The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-05-25

| try has afforded. Almost every kind l of business is affected directly or in directly by the tariff laws and it has
 in recent years become notorious that
 the schedules of the tariff were arr
 ranged by the Ways and Means Com
 mittee of the House of Representatives and the Finance Committee of the Senate with a very tender regard for particular business interests.
 Everybody will agree that if the tariff policy is indeed to be protective and to seek the objects which it has
 always pretended to seek, it is per- fectly legitimate that it should have to pay a very careful regard to the business interests of the country ta- ken as a whole. But that is a very different matter from paying regard to the individual interests of particu- lar undertakings and of particular groups of men. The long and short of the whole experience, as we now see it, is that our whole tariff legisla- tion has degenerated from a policy of protection into policy of patronage. The party which has stood most con- sistently for the so-called system of protection has derived not a little of its power from the support of the great business interests of the country. do not mean the moral support mere. ly. I mean that it has been supplied with immense sums of money for the conduct of its campaigns and the maintenance of its organization and that, whether consciously or unconx sciously, it has established a partner ship with the manufacturing interests of the country which has deprived it of its liberty of action in all matters touching the tariff. It is bound by obligations, tacit and explicit, to see that those interests are not damaged which have been it's most stalwart hackers and
 It has again and again happened, therefore, to the scandal of the whole country, that items and clauses have been inserted into our tariff laws which were not even explained to the members of Congress, which received no exposition at all, which were a matter of private arrangement and un- derstanding between the representa- tives of certain great business inter- ests and the members of the Ways and Means Committee of the House and the Finance Committee of the Senate. The Finance Committee of the Senate in particular during many years was the stronghold of these spe- cial interests. I am not intimatins direct corruption of any kind. I am speaking now only of that subtle cor ruption of the will to which I have already referred. The will dominant in the finance committee of the senate has for many decades together been subservient to the dictates and to the interests of particular groups of men. Their interests have been served con- Stantly and often in defiance of the well-knoWn opinions and purposes not only of the national administra ton but of the members of the Houses as well who for reason struggled in vain against the dicta teS of the omnipotent leaders of the Senate.
 Here displayed in it's grossest form was the intimate power of business over politics.
 The country has definitely made up it's mind that it will get at the root of this matter and of all other matters like it, and that it will break up this alliance. There was time when it looked as if to accomplish this would involve a very dangerous sort of strife between the general mass of voters in the country and those who had eXhib- ited splendid talents in building up the business of America. But hap oily, that threat has disappeared. It is one of the happy circumstances of our time that the most intelligent and progressive of our business men have seen the mistake as we'll as the im- morality of the whole bad business. The alliance between business and poli- tics has been a burden to them-an advantage no doubt upon occasion but very questionable and burdensome adVantage. It mas gwen them great power but it has also subjected them to a sort of slavery and sort of sub- serviency to leading politicians They are anxious to be freed from the bon- dage as the country is to be rid of the influences and methods which it rep resents. Leading business men are now becoming great factors in the emancipation of the country from a system which was leading from bad to worse. There are those, of course who are welded to the old ways and who will stand out for them to the last, but they will sink into a minor- ity and be overcome. They have found that their old excuse that it was nec- essary to defend themselves against unfair legislation is no longer a good excuse, that there is a better way of defending themselves than through the private use of money and that is to take the public into their confidence, to make absolutely open all their deal- ings with legislative bodies and legis- Iative officers, and let the public judge as between them and those with whom they are dealing in the field of poli- tics.
 This discovery on their part of what ought to have been obvious alr along points out the way of reform, for un- doubtedly publicity comes very near being the cure-all for political and conomic maladies of this sort. But publicity will continue to be very diff