Red Lodge picket. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1889-1907, 1893-12-23
TARIFF ARGUMENT
The Ways and Means Committee Re.
ports the Wilson Bill to the
House.
It Is a Long and Exhaustive Argu-
ment Against the Principle Of
Protection.
Reduction of Duties VIII Give More
Abundant Life to Manufacturing
Industries.

w ASHINGTON, Dec. 2O.-Ihe ways and
means committee Of the house has sub
mitted its report on the tariff bill to the
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 il principle and
grievously unjust in operation. They
have decided as free men must always
decide-that the power Of tax .tion has
no lawful or constitutional exercise ex-
cert for providing revenue for the sup
port of the government. Every depart
ura from this principle is departure
from the fundamental principles Of free
institutions, land inevitably works out
a 6 :oss 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,
until we have reached in the existing
tariff IN extreme ard voluminous sys-
! tenn of class taxation, to which history
may lie challenged to furnish any
parallel. So many private enterprises
have been taken into partnership with
the government; SO many private inter-
ests now share in the rich prerogative
of 10000, 600 of people that any attempt
to dissolve this illegal union is neces-
sarily encountered by an opposition that
rallies behind the intolerance of
mon opoly, the power of concentrated
wealth, the inertia of fixed habits and
the honest errors of a generation of false
teae him.
Not Complete Response.
Tie il en- which the committee has
expended much patient and anxious
Ia or is not offered as a complete re-
spouse t the mandate Of the American
people. It no more. 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-
jstence 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 lmperil or to cuctail. We be-
ieve, and we have the warrant of our
past experience for believing. that re-
uuction of duties will not in]ure, but
Give More Abundant Life
to all our great manufacturing indus
tries, however much they may dread
the change. LII 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.
A glance at the tariff legislation Of our
own country ought to satisfy every in
telligent student that protection has al
ways shown its falsity as a system OF
economy 10y its absolute failure to in-
sure healthy anil stable prosperity to
manufacturers. 1t teaches men to de-
pend on artificial help, On laws t,xin5
their country1nen for prosperity in busi-
Tess, ra her han u. on their own skill
and eff . l. ihrows u ,iness out OF its
nat Ia; channels into artificial channels,
VIII III ere must always lie
Fluctu I'll n 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 MIR. Edward Ever
cit stated, in an Grafton at Lowell, that
the sagaclous men who founded the
manufactures of New England were
never friends of a 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 ut the counting room Of one OF their
number and after deliberate consulta-
tion, came unanimously to the conclu-
sion that they
Had Rather BE Let Alone
Is their business has grown up 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
fluctuation and uncertainty But, as
usual, the clamor of selfish and less far
seeing men, and the ambition of law
makers to usurp the place of Providence
prevailed. The country entered on q
protective policy, with the unfailing re-
suit that the government help begot
violent demand for more government
help.
The report goes on to give history Of
&uS tdI1n lS,,1SldIlOu S1lCC lO1O, dllu COLI
Gnues:
The history Of American industry
shows that during no other period has
there been more healthy and rapid
development Of our manufacturing in-
dustry than during the Is years of low
tariff from 1916 to 1851, nor more
healty and harmonious lgrowth of agri-
culture and all the other industries Of
the country.
A Saiutary Lesson.
No cha ter in our po itical experience
carries with it more salutary lesson
than this, and none could appeal more
strongly to lawmakers to establish just
and ration / system Of public revenues,
neither exhausting agriculture by con-
stant blood letting, nor keeping manu-
facturers alternating between chills and