Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1910-08-11
AS MFR. watterson Sees 1t.

As Mr.. Watterson Sees 1t.
The republican insurgents who
make the tariff the center-piec'
around which they rally and call the
braves to battle, remind an old stager'
Henry Watterson of-the Louisville
-Courier-Journal-"o the man wht
!, first discovered that water runs dowl
h'n. AS little as the boy learning hi
multiplication table conceives the
complications of the higher mathe
n atics do they conceive the mystif1ca
tons of the tariff. They are today
where the pathfinders of tariff reform
we're forty years ago."
Mr.. Watterson can find nothing
in politics more anomalous thar
the attitude of the farmer vote
in the northwest toward the pro
tective system since the end of the
sectional war. The high duties Of
1861 were war duties, to be repealed
when the exigencies of war had
passed. The war over live republican
leaders set out to reform the tariff
They had freed the niger and they
were going to free the trade" The
influence of the Golden club was felt
81 strongly here that Allison and Gar
! field became members of it.
! But the problem from that to 1880
/ Was reconstruction, and privilege
worked under cover, while national
ali ention was on the south, to screw
up the tariff schedules. And the
| farmers of the northwest intent upon
securing the fruits of victory, voted
IS they shot" the while strengthening
the hands and feathering the nests of
/ the greedy and fattening Plumber
/ tund.
| So it went from year to year, until
millionaires were made and their
money pouring into the campaign
fund silenced the conscience of the
party and the free trade south
keeping the northwest convinced that
it was right in opposing what the
south favored. Then came the VIII
son tariff, undoing the work of thirty
years of education, and frittering
away the fruits of victory.
Now" to quote Mr.. Watterson-
comes the queer situation in Iowa
and Kansas. For the first time
through their own leaders, that is
through Dolliver and Cummins, Bris-
tow and Murdoch and Poindexter, the
farmers of the great northwest, and
the far-away Pacific are beginning to
realize something of what has been
done to them. But those leaders
touch the real question so gingerly
that they do not much threaten the
protective system. If the protection
D hoy
themselves to the new conditions and
accept the proposed reform, under re-
p,.tlican auspices. Thieves, however,
ere never wise. The rubber barons,
sv oIIen with peIf and pride, intrenched
in their privileges legally to levy
tribute, sure of their footing at Wash
irgton, support Aldrich and Cannon
end repudiate Dolliver and Cummins,
/ Bristow, Poindexter and Murdoch
Like the old slave aristocrats of the
south, they yield nothing. They know
/ their advantages and propose to stand
| pat upon it.
THAT advantage is the vastness OF
the protective system, the mystifica-
ton of the schedules and classified
tons. the impossible complications of
the tariff.
This tariff is feudal castle, girt
by massive walls and moats wide and
deep outside, constructed within upon
system of corridors and crossways,
defended by rifle-pits and masked bat
teries, so that in case the outer works
be carried the besieging force Will
find itself when it has passed the ex-
ternaI barriers entombed in a LADY
rinth and at the mercy of the be-
sieged.
at was thus that the Cleveland ad-
ministration, induced to cross the
drawbridge and to come inside the
walls in other words to recognize
the schedules, and classifications, to
tackle the masked batteries and rife
pits, to assist the mystifications and
complications of the robber castle,
instead of blowing it up with dyna-
mite-was cruelty slaughtered, just as
the new school OF reformers will be
slaughtered unless they pursue diff
ferent method Of warfare. All the
revenue we need to get through the
crstom-houses may be derived from a
simple scale of revenue duties not to
exceed twenty-five of thirty items,
m ainly of foreign production, for i'm
port. Under such a system every
voter will distinctly know on what he
Pays taxes and precisely how he Is
taxed. The robber barons could not
hide behind their schedules and classi-
fieations to pick consumers off as from
r:fie-pits and masked batteries. the
poor devils ignorant where the shots
come from and by whom they are
fred. In other words, such measure
would force the robbers out into the
oIen.
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