Iowa state bystander. [volume] (Des Moines, Iowa) 1894-1916, 1910-05-13

business Offices Of which they were the
owners or the employees, In the last SEES
sion ! read In the senate. in the hand.
Col George G. richenor In which this
| fact Is clearly disclosed, and from which
a somewhat discouraging inference may
be drawn that not even n change of polii-
icnl parties was able to shake the grip of
| great manufacturing interests upon the
congress Of the United States. l viii read
the letter now, from this little book which
mas since been printed by Henry d. Tiche-
nor. the son and private secretary OF the
late chairman OF the board of general APP
| praiscrs,
| Jan. 30, 1so7.--My Dear Sir: Yours
enclosing suggestions as to tobacco schcd-
nle Just received. send you by this
will notice by these hearings that the
manufacturers ask only cent and a half
on tin plate and generally few changes.
~ me eastern mannfacturers want iron kept
AZ W cents and the western ore men want
1t advanced to 80 cents We expect to
cut nearly all our duties considerably below
those of the act of 1890, The metal an
son blu, were really made by the manu-
facturers; except as TO few items. Yours
very truly Nelson Dlngley, Jr
True Of Other Industries.
49,, What Is true ~ the cotton schedule
textile industries. Our tariffs on linen
goods, and on silks, are more completely
products of the factories concerned than
thoroughly is that understood that few
people in congress were able to see tho
joke, when at the end of the extraordinary
session the lifelong lobbyist of the silk
mills left the capitol saying: Gentle.
men, that is the best silk schedule ever
wrote
the ESr thirty years our hearings before fore
little more than an iteE!lzed statement
by interested parties Of what they de.
sired ITO have done, and a careful study
nf hon nj Ill nv Ia tad at
my own public service, enables me to say
that very large proportion of the rates,
even In the minor schedules, can be traced,
almost in n straight line, to these hear.
iEgs In the old days, when maHy of on,
industries were struggling for foothold In
the market place; when they were all In
when no great combinations had growh
up to control prices when there was anx.
iety on every, hand to stimulate enterprise,
and induce the Investment of capital, thu
old method Of tariff making even II it had
been understood by the public. was LEST
offensive morally than 1t is now.
Yet, more than twenty years ago thu
a provision elaborate in It's machinery. TO. |
putting our customs laws upon a tariff |
commission: and in S91 Senator Spooner.
duced into the senate on July $ an amend
ment to the Dingley bill. prepared by
Colonel Tichenor. creating tariff COM
mission ,is and in Of his
niicant now than they were then:
. IT the old method Of tariff making
had produced no other scandals except
that involved in transferring to interested
outside parties, the exercise of he power
Of the congress over taxation. 1t would
have been bad enough: but unhappily, the
method lends itself too easily to the sys-
TEN of party organization through which
the bossism, which has corrupted nearly
all our municipal governments and taken
the administration of the affairs of great
out of the hands of the
people who inhabit them, has been brought
into the legislative power Of the govern
menf' ~