The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1893-12-21
TARIFF ARGUMENT
The Ways and Means Committee Re-
ports the Wilson Bill to the
House.
It Is Long and Exhaustive Argu-
ment Against the Principle of
Protection.
Reduction Of Dlties Will Give More
Abundant Life to Manufacturing
Industries.

"ASnANofONs Luz. SVs-1uc ways dul
means committee of the house has sub
mitted its report ON the tariff bill to tn,
house. The report is mainly an argu
ment against the principle of protection
The committee says:
The American people, after the full
and most thorough debate ever given
by any people to their fiscal policy, have
deliberately and rightly decided that the
existing tariff is wrong in principle and
grievously unjust in operation. They
have decided as free men must always
decide-that the power Of taxation has
no lawful or constitutional exercise ex-
cept for providing revenue for the sup
port of the government. Every depart
ure from this principle is departure
from the fundamental principles of free
institutions, land inevitably works out
gross inequality in the citizenship of
country. For more than 80 years we
have levied the largest part of our fed
eral taxes
In Violation Of This vital Truth, e.
until we have reached in the existing
tariff an extreme and voluminous sys-
tenn of class taxation, to which history
may be challenged to furnish, any
parallel. So many private enterprises
have been taken into partnership with
the government; 80 many private inter
ests now share in the rich prerogative
Of 10000, 900 of people that any attempt
to dissolve this illegal union is neces-
sarily encountered by an opposition that
rallies behind the intolerance Of
Jnopoly, the power of concentrated
wealth, the Inertia of fixed habits and
the honest errors of generation of false
teaching.
Not Complete Response.
The bill on which the committee has
expended much patient and anxious
labor is not offered as q complete re-
Spouse to the mandate of the American
people. It no morel processes to be
purged of all protection than to be free
of all errors in its complex and manifold
details. However we may deny the ex-
istence of any legislative pledge or of
the right Of any congress to make such
pledge for the continuance of duties that
carry with them more or less acknowl-
edged protection, we must recognize that
great interests do exist whose existence
and prosperity is no part of our reform,
either to imperil or to curtail. We be-
Eeve, and we have the warrant of our
past K ia tor believing. that re-
ductiJn Of uuu will not injure, but
Give More Abundant Life
to all our great manufacturing indus
tries, however much they may dread
the change. In dealing with the tariff
question, as with every other long stand
ing abuse that has interviewer itself
with our social and industrial system,
the legislator must always remember
that, in the beginning, temperate reform
is safest, having in itself the principle of |
growth. ,s,-.
A glance at the tariff legislation of our |
own country ought to satisfy every in
telligSnt student that protection has al !
ways shown its falsity as system of |
economv by its absolute failure to in
sure healthy and stable prosperity to |
manufacturers. It teaches men to de-
pend on artificial help, on laws taxing
their countrymen for prosperity in bust
ness, rather than upon their own skill
and effort. 1t throws business out of its
natural channels into artificial channels,
which there must always be
Fluctuation and Uncertainty,
and it makes the tariff system the foot
ball of party politics and the stability of
large business interests the stake of
every popular election. None have
recognized this truth more fully than
the wiser men who from time to time
have engaged in the so-called protected
interests. Years ago Mr.. Edward Ever
EFT stated, in an Grafton at Lowell, that
the ,sagacious men who founded the
manufactures of New England were
never friends Of q high tariff policy.
Hon. Amasa Walker, former member
Of this house from Massachusetts, and
one OF our foremost writers on economic
questions, declared it to be within
his own personal knowledge that
when the proposal was made to
impose the protective tariff of 1916, the
leading manufacturers of Rhode Island.
amongst whom was Mr.. Slater, the
father of cotton spinning in this country,
met at the counting room of one of their
number and after deliberate consulta-
ton, came unanimously to the conclu-
sion that they
Had Rather BE Lot Alone,
as their business has grown ND natur.
ally and succeeded well, and they felt
confident Of its continued prosperity If
let alone by the government. They
argued that by laying protective tariff
their business would be thrown out of
Its natural channels and be subject to
ductuation and uncertainty. But. "a
usual, the clamor of selfish and less far.
seeing mel. and the ambition of law
makers to usurp the place of Providence
prevailed. The country entered on a
protective policy, with the unfailing re-
sult that the government help begot a
Violent demand for more government
help.
The report goes on to give history ~
he tariff legislation since 1915, ar
inues: -
The history Of Ar- III con-
Ihows that durir
here been, -.erican industry
lsvelc- g no other period has
= more healthy and rapid
.,ment of our manufacturing IN
.ustry than during the 10 years OF low
tariff from 1916 to 1851, nor more
healty and harmonious igrowth OF agrl.
culture and all the other industries OF
the country. ,ssls4slla
A salutary Lesson.
No chapter in our political experience
carries with it q more salutary lesson
than this, and none could appeal more
strongly to lawfnakers to establish just
and rational system of public revenues,
neither exhausting agriculture by con-
slant blood letting, nor keeping manu-
facturers alternating between chills and
fevers by artificial pampering. In this
a.->~kso,, olora lice afabilify Con-