The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1893-12-29
The Ways and Means Committee Re.
ports the Wilson Bill to the
House.
II Is q Long and Exhaustive Argu
ment Against the Principle of
Protection.
Reduction of Duties Will Give More
Abundant Life to Manufacturing
Industries.

mitted its report OH the tariff bill to til
house. The report is mainly an argr
ment against the principle of protection
The committee says:
The American people, after the ful
and most thorough debate ever give
by any people to their fiscal policy, hav
deliberately and rightly decided that tn
existing tariff is wrong in principle ant
g%rievously unjust in operation. The.
have decided as free men must Away.
decide-that the power of taxation hal
no lawful or constitutional exercise ex
cept for providing revenue for the sup
port Of the government. Every depart
ure from this principle is a departure
from the fundamental principles of free
institutions, land inevitably works out
gross inequality i'll the citizenship of
a country. For more than 30 years we
have levied the largest part of our fed
eral taxes
In Violation Of This Vital Truth,
until We have reached in the existing
tariff IN 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
h government; so many private inter-
ests now share in the rich prerogatiye
of Z 0,0O0, 900 of people that any attempt
TO dissolve this illegal union is neces-
sarily encountered by ain opposition that
rallies behind the intolerance of
monopoly, the power of concentrated
wealth, the inertia of fixed habits and
the honest errors of a generation of false
teaching.
Not a Complete Response.
The bill on which the committee has
expended much patient and anxious
labor is not offered as a complete re-
Spouse to the mandate of the American
people. 1t no moreI 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 aclnowl-
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-
leve, and we have the warrant of our
past experience for believing, that re-
duction of duties will not injure, but
Give More Abundant Life
all our great manufacturing indus
tnes, 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.
legislator must always remember
nat, In the beginning, temperate reform
S safest, having in itself the principle of
A glance at the tariff legislation of orr
WIN country ought to satisfy every in.
elligent student that protection has al.
ways shown its falsity as a system of
by its absolute failure to in
ure healthy and stable prosperity to
manufacturers. 1t teaches men TO de.
on artificial help, on laws taxing
neir countrylnen for prosperity in bust
ess, rather than upon their own skill
nd effort. 1t throws business out of its
atural hannel into artificial channels.
'hich there must always be
Fluctuation and Uncertainty.
nd 1t makes the tariff system the foot.
all OF party politics and the stability of
lrSe business interests the stake of ]
very popular election. None have i
'cognized this truth more fully than t
he wiser men who from time to time I
ave engaged in the so-called protected 9
Years ago MIR. Edward Ever
[t stated, in an Grafton at Lowell, that I
10 isagacious men who founded the Q
MANUFACTURERS of New England were
sver friends of a high. tariff policy,
on. Amasa Walker. a former emn
this house from Massachusetts and a
he OF our foremost writers on economic t
lestions, declared it to he within a
8 W personal knowledge that (
hen the proposal was made to L
lpose the protective tariff of 1916, the 7
aiding manufacturers of Rhode Island. L
nongst whom was Mr.. Slater. the I
OF cotton spinning a this country. b
ct at the counting room of n of their
imber and after deliberate c~onsulta.
IN, came unanimously to the conclu-
IN that they u
Had Rather He Let Alone, :
their business has grown up natur. =
" and succeeded well, and they fell =
nadent of its continued prosperity If 9
alone by the government. They =
gued that by laying a protective tariff =
cir business would be thrown out of
natural channels and be subject to
lctuation and uncertainty. But, "a q
ual, the clamor of selfish and less far. l,
sing men, and the ambition of law b
akers to usurp the place of Providence n
evailed. The country entered on q a
elective policy, with the unfailing re-
It that the government help begot a
,lent demand for more government
Up. G
The report goes on to give a history of r
tariff legislation since 1916, and con- u