The Portland daily press., 1883-03-07
New York Tribune.l
The New Tariff Act

The great work Of the XLVIIth Congress
has been the revision and reduction of the
tariff and the large reduction of internal
taxes. Faulty in many things, this Congress
has grandly yindcated at last the wisdom,
and, it might almost be said, the absolute
necessity of one of the most important acl s
passed at its first session. When the Tariff
Commission bin was passed opponents of
the Republican p ATTY declared that it was a
cheat. intended To prevent any revision or
reduction of the tariff. Many thousand vot-
ers, distrusting the sincerity of the step.
voted against the party last fall for that rea
son. But Congress has now passed a greatly
improved Tariff bill at short session-a
thing deemed impossible by very many; has
adopted to very great extent the recon-
mendations of the Commission which it had
created, and has clearly demonstrated in the
course of this greaG work that it's perform
ance, in the teeth of unpatriotic and unscru-
pul0us Democratic opposition, would have
been utterly impossible had not the inyesti-
cations of the Commission first given defin
iteness and guidance to the movement and
brought to aid it powerful concentration
of pubic opinion.
From the outset, the bill of the Commits
sion has been stronge out of Congress and
even in Congress than any other which it
was possible to frame. 1t contained numer-
GUS errors. due to lack of time for prepara-
ton, which the Commissioners themselves
OIL I,o fopo -
A large proportion of the changes that have
been made in the form of enumerations or
III rates have been corrections of this nature
But there are very few members Of either
House, we suspect, who are aware how
large part of the bill that has been passed
was in every letter the work of the Commits
sion. There has been so much conflict of
opinion about few important departures
from its plan that the substantial identity
of the great part of the bill now passed with
the one reported by the Commission has
been generally lost sight of. For public in
deemed worth while.
The first and greatest merit of the Tariff
Commissioners bill was judged to be its
simplifcation of the Tariff, its removal of
those antiquities which had caused count
less vexations and costly disputes. Now
the bill that has been passed embraces 631
distinct articles or classifcations, not includ-
ing the free list. OF these 524 have been
taken. word for word, from the bill reported
by the Commission. And much more than
balf of tho rom ind 1ap oro mara additions sc
triaing articles by name which the Commits
sion for brevity's sake had judged it sufici-
ent to include under general clauses. or
which had been inadvertently overlooked
In order to render vexatious uncertainty
still less probable, Congress has chosen to
insert the names specifically with the ap-
propriate duty. In another and smaller
class of cases, however, Congress preferred
to retain The present classifications, holding
that l. gal decisions had now sufficiently re-
moved the danger Of ambiguity. In third
and still smaller class of cases, the object of
the majority was to secure greater or less
reduction Of duty than had been recommend
ed, and these, probably less than 25 in num-
Der, were mainly in the cotton, woolen
goods, or iron aud steel schedules, over
which there has been so much struggle.
Next, as to rates, III about stwo-thirds OF
the 631 specifications, namely in 400 in all,
the act passed retains precisely the rate pro-
posed by the Commission. In over so cases
more, substantially the same rate is retained
for articles now named which the Commits
sion had included under general clauses.
Thus there remain in all about ITO depar-
lures from the ra es fixed by the Commis-
sion, and many Of these are small. Lower
duties are fixed in 9S cases, higher duties in
40 cases, and in about 20 cases it does not