Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1908-12-03
WILL REVISE TARIFF
PRESIDENT-ELECT TAFT HAS
GIVEN PLEDGE TO COUNTRY.
"Tinkering" Can Have Nothing but
Bad Effect on Busness-Some
Evils That Call Loudly
fer Correction.

The incipient agitation which ap-
pears to have sprung up for immediate
tariff revision at the next session of
congress and the biting insnuation
that revision promises were largely for
the purpose of buncombe are prema-
ture. 1t is reasonable to give Mr.. Taft
chance. He did not promise revision
at the December session. His platform
declared for revision of the tariff at
an extra session of congress, to be
called Immediately after March T. Mr..
Tafts sincerity was impugned during
the campaign, and in several speeches,
notably in one of his chief speeches in
Kansas, he set all doubts at rest by
declaring that he and his party had
pledged tariff revision; that revision
undoubtedly would be down." and
that to the best of his ability he would
fulfill the pledge to effect forward
legislation which should express the
deliberate sense of the nation
The deliberate sense of the nation is
what is wanted and needed, but re-
vision in a haphazard and tentative
way at the neXt session, at the fag
end of the Roosevelt administration,
might prove to be nothing more than
very hazardous sort of tariff tinker
ing which would prove troublesome
to business interests and wholly un-
satisfactory to everybody. 1t is now
recognized by Mr. Taft's party and by
every class of political thought that
something must be done with the tar
if, and that the task must be under
taken and performed in perfect good
faith; but free traders, tariff-for-reve-
nue. men, moderate men and high pro-
tectionists can perhaps all stand on a
platform which decides for peace and
pause this winter and for a program
which avoids haste, waste and hys-
terra.
The eXaction of inordinate prices for
commodities which affect the railroad
activity, and indirectly the purses and
prosperity Of the whole people; hun
dreds of indefensibe schedules which
bear with hardship upon the consum-
ers, and the maintenance of artificial
high prices in many fields, are evils to
be corrected Nobody, even on the
stump, now seriously contends that
the foreigner pays the tax, and revi-
sion has been inevitable from the day
that President Mckinley declared in
his Buffalo speech:
IF, perchance, some of our tariffs
are no longer needed for revenue or to
encourage and protect our industries
at home, why should they not be en-
ployed to extend and promote our mar
kets abroad?"
The country will demand and it will
have tariff revision, but only a doc
trinaire will lose sight of the fact that
the tariff is intimately bound up with
the whole fabric of our commerce and
industry, and that the relation is so
close and complicated that tariff re-
vision will affect every element of the
population, directly or Indirectly, and
every industry, whether it be directly
related to the tariff or not big stick"
and snap judgment methods are not to
be desired in dealing with the tariff.
The country voted for Judge Taft be-
cause he represents in the public mind
as clearly as any man can deliberation,
wisdom and common sense 1t is right
that the administration under his guild
ance should have complete control OF
the tariff question, not merely because
his administration must shoulder the
responsibility, but because the country
has confidence in his wisdom, modera-
ton and courage.