Bisbee daily review., 1902-12-04
ACTUAL susstR PamTtp Ie-eAY.l4oo.
MR. REED AND THE TARIFF

THE TARIFF
 The New York Times, one of the leading republican papers of the coun' try, has the following regarding the tariff and the views of ex-Speaker Tom Reed, which by the way seem to coincide with the Roosevelt idea The Times says:
 Under the deceptive title of What Shall We Do with the Tariff?" Mr. Thomas B. Reed in the current num- Der of the North American Review, reflects at some length and with his accustomed grace on the supreme expediency of doing nothing with that sacred statute of taxation.
 We cannot say that there is any thing strikingy novel in his refec- tions. They are presented with that seriousness which is the charm of his delicate humor, and they abound in his gentle cynicism at the expense of those who oppose the wisdom of the ages as embodied in his own conciu- sions. But the substance of the ar gument is that really you would do best to let well enough alone, and that the Dingley tariff bill is quite good enough to be undisturbed. If you touch it you cannot tell what will happen. You may have tariff revision in your mind" and it may be perfect after its kind; but "a bill enacted by congress, ike the progress of the world, is the result of a fierce conflict of opposing human interests and must be so." Why bring on such a con f1ict?
 All this, not so attractively stated, has been said many times since the passage of the first American tariff. and the opposing human interests" which demand revision of the ab- surd and oppressive features of the actual tariff will not be lulled into ac- quiescence by such appeals. The in errant Dingley taxes may have been arrived at by process like that of "the progress of the world. but they do not represent the last stage of that progress, and the peo6De who suffer from the injustice, the favoritism, the promotion of monopoly which the DingIey ,aw involves, will not settle down into dumb submission for fear that they will get something worse. Nor will they be frightened by the ac- cusation that they are seeking free trade for it's own sweet sake" What ever they seek is for their own advan- tage and their own rights. and they can stand the sub-acid scolding Of Mir Reed better than they can endure the discrimination the tariff imposes.
 MT. Reed sniffs peril in the old no ton that the tariff was intended for the protection of infant industries, to be dropped as soon as the protection was no longer needed. Time and experience he cries, have enlarged that notion of protection. They have shown that protection is not privi- lege but system" We should say that protection was privilege erected into a system. MT. Reed thinks that a system must justify itself by re sults,' and proceeds to attribute most of our prosperity to the effect of the tariff and about all our setbacks to at- tempts at cutting down the tariff.
 Tn the United States the policy of protection has had century and a quarter of alternate triumph and de feat. The triumph has a'ways been followed by prosperity. the defeat by hard times" and he cites the Wilson bill as the latest instance. So prompt were the evidences of failure to meet the hopes of its.4 franrers that the country rose as one man and repealed the act" This is a beautiful speci- men of post-ergo-pxopter reasoning or assertion. So far as the people rose as one man" in the election of 1886 1t was due to the union of the gold democrats with the republicans against Bryanism and free silver There was no unanimity among the supporters of Mckinley as to the tar if. On the contrary, he got much sup port from the very men who had re belIed against the Mckinley tariff ir 1882.
 Nor do we admt the fairness of tho