the United States for her sugar, little attention was given to the fact that all legislation at Madrid was for the benefit of the mother country and that nothing was being done with a view to holding foreign markets for the island.

As years passed the continental countries of Europe all became producers of beet sugar and levied heavy duties against foreign imports, thus closing their markets to Cuba, and as soon as their production exceeded their consumption requirements, export bounties were paid, which enabled them to sell free-trade England at prices a good deal below cost of production. Cuba could then no longer compete there, and so became dependent upon the United States, where, fortunately for her, a countervailing duty, in addition to the regular tariff, had been enforced against those countries paying an export bounty.

With the gradual abolition of slavery in Cuba, 1866-1880, her

cost of production had greatly increased, while, by reason of the growth of the beet sugar industry, values had been cut in two. Spain through all these changes held blindly to her course of protecting her home trade, regardless of the interests of Cuba, and the inevitable result was the long and disastrous insurrection, 1868-1878, which brought financial ruin to so many of the sugar estates of the island.

During this period the United States, up to 1884, was almost as negligent of her foreign trade interests as was Spain of the interests of Cuba. When the change came from wooden to iron ships, and from sailing to steam vessels, England was prompt, not only to furnish tramp steamers for the transportation of Cuba's sugar crop to the United States, but with English capital she built and operated under the Spanish flag steamers which carried both Spanish and English merchandise to Cuba, taking advantage of the first and third columns of the Spanish tariff for Cuba, from which American merchandise was debarred, for the United States contented herself by imposing an additional duty of 10 per cent upon Cuban and Puerto Rican merchandise in Spanish vessels. This provision was applied by the United States as late as 1874 upon a cargo of molasses imported by a Spanish schooner. In 1884 these discriminating duties were abolished by agreement with Spain. But we had for many years the singular spectacle of English-built Spanish steamers, operated largely by English capital, running from English and Spanish ports and supplying Cuba with the many articles of need which should have gone from the United States, including flour from American wheat, which was shipped from New York to Santander under the British flag and thence to Havana as Spanish flour. These same Spanish steamers came in ballast to our southern ports to load cotton back to Europe.

All this was allowed for years in the name of protection to American industries and American shipping, and at a time when, through radical changes in the commerce of the world, we were every year taking a larger proportion of Cuban exports and paying through New York, by remittance of exchange, to Spain, England, Germany and France, in settlement for merchandise with which they were supplying Cuba.

In 1890 the McKinley tariff bill was passed and by what was known as the Aldrich amendment, power was conferred upon the

President of the United States to negotiate treaties of reciprocity which would admit sugar free of duty from such countries as would would make concessions in their tariffs upon American merchandise. Under the power so conferred a treaty of reciprocity was negotiated with Spain, and afterwards similar treaties were made with the principal sugar-producing countries of the world, and the United States' tariff upon sugar was practically abolished; so our exports to Cuba rapidly increased, the cost of food supplies in Cuba was greatly reduced, and the island entered upon a period of prosperity such as it had not known for many years. This lasted until the year 1895, when the second insurrection occurred.

In 1894 the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration at Washington was followed by the passage of the Wilson tariff bill, which again placed a duty upon sugar, cancelled the reciprocity treaties and brought a return to the Spanish tariff rates in Cuba. Prices of sugar declined, while cost of living increased; confidence was destroyed through such conditions, together with a threatened insurrection, and as the estates finished their crops in the spring of 1895, all work on the plantations ceased, and the thousands of laborers suddenly thrown out of employment and unable to gain a livelihood took to the woods and joined the ranks of the insurgents. The destruction of property, the loss to commerce, and the reduction of Cuba's sugar crop from 1,040,000 to 230,000 tons, with the Spanish-American War which followed in 1898, are now matters of history. In 1897 the Dingley tariff bill was passed, by which ninety-six test sugar paid 1.682 cents per pound, about double the rate under the Wilson bill.

Following our war with Spain and the taking over of her colonies came a radical change in our trade relations with Cuba through the reciprocity treaty, which took effect December 27, 1903. By this treaty Cuban sugar enters the United States at 20 per cent less duty than is charged upon other foreign sugar under the existing Dingley rates, or in round figures 1.35 cents per pound against 1.69 cents, the full rate on ninety-six test sugar, and Cuba concedes to the United States a reduction ranging from 20 to 40 per cent from her regular tariff rates charged to other countries.

When this treaty took effect the serious competition between European beet and Cuban sugars in the United States ceased. Under the Brussels agreement all government bounties, except those

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