Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-07-15
SENATORIAL TARIFF REVISION

The soundest criticism of the senate's work
 in framing the dutable schedules of the tariff
 bill IS that offered by Senator La Follette-it
 practically ignores the vast economic changes
 which have occurred since the enactment of the | Dingley law. All the old protectionists af firmed their disbelief in a tariff that promoted
 monopoly. They held to a faith in competi-
 ton as an industrial regulation, maintaining
 that although tariff duties might reduce, re
 strain or abolish foreign competition, they aug
 mented domestic competition, thus protecting the consumer from exorbitant prices But what
 has actually happened9 Not only has foreign
 competition been practically eliminated by the high duties imposed on importatons, but free
 dom from foreign competition has been taken advantage of for the formation of domestic combinations to eliminate home competition.
 Under the Dingley law industrial combination has rapidly advanced, until on January l, 1908 we are using Senator La Folette's figures
 it embraced 10220 manufacturing plants, with a total capitalization in stocks and bonds of $31 ,672 ,000,000 These combinations con trol prices to such an extent that competition plays but limited role in regulating charges to the consumer.
 Meanwhile, the processes of production have been greatly cheapened, the efficiency of labor enhanced, inventions have multiplied the econ Omies of manufacture and displaced slower and coster methods of hand labor, so that the re- suit has been that we are now making commod- ities of all sorts at lower labor cost than any where else in the world, and our competition has been felt in the markets of every industrial nation. In fact, foreigners can obtain what we produce Tn many instances at vastly lower prices than the American who bears the burden of tariff taxation, and yet, as Mir. La Toilette says, ''the consumer IS not only denied the ben ehts of cheapened production but is compelled to pay extravagant prices for inferior articles '' -the precise consequence of monopoly the world over at every period of history.
 Now the senate finance committee and the senate, under its guidance, has thrust aside these vital considerations as irrelevant. It has gone upon the theory that gigantic combina- tons need, as much as the small manufacturer of an earlier period, to be protected from the competition of foreign manufacturers with whose products they are actually able to com- pete in oversea markets. The cheapening of ad is alleged as an excuse Reproduction abro not permitting the consumer to derive any ad vantage from the like rhaapening of production at home. All the great facts of domestic pro- dw.ion arc ignored, and only the possibility t!E lmportatiOns may to some extent disrlace domestic manufactures Is given any weight. Tol exclude these importations or to insure that the cost of making them shall allow the domestcl to charge monopoly price for his output is substantially the object of the duties imposed in the senate revision. That ex- cessive duties encourage monopoly as Presi- 1 dent Taft has said, has been of no concern to the senatorial revisers
 The form of prosperity that arises out of the | nigh privilege of expressing the American peo- pie under the forms of law is not of enduring stability, nor is it likely to insure the contnu- ance of the existing era of political good feel ng. t