Manchester Democrat., 1909-05-26
SOME OF THE MYSTERIES OF
TARIFF MAKING.
(From Senator Delivers Speech.


tial judges. For half century, our
people have defended it with their
votes on every election day, with no
direct concern of any large signifi-
cance in any of its schedules and no
purpose to serve except the general
prosperity of the American people
What have said of Iowa is true,
in an important sense, of the upper
Mississipppi valley,sand cannot help
thinking that there is radical de-
feet in that party leadership which
dismisses the voice CT that great
community, fearlessly expressed in
both houses of congress, with Gym
ical sneer about the weakness of
public men who are governed by tenn
porary political eXigencies. For it
ought not to be forgetful that what
we are doing here must be submit
ted TO the American people n jury
Of unnumbered millions, already i'm
panelled, with this case under con-
sideration. 1t is not the same jury
which passed upon the tariff act of
1897; it is the most momentous fact
in 1ur national life. as the late SEN
atar Hoar suggests in his "Autobiog-
Iraphy af Seventy years" that within
this period the whole field OF Amer.-
can Industry has undergone revolu-
ton. The independent workings of
American labor stand no longer as
they appeared in the magnificent vi
sion OF Alexander Hamilton when he
laid dawn the doctrine that the CON-
petition of domestic producers would
guard the community against all the
evils of extortion. The inspiring re-
trcspeat of MIR. Blaine in his Twenty
Years of Congress" in which he re-
counted the triumphs of the protec-
tive doctrine in the perfect fulfillmen
af Hamiltons prediction already needs
a good deal of revision to bring the
narrative up to date.
The Situation in 1897.
In 1897, when the Dingley tariff law
was enacted, the consolidation of our
industrial system into great corpora
tions had not fairly begun. The bust
ness men who appeared before the
ways and means committee of the
house were an anxious company; the
spoke for silent factories and the
dead. ashes of furnaces without fire
and chimneys without smoke. They
represented unemployed labor and
idle capital; they belonged to the oil
Industrial regime, now almost obso-
lete in nearly all great departments
Of production, and they received the
treatment which they would receive
now freely at my hands if / had
the power to give it to them. 1t. is
a grim failure to comprehend what
iold DR.. Johnson used to call @the sad
yicissitudes of things when. the lead
ers of2a political party summon their
followers to practically re-enact the
tariff Of 1897 under the conditions
which prevail today, and when men
are derided because, having helped
to frame that law, they seek to have
it re-examined in the light of pre-
sent-day experience.
| is it possible that man, because
he voted for the Allison tin plate rate
of 1889 and heard poor Mckinley ded-
icate the first tin-plate mill in Amer
of treachery to the protective-tarift
system if he desires that schedule re-
examined, after seeing the feeble en-
terprise of 1890 grown within single
decade to the full measure of this
market place, organized into great
corporations, over-capitalized into g
speculative trust, and at length un'
| loaded on the United States Steel
company, with rake-off to the pro
moters sufficient to buy the Rock
Island system? If a transaction like
that has made no impression upon TIL
| mind of congress, l expose no secret
| in saying that it has made very
4 profound impression on the thought
and purposes, of the American people
| The Special Duty of Congress.
II repeat, therefore, what l said the
other day, that the duty of this con
grass is to reduce the margin of pro
lection provided in the Dingley rates
wherever it can be done without sub
stantial injury to the productive en-
terprises of this market place, 1t Il
our special duty to take up thos'
schedules which represent the lars
est investments of protected capita
and at least take out of them rate
that are now everywhere known t
be eXtrayagant and unnecessary
which rise so far above the level O
our real industrial needs as to brin!
the policy of protection into ridicul
without doing anybody any sort O
good. recognize the peculiar pref
aration of the senator from Rhed
Island for that work. He has a
ready successfully applied sound pril
ciples to some of the excesses
the iron and steel schedule. d
not know that he has gone far enous
, but he certainly has gone in the rigf
direction. He has failed, in m
Judgment, in those schedules, whic
relate to the textile industries, an
it becomes the duty cf somebody II;
helplessly preocupied with local i
terests to bring this failure to til
attention of the senate and of I'll
American people. need not at
that in doing so shall speak vii
perfect coed will for those wi
differ from me and with perfect cha
ity to those whose unconscious poll
ical bigotry makes it hard for the