Arizona republican., 1909-09-18

miners and farmers or else go ont ot
 business and find something else more
 profitable.
 ! Now, certainly the promises of the
 platform did not contemplate the
 downward revision of the tariff rates
 to such point that any industry
 heretofore protected should be in-
 Jured. Hence these who contend that
 the promise of the platform was to
 reduce prices by letting in foreign
 competition are contending for free ,trade. and not for anything they had
 rlght to infer from the republican
 platform.
 The ways and means committee of the house, with Payne at its head, de- voted full year to assembling evil
 uehce Tn reference to the rates under
 the tariff, and devoted an immense amount of work in the study of the tquestlon where the tariff could be reduced and where they ought to be raised with a view to maintaining a
 reasonable rate under the principles Of the platform, for every industry that deserves protection. They found l 1 ton was what the actual cost of pro-
 duction is, and whether an industry | in this country could live under a certain rate and withstand competi- ton from abroad, was a question of the utmost difficulty in settling. The manufacturers were prone to exag- gerate the injury which a reduction in the duty would give and to mag nifty the amount of duty neededI while the importers. on the other hand who were interested in developing impor- tation, were quite likely to be equally ! biased on their side. Mir. Payne re- ported bill-the Payne tariff bill which went to the senate and was amended in the senate by increasing
 the duty on some things and decreas- ing it on others.
 The difference between the house bill and the senate bill was much less than the newspapers represented. It turns our upon examination that the reductions in the senate were about equal to those in the house. though they differed in character. Now there is nothing quite so difficult as the discussion of the tariff bill for the reason that it covers so many differ ent items, while the meaning of the terms and the percentages are most difficult to understand. The passage of a new bill. especially where a change in the method of assessing duties is to be followed, presents an opportunity for various modes and calculations of the percentages of in creases and decreases that is really most misleading, or really throws no light at all upon the changes made
 One way of stating what was done is to say what the facts show-that under the Dingley law there were 2,e24 items. This included lutiable items only. The Payne law leaves 1,150 of these items unchanged There are decreases in 654 of the items and increases in 220 of the items. Now of course, that does not give a full pie ture. but it does show the proportion of decreases to have been three times those of the increases. Attempts have been made to show what the real effect of these changes have been by com pairing the imports under various schedules, and assuming that the changes and their importance were Tn proportion to the importations. Moth ing could be more unjust in a protec- tive tariff which also contains revenue provisions. Some of the tariff is made to increase the revenue by increasing importations which shall pay duty. Other items in the tariff are made to reduce competition, that is, by reducing importations. and therefore the ques tion of the importance of a change in rate cannot in the slightest degree be determined by the amount of i'm ports that take place.
 Tn order to determine the impor- tace of the changes, 1t is much fairer to take the articles on which rates of duty have been reduced and those upon which rates have been increased, and then determine from statistics how large a part articles upon which duties have been reduced, play in the con- sumption of the country and how large a part of those upon which duties Have been increaSed, play.
 Now the promise of the republican platform was not to revise everything downard, and in the speeches which have been taken as interpreting that platform, which I made in the cam DdlRn. l Qlu UOI ti1dt every thing should go downward. What 1 promised was that there should be many decreases and that in some few things increases would be found to be necessary: but that on the whole conceived a change of conditions that would make revision necessary down ward. and that I contend under the showing which I have made, has been the result Of the Payne bill.
 '.I do not agree. nor did the republi- can party agree. that we would reduce rates to such a point as to reduce prices by the introduction of foreign competition That is. what the free traders desire. That is what the rev. enue tariff reformers desire, but that is not what the republican platform promised-aud it is not what the re- publican party wished to bring about.
 "To repeat again what l opened this speech with-the proposition of the republican party was to reduce rates so as to maintain difference between the cost of production abroad and the cost of production here, in surfing a reasonable profit to the man ufacturer on all articles produced Tn this country, and the proposition to reduce rates and to prevent thelr be- ing excessive was to avoid the op-