Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1910-05-11

l PI SSuil1S d SOOo WINS WYNN
be heard in objection, and somebody
would be liable to say that a PROPOSE
ton involving the price of the peoples
clothing should be considered for few
minutes at least from public stand
point, so that that portion of the COM
munity which wears wooden clothes
should have their complaint heard.
Yet in 1857 schedule K was handed
to us, after that exact argument by
Senator Sherman. and by that exact ar
gurnent It has been continued from
generation TO generation, bringing into
reproach every general revision of the
tariff from that day to this. Even at
the beginning. there We're some voices
against such method of transacting
the public business. The names Of
Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson
We're recorded against the measure on
its mai passage. But there IS no evil
dence that the general opinion of the
country took any offence on account of
the application of this primitive meth
cd of tariff making by a commission
selected by its beneiciaries, so that for
nearly half century that schedule, un-
changed and inlmutabIe. has defed
every effort of the law making power
TO mitigate its excuses, or even TO
InOCSrNlZe It's pnrdSSOlOSN.
True OF Other Industries.
What is true Of the cotton schedule
an dthe wool scheduie is true Of the
other textile industries. Our tariffs on
linen goods, and on silks, are more
completely products Of the factories
concerned than the cloths which they
weave, and SO thoroughly is that I'M
derstood that few people in congress
were able 10 see the joke, when at the
end of the extraordinary session the
lifelong lobbyist of the silk mills left
the capitol saying: Gentlemen, that is
the best silk schedule 1 ever wrote.
For thirty years our hearings be-
fore the ways and means committee
have been little more than an itemized
statement by interested parties OF what
they desired to have done and careful
study of these hearings during the per-
iod of my own public service enables
me 10 say that a very large proportion
of the rates, even in the minor sched-
ules. can be traced, almost in a
straight line, to these hearings. In the
old days, when many of our industries
were struggling for foothold in the
market place: when they were all in
active competition among themselves:
when no great combinations had
grown UP TO control prices: when there
was anxiety on every hand TO stimu-
late enterprises and induce the invest
7nent of capital, the old method of tar
if making. even if ii had been un-
derstood by the public. was less often
siye morally than il is now.
/ Yet more than twenty years ago
the senate, in the Allison bill of 1883,
added a provision, elaborate in its ma
chinery, for putting our customs laws
upon scientific basis by the creation
of a tariff commission; and in 1897
Senator Spooner, q man of ularvelouslT
clear vision, introduced into the senate
on July 5 an amendment to the Ding
ley bill, prepared by Colonel Tichenor,
creating a tariff commission, and in
support of his amendment spoke these
words of wisdom, far more significant
than they were then:
IF the old method Of tariff making
/ had produced no other scandals except
that involved in transferring 10 inter-
ested outside parties the exercise OF
the power Of the congress over taxa
ton. it would have been bad enough:
but. unhappily, the method lends itself
100 easily 10 the system of party or
ganization thru which the bossism,
which has corrupted nearly all our mu-
nicipal governments and taken the ad-
nlinistration of the affairs of great
commemorative out of the hands Of
the people who inhabit them, has been
brought into the legislative power Of
/ the government