The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1893-12-21
\ The Ways and Means Committee Re
ports the Wilson Bill to the
ssStl; House. IT. 81 %.
Vt is q Long and Exhaustive Argu-
ment Against the Principle Of
Protection.
4 Reduction of Dates Will Give More
Abundant Life to Manufacturing
5a55. Industries.

u 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
NJ by any people to their fiscal policy, have
4 deliberately and rightly decided that the
n existing tariff is wrong in principle and
n grievously unjust in operation. They
have decided as free men must always
I decide-that the power of taxation has
\ no lawful or constitutional exercise ex-
N cept for providing revenue for the sup
Il port Of the government. Every depart
\. ure from this principle is a departure
I from the fundamental principles of free
institutions, Fand inevitably works out
!. gross inequality in the citizenship of
h country. For more than 80 years we
\ have levied the largest part of our fed
1 eral taxes
In Violation of This Vital Truth,
Y 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; SO many private inter-
ests now share in the rich prerogative
!. Of 70,000,000 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 generation of false
teaching.
Not a Complete Response.
The bill on which the com mittee has
expended much patient and anxious
labor is not offered as 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 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-
ieve, and we have the warrant Of our
past experience for believing, that re-
duction of duties 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.
A glance at the tariff legislation Of our
own country ought to satisfy every in
telligent student that protection has al
ways shown its fa!sity as a system of
economy by its absolute failure to in
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. It throws business out of its
natural channels into artificial channels,
which there must always be
Punctuation and Uncertainty,
and it makes the tariff system the foot
ball of party politics and the stability of
large business interests the stake of
,,Dr,,1or
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
cit stated, i'll an Grafton at Lowell, that |
the tsagacious men who founded the
manufactures of New England were
never friends of high tariff policy.
Hon. Amasa Walker, former member
of this house from Massachusetts end
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 Let Alone,
as 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
auctuation 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
protective policy, with the unfailing re-
suit that the government help begot q
violent demand for more government
help. ..>
The report goes on to give history Of |