The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1910-05-23
CLARK ATTACKS
PAYNE ST ATUTE
Minority Leader Bitterly As
sails Tariff Law.
MAKES NOVEL PROPOSAL

Pledges Democratic Support If the
President Will Send Message to
Congress Recommending a Reduc-
tion of Duties on Wooden Schedules.
Foss of Massachusetts Also Pays
His Respects to Measure.
Washington, May 23.-Denouncing
the Payne-Aldrich tariff as trans
parent humbug," attacking the tariff
views Of it's author, Representative
Serene Payne (Rep., N. ~ and Wig
orously assailing President Taft for
his support of that law, Representa-
tive Champ Clark of Missouri, leader
of the Democratic minority, delivered
in the house what is regarded as the
Democratic keynote speech of the
coming congressional campaign. Mr..
Clark had prepared his address with
great care and spoke at length, giving
facts and figures in support of his con-
tention that the tariff had not been
honestly revised and that the Repub-
lican majority in congress had en-
deavoreda to trick the people. Mr..
Clark also paid his respect incidental
ly to the $250,O00 item in the sundry
civil appropriation bill for the crea-
ton of a tariff board. In concluding
Mr.. Clark made this proposal:
II have fair proposition to make
to the president and to my Republican
friends which will promote harmony
and which will bring untold blessings
to the consumers in the land: That
the president send a message to con-
gress, short and vigorous, which
shows that he means business, pro-
posing substantial reductions in the
WOODEN goods Schedules; let Mr.. Chair
man Payne report that bill from his
committee and, put it on it's passage
and without having consulted single
Democrat in the house I will give
bond for the proposition that every
Democrat will line up and vote for-it
Would Pass With a Whoop.
IF he would recommend it it will
go through the house and senate with
whoop and the people would rise up
and call him blessed. 1t is contended
that the reasons that no change in the
tariff in any manner whatsoever, how
ever meritorious, can be offered is the
fear that, if the tariff question be
opened up at all, we wicked Democrats
will let slip the dogs Of war and open
up the whole tariff question-to the
disarrangement of all business in the
land. I am so much interested in see
ing the American people have cheaper
wooden clothes that, without having
consulted single Democrat, l am GER
tain that every one of them agrees that
if the president will send a message
recommending the bill which I have
Indicated and Mr.. Chairman Payne
will report it and put it on it's passage,
sort to it.
|" The whole transaction could be
consummated in less than week and
a shout of rejoicing would ascend
from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
from the Great Lakes to the seething
waters of the sunlit gulf. It matters
not that the president would receive
the lions, share of the glory"
Foss Also Denounces Tariff.
Representative Eugene N. Foss, the
newly elected Democratic representa-
tive from Massachusetts, former Re-
publican and leading manufacturer,
signalized his beginning of active par.
ticipation in the house with sensa-
tionally radical attack upon the Payne
Aldrich tariff He declared the re-
cent revision Of the tariff to be "a
deliberate, bunco game from start to
finish"
"The people are demanding protec-
tion,' said Mr. Foss, "but the protec-
ton they are demanding is protection
from the Payne-Aldrich tariff"
Naturally it looks little strange
to some of us-after all this long de-
lay-and after the people have them
selves discovered the worst evils of
our tariff system, which such COM
mission could have exposed years ago
that it is now brought forward at
this eleventh hour. Clever editors Of
the leading journals have stigmatized
this proposition since its Introduction
here as "a sop to Cerberus,' or a tub
to the whale. .