Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1905-10-12
SHOULD BE NO TARIFF JOLT
If the Dingley Law Is Good, Why
Should the Hand Of Re-
vision Touch Tt?

A curiously tuned "bugle call" for
tariff revision comes from that staunch
and stalwart organ of republicanism
and protection, the Pittsburg Ga
zette. Lest it be imagined that the Ga
zette has fallen from the faith and
embraced false doctrines, we quote from
its editorial a few sentences that have
the ring of truth:
There is no room to doubt that pro-
tective tariff is the basis of national
prosperity. The student of history can
not avoid that conclusion if he follows
the lines with an open mind.
"Teeming prosperity greets the OBJ
server on every hand. Mills and fac
tories are overwhelmed with orders la
Dor is fully employed, the fecund earth
is yielding crops almost without paral-
lei in agricultural annals.
IF tariff adjustment is shock to
business there will never come a mo-
ment when business will be in better
condition to bear it.
This prosperity, practically contin-
uous, began with the enactment of the
Dingley law. That law was the founda-
ton on which it was built"
Why, then, asks the Rochester DEM
ocrat and Chronicle, with tariff under
which abounding prosperity has been
obtained and retained should the hand
Of revision be laid upon an instrument
so powerful in its promotion Of the COM
mercial and industrial activities of the
country? Because, in the words of the
Gazette, "the common people. grown
rotund with fatness, have forgotten the
lean years and are demanding a change
in the tariff laws" Because "if the F'if-
ty-ninth congress does not do this, no
man may say who will be called to do it,"
Because "the Fifty-ninth congress is a
republican congress. 1t is economical
ly sound. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon is
a protectionist; Serene E. Payne, John
Dalzell, Charles H. Grosvenor, ranking
members of the committee on ways and
Means these are among the most ardent
protectionists in this country. With
these men TO lead and a solid phalanX
of republicans behind them, when tho
tariff is taken up for revision it will
be in the hands of its friends. 1t will
be revised right. No industry, no ma
terial interest will suffer. There ought
not to be any fear about revising the
tariff while these men, good and true,
are there to do it,"
All of which, apparently, means some
thing like this: That the everlasting
clamOr of the free traders against the
protective system is making an impress
sion on large mass of people who do
not know when they are we'll off, who
are liable to be led astray and who
may suddenly vote into power the anti
protection party. Therefore the repub-
lican party should forestall any such
movement by revising the tariff after
its own fashion and in line with the
popular sentiment may be appeased and
principles of the Dingley law, so that
tranquiliZed by the form Of a revision
which shall effect a change in schedules
but not in the spirit and policy which
pervade the present tariff Then, says
the Gazette, ''let it alone for the next ten
years"
shrewd plan honestly stated. but in
its very nature wholly unsatisfactory TO
the most insistent agitators for revision
-namely those whose leading articles
of faith is that protection is robbery"
| The ten-year feature of the scheme
| could not be binding on them. or any
body else, if public sentiment should
demand another revision in five years.
| The present tfdiff is not quite eight
years old. Who can say how long o.
| new one would last in view of the 'irre-
| pressible conflict between free trade
| and protection and of the waves of po-
litical reaction which occasionally and
spontaneously sweep over the country?