The 'Mongrel Tariff' of 1883 and its effects on modern-day cuisine

A short history of poor fiscal policy

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

– Unknown genius

When President Chester A. Arthur signed the “Mongrel Tariff Act” into law on March 3, 1883, he knew the legislation was both unpopular and unnecessarily complicated.

After the 1882 election, Republicans in Congress—historically proponents of a strong national tariff—scrambled to reduce the tariff before Democrats took control of the House. The GOP’s fear was that with Democrats in control, starting with the new session, the opposition was almost certain to reduce tariff rates by an even bigger margin.

A deal was made—a shoddy one. And with the new bill, tariffs were generally reduced across the board.

However, duties on the occasional product were raised. Some goods even had multiple tariffs placed upon them. Thus the “mongrelized” nature of the legislation.

Overall, tariff rates were reduced by an average of nearly 1.5 percent, though most products still maintained a roughly 35–40 percent tax. The 1883 act was certainly an instrument of taxation, but with no specific aim.

Was the tariff, in this case, designed to generate revenue or to protect American domestic industry? The question has never been properly answered.

Naturally, President Arthur quickly realized that the Mongrel Tariff was a giant goat schtup. So, he acted and went into damage control mode. The president authorized his Secretary of State, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, to start making reciprocal trade agreements with other nations—predating GATT by several decades and NAFTA by over a century.

With such agreements in principle, Arthur could effectively amend the tariff without involving Congress. In other words, President Arthur side-stepped the hornet’s nest of laws, regulations, and bureaucratic whimsy with these managed trade agreements. Practical politics, really.

The wisdom of Arthur to start doing deals on the side proved fortunate, for it turned out that there was no apparent rhyme or reason to much of the Mongrel Tariff other than political expediency during the lame duck session.

Interestingly, and perhaps bizarrely, the new tariff law exempted fruit, but not vegetables. “No big deal. Don’t make a federal case about it,” some would say. However, there was indeed a federal case made about this matter.

On May 10, 1893, the Supreme Court declared in the Nix v. Hedden decision, that vegetables would not be getting relief from the tax man, but fruits would still skate by, untaxed. One of the biggest historical ramifications of the case—one that still smarts to this day—was that, thanks to a Court decision, tomatoes were to be forever considered vegetables.

Some readers are nodding their heads, “Yes, of course.” Others are outraged, “No! Botanical blasphemy!”

Never mind the botanical reality that a tomato is a fruit, and “vegetable” is an overarchingly vague term—arbitrarily applied—that includes all edible plant matter.

Not only did the Court make such an “anti-science” decision, but they also ruled unanimously! For Americans, however, this debate is not over, no matter what the Court had to say.

For the purposes of tariffs, imports, and customs, and according to the general government of the United States and its case law, tomatoes are forever considered vegetables.

For the purposes of trivia, your dinner table debate society, and according to botanists worldwide, however, a tomato is—definitionally—a fruit.

Be that as it may, the Supreme Court and the general government aren't always on the side of the American people, shocking as that may come to some citizens.

The facts of the case, essentially, were thus:

• The Mongrel Tariff required a tax be paid on imported vegetables, but not on fruits.

• John Nix & Co., one of the largest sellers of produce in New York City, and an importer of a significant amount of foreign produce, filed a suit against the Collector of the Port of New York, Edward L. Hedden, to recover back duties which they had paid under protest.

• Nix argued that a tomato is a fruit because it has a seed-bearing structure growing from the flowering part of a plant.

• Counsel for both sides then made use of dictionary definitions to bolster their cases.

• The court unanimously decided in favor of Hedden, essentially saying that the broader definition of vegetable would apply regarding the tax.

• Justice Gray, delivering the opinion on behalf of the Court, expressing an oddly nuanced point of view, told us that we are to recognize tomatoes as vegetables because they are usually eaten as part of the main course, as opposed to being eaten as a dessert.

This is your government.

A century or so later, the State of New Jersey even went so far as to declare the Jersey tomato its “State Vegetable.”

They spit on you and tell you it’s raining.

While this case and its decision was absurd, it also foreshadowed the death of the tariff as the primary funding mechanism for the general government. Two decades later, the income tax—previously illegal and unconstitutional—was enshrined with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Tariffs still existed of course, and still do, but their reputation has been sullied. First, because of the Mongrel Tariff (and for good reasons). Later, the economic ignorami used the bogeyman known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff to help tell their farcical story about the Great Depression. It is still very much in the water today.

The 1883 tariff was indeed ill-conceived and scattershot. To be fair, however, American fiscal policy has never been partial to finesse—since well before the days of the Mongrel Tariff. For most of its history, the general government has had the hammer, so everything looks like a nail.

Plumb-line libertarian types will tell you that tariffs are evil, and they shouldn't exist. In a vacuum, this may be the correct point of view.

An economic nationalist, on the other hand, understanding practical reality and that “The State” is not going away anytime soon, might agree with a libertarian about burdensome taxation. But all things being equal, he embraces the tariff over other methods such as the income tax, which blatantly punishes citizens for their mere existence.

As cousins to the liberals, libertarians also tend to be pie-in-the-sky moralists. Purity spirals within their ranks tend to diffuse any spark a decent idea may engender. An economic nationalist, on the other hand, has a practical outlook on things and thus offers pragmatic solutions.

The libertarian wants to abolish the government at all costs, whereas the economic nationalist recognizes that government will exist in one way or another, even if the current model is not the “perfect solution.” To that end, the economic nationalist understands that when a monstrous apparatus such as the general government of the United States requires funding, the moral and prudent thing to do is to place the lion’s share of the burden on those folks who are not, in fact, United States citizens.

To every bureaucracy wielding the hammer of taxation, the individual American citizen looks exactly like another nailhead that needs pounding. The economic nationalist prefers to get out his catspaw and pry free the American taxpayer.

Without the specter of half of the earnings of the average American being wiped out each year thanks to taxation, domestic economies should rebound and flourish. Recognizing that robust markets will increase economic activity and make individual Americans wealthier, the proper tactic for the general government is to strategically penalize foreign firms, people, and nations who wish to undercut Americans at every step.

The American government need not bend over backwards to appease any foreign regime. Recall O'Leary’s First Law: Nice is not a virtue.

Why should everyday Americans have to foot the bill when it is the elected officials and bureaucrats, after all, who plunged the nation into massive debt in the first place?

In 2007 acclaimed historian, entrepreneur, and all-around hail-fellow-well-met, Tom Woods, compared this burden of taxation, which nearly every American now blindly accepts as his own, to one of the evils inherent in slavery:

“Slavery was wrong because the slave did forced labor every year of his life, the fruits of which he could not enjoy. American taxpayers do forced labor for half the year. Being forced to work for someone else against your will all year long is a moral abomination; being forced to do so for only half the year is a-ok. I just don't see it.”

Left out of the discussion at hand, though, is the dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Never fear, he is not to be trusted as his solutions are punitive toward any American not on the dole.

He also retains zero patriotic instincts—favoring “citizens of the world” over he/him/his own countrymen. The liberal has no compunction taxing his neighbor at the highest levels, especially if he sees him as “rich.” He is an enemy.

What, then, is an economic nationalist?

First, he is a patriot. He is not concerned with appeasing anyone other than his people. America for Americans, in other words.

He is not a free trader, either. In Where the Right Went Wrong (2004), Pat Buchanan wrote, “Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of World Government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright shining lie.”

If taken to their natural conclusion, the ambitions of free traders—and of liberalism in general—will result in a one-world government. This is the exact opposite aim of an economic nationalist. Libertarians, meanwhile, believe in the fantasy of no government.

Again, the initial instinct of the libertarian is understandable, if it were a given that we live in a vacuum. There already exists, however, a principle of subsidiarity in a proper society, which, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, “is opposed to certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms.”

It has been this way for millennia. The State has certain functions to keep the common weal. Being at odds with, and the major antagonist of, its own citizens is not one of those proper functions.

To put it succinctly: A tariff, properly raised, and an income tax, properly eliminated, should be the priority for the current Trump Administration.

A final request: Let the citizens decide what kind of fruits they enjoy without the cudgel of taxation manipulating their taste buds.

Sadly, some folks are so beholden to bad legislation and poorly decided case law that trying to convince them that the government's spittle is not precipitation becomes a near impossibility.

Why do they have tomatoes in with the fruits for? I know there are people that argue that tomatoes are a fruit. Tomatoes are a vegetable. I don't care what they say.

– Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes, April 13, 2008