The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1893-12-20
TARIFF ARGUMENT
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 D1ties Will Give More
Abundant Life to Manufacturing
Industries.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20.--The 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:
N 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
I'm Violation of This vital Truth,
until we have reached i'm 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; SO many private inter-
ests now share in the rich prerogative
of 20, ,000, 600 of people that any attempt
to dissolve this illegal union is neces-
sarily encountered by an 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 n Complete Response.
The bill ON which the committee has
expended much patient and anxious
labor Is not offered as complete re-
sponse to the mandate of the American
people. 1t 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-
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
70 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.
A glance at the tariff legislation of our
own country ought to satisfy every i'm
telligent student that protection has al
ways shown its falsity as system of
economv by it's absolute failure to i'm
sure healthy and stable prosperity to
manufacturers. 1t 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
ett stated, in an Grafton at Lowell, that
the sagacious men who founded the
manufactures Of New England were
never friends Of high tariff policy.
Hon. Amasa Walker, q former member
Of this house from Massachusetts, and
one Of our foremost writers on economic
questions, declared 1t to be within
his own personal knowledge that
when the proposal was made TO
impose the protective tariff of 1915, the
leading manufacturers Of Rhode Island,
amongst whom was Mr.. Slater, the
father ofcottOn spinning In this country,
met ct the counting room Of one Of their
number and after deliberate consulta-
tion, came unanimously to the oonclu-
sion that they
Had Rxther BE L4st ALONE,
as their business has grown mp natur-
ally and succeeded well, and theys fel /
confident of its continued prosperity il
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
fiuctuation 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