The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-03-19

l.the tariff act or ltl6 unhii the h8itd- tion for an upward revision Of the custom duties began. propaganda of far-reaching influence was set on foot, and the protection advocates hammered away year in and year out for higher tariff. Societies. sprang up
 everywhere, whose purpose was to fos- ter the protection sentiment, New York
 and Philadelphia being the irspira-
 tionai centers of the agitation. By 1917 this agitation had grown to such
 volume that the New York legislature passed a resolution requiring all its members to appear dressed in clothes
 which were made from American cloth. The New York society elected the three ex- -nresidents members of the society. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison accepted the election by letter. Mon- roe, then President appeared Tn per
 son and delivered. an address.
 We are given a glimpse of the fore runner of the American Protective
 Tariff League in a speech delivered in
 the House by Mir. whitman of Massa- chusetts. He said that the press or
 the country was being filled with the
 paganda, that this society was cir culating the protection doctrines so
 thoroughly that the people were being deluded into believing them. In his climax he asked :"If they can do this
 in the gristle. what will they do in the
 boneg'
 By general consent there were few changes of minor nature made in the
 tariff in 1913. but they were merely corrective of some palpable errors in the law of 1916. A stiff fight ensued
 in 1s1s Henry Clay, greatest of the
 Protectionists. was Speaker. and he proceeded to shape mp his committees in favor of high tariff. A high tariff
 bill was brought In and considered. It was during the consideration of this
 bill that the first faint reference to the constitutionality of Protection was made---by Mir. Whitman of Massachu- setts. Speaker Clay exercised his privilege as member. and delivered a comprehensive address on the sub ject. Referring to the constitutional argument he said that 1t had remained for the gentleman from Massachusetts to find. such an impeachment. an im- pediment which no other statesman would leave "him in undisturbed pos- session" of his discovery. Tn not one of the voluminous American State Papers" relating to the tariff was this question of constitutionality raised.
 The House passed its. Protection bill with little trouble, but when the mat ter came up in the Senate, that body, uy u HidJoTIty Of Oniy one vote, 0ecIdoI to postpone consideration .. until the next session, which was tantamont to defeat of the measure. Harrison Gray Otis was the Senator who de- feated the. bill! He was in favor of it, and would have so" voted, but his con- stituents wished him to oppose it, and he did so, for which he was thanked in public meeting in Boston. It was great blow to the Protectionists. but
 ne fHnt fnA so seriously as the Lexington. Ken lucky, Public Enquirer. It appeared with the black. borders of deepest mourning. and commanded: Mourn, oh y8 sons and daughters of Kentucky. Oh ye inhabitants of the United States, put on sackcloth and ashes. for the great enemy of your independence has prevailed" Y:
 The defeat settled the question for the time being. so far as Congress was concerned. but it"gave. only renewed life to the agitation before the coun- try. There was no effort to revive the bill fin, tnee"Senate during the second session A6f 'the Sixteenth Congress, and tariff Legislation in theA Seventeenth Congress got no further than desul- tory consideration in the House in the Committee Of the Whole. But in the meantime the census of 1920 had been taken. It brought about a reappoint- ment that considerably enhanced the protection strength in the House, and the high tariff people looked forward with high hopes to the Eighteenth Congress.
 The proceedings of c ongress in enacting the tariff law of 1924 was but the Gettysburg of the campaign that resulted in the recrudescence of the protection sentiment of the country. President Monroe had referred to the matter in such a way in his messages to Congress that both sides have since been able to derive comfort from his words. But his attitude was no more uncertain than that of others. Madi- son once made statement with refer- ence to protection which the friends of the policy assertedFwas in its favor The enemies of protection construed it as being against the policy. The ef- rect Of his utterance was to-say that he could not be written down as a Free Trader. but it did not go far enough to justify his being called Protectionist.
 An effort was made to have incor- porated in the Act of 1924 provision which would put an end to the prac- tice of extending credit, to the mer- chant importers to cover the import duties until such time as they disposed of the goods and got the money for them. This had been the practice from the beginning. and it was urged that the merchant did not pay the duty. but simply collected 1t from the consumer This proposition was urged with much force, but Congress never effectively cut off the credit system until 1s42. It is true that it Vlad enacted a law to stop 1t in 1882, but that law was more honored in Its breach than in It's ob- servance.
 The debates on the tariff bill shed much light on conditions obtaining at home and abroad at that time. There was no market for American food stuffs abroad. The Protectionists as- serted that this was due to the low tariff. But at that very time England had a law on her statute books provid- ing that no wheat should be imported from the United States so long as the price of wheat was under ten shillings 1.-two and a half dollars) bushel Of course the price never reached that point. and American wheat found no outlet. There was a depression every where-worse in Europe even than In America. The termination of the Napoleonic wars had turned loose great hordes of unemployed. and while there was no scarcity of foodstuffs there was a woefu1 lack of means to pur- chase them.
 The two most gifted orators of the day drew rival pictures of the times Henry Clay portrayed the country in the throes of the deepest depression; factories idle; industries crumbling; men unemployed; people hungry-these were the familiar essentials, Daniel Webster drew the answering picture, He had not seen in the situation the things Clay had painted. He saw labor raUardad tai n