The Strong Trade Position of Manufacture. 85 



off with the very frank admission that "I have made 

 monev everv vear ont of the tariff graft." He goes on 

 to say: "Under this tariff, those who supply the facto- 

 ries I am interested in with their material, have consoli- 

 dated or formed trusts and have raised the prices 25 to 

 50%. All those years I have, as before, made my sale 

 price on a percentage of costs, and when the tariff pets 

 raised their prices, as they did $50,000 to me, I made the 

 charge against the jobber $60,000, and I know beyond 

 question that he also figured on a percentage basis, and 

 charged more than $70,000 for the $60,000 he paid me. 

 The product went through one or two other hands before 

 reaching the consumer. The $50,000 I paid becomes 

 about $100,000 to the agricultural consumer. ' ' 



In this connection a paragraph in the Springfield 

 "Weekly Eepublican of Dec. 5, 1907, is of interest. The 

 will of Chas. H. Deere, implement manufacturer, evi- 

 dently of Rock Island, 111., shows property valued at $20,- 

 000,000, all of which goes far to sustain the truth of state- 

 ments made bv a Worcester blacksmith to the author; 

 one of which was that shafts that a while ago he bought 

 for $1.75 were now sold for over $11. This statement 

 was made in November, 1907. 



Mr. Miles ' remarks show one of the ways by which the 

 tariff increases the cost of articles produced in the 

 United States. The ''tariff pets," that furnish raw 

 material, form associations or combinations and force 

 price way up. Then each succeeding intermediate 

 between these and the consmner compute the same i)er- 

 centage of profit as before on these greatly increased 

 values. 



The plate glass letter reveals another feature of this 

 adorable tariff measure. In spite of our exorbitant 



