The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1909-01-15
JUSTICE DEPENDS
TARIFF CHAMPION
How Fordney. in Ways and
Means Committee, Unmasked
Selfish Claims.
cLoTHiER's CONFESSION
Would Manufacture Abroad and Ship
Here IL Duty Were Removed.

From the Philadelphia Public Ledger.
Criticism of the course of Representa-
tive Joseph W. Fordney of Michigan,
, as a member Of the Ways and Means
Committee, during the pending tariff
inquiry, has brought Theodore Justice,
of this city, to his defense
DIR. j. j. Orton, on December 80, in a
symposium on tariff revision held in
Baltimore by the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, said:
1T cannot be doubted that Congress
has departed very widely from honest
or consistent protection. He also
stated that IF we had high and
honest standard of public morals in
Congress it would be much easier to get
an honest tariff, and the consumer
| would not be plundered. I'm Washing.
ton, he added, 1T is common gossip
that ont Of 10 members of the WAYS
and Means Committee which Will
frame the new tariff various member
are pecuniarily interested in this or that
schedule. He spoke of Representative
Fordney as having particularly offended
in connection with strenuous opposition
to legislation favorable to the consum
er, and declared that Senator Burton's ;
act in representing private interests
before one of the Government depart
ments, for which he was sent to prison,
was mild and harmless as compared
with acts that are openly committed by
members of Congress in connection
with tariff legislation.
LOYAL TO PLATFORM
Mr.. Justices comment on the fore
going is as follows
mo one could be selected TO whom
these statements apply with less truth
than to Mr. Fordney. These criticisms
are not only unjust but cruel; and they
are false. After having spent many
days in the room of the Committee on
Ways and Means while witnesses were
being examined, gained the profound
impression that Of all the committee
members Mr.. Fordney was least deserv-
ing Of any structures of this character
THE tariff plank in the Chicago plat.
form was the rock Of principle upon
which Mr.. Fordney firmly stood. He
s-questioned the witnesses in such a
manner as to uumask in the briefest
! space of time the motives of personal
se|fshness which had brought them be-
fore the committee. At the same time
Mr.. Fordney was ever the active cham
pion of broadly national and consistent
protection for every and all American
interests. 1t reminded one of Major
McKinley's attitude when he was form
ing the act of 1890 which bore his name.
particularly noted the fact that MIR.
Fordney always hewed to the line of
that important plank of the Chicago
platform which the American people
have so recently indorsed, and which
was their mandate to Congress not only
to revise the tariff but as to how to re-
wise it. Witnesses who were asking
for tariff changes that would injure
whole classes of the American people
were so questioned by MIR. Fordney as
to develope the fact that such claimants,
while eager and pleased to describe
themselves as 'protectionists,' were ut
terly opposed to any practicable appli-
cation of the principle of impartial
protection to American industries and
in favor of consumers, who are the
main body of producers This consis-
tent and fearless course made him
especially offensive to the free traders,
for there is no middle class. If an in
dividual does not believe in protection
that will protect he is not protection
ist.
A SAMPLE CONFESSION
LAS an illustration of the kind sof
confessions that Mr.. Fordney extracted