Jamestown weekly alert. [volume] (Jamestown, Stutsman County, D.T. [N.D.]) 1882-1925, 1911-12-07
PRESIDENT TALKS STRAIGHT
TO THE POINT ON PUB
LIC MATTERS
Will do His Duty as He Sees it and
Believes He is in the
Right

Right
tent issue of the Outlook there ap-
pears an article entitled president
Taft's Own View, An Authorized In
terview," in which the president dis
cusses current topics with an. inter-
viewer, as follows in part:
Speaking of the tariff issue, Mr..
President, if you could begin your
administration again, would you re-
peat your Winona speech tomor-
row?" the interviewer asked.
"In phraseology, no; in effect,
yes. Had I known as much as I
do now, should have realized that
there are some things one cannot
leave ito be taken for granted. I
dictated that speech to a stenograph-
er on the cars between two stations,
and glanced through it only enough
to straighten its grammar; it was
sent out by the press with cores
pondingly little ceremony, so that
papers received it in all sorts of
shapes. If I had prepared it two
or three weeks before and revised
it deliberately, as 1 ought to have
done, I should have clarified sever
al passages. And, particularly, I
should have changed the sentence
where I proclaim the Payne Tariff
Act the best ever passed. The COM
parative would have been better
description than the superlative; for,
whatever its shortcomings the act
still contains less to be criticised than
it's predecessors, and it did, as a
whole, revise the existing schedule
downward. go
"I had no fault to find with eth
er democrats or insurgents for try
ing to reduce any duties they chose;
what I object to is disturbing the
business of the country today, when
there is nothing better than guess
work to proceed upon, and then dis
turbing it afresh six months later
when the best available information
is before us. I do not join in the
charge of Inconsistency against the
democrats for compromising with La
Toilette on the wool schedule in
stead of standing by their own fig
ures. If they could not get all the
reduction they asked for, they were
quite justified in taking what they
could get. My chief criticism on
their tariff activities last session was
that they were willing to send to me
legislation so crude and i'll digested
that they must have known, if they
had paused to think, that I could
not possibly approve it"
els your tariff reduction program
based on the theory that it will bring
about a corresponding reduction in
the cost of living?"
81 think that that effect is greatly
over estimated. My chief objection
to a needlessly high tariff is that it
nourishes monopoly. It holds forth
constant temptation to the forma-
tion of little trusts, which often are
more directly oppressive to the con-
sumer than big ones"
.'Mr. President, there is your tar
If board. You have been sharply
criticised for makingl>it up Of men
who are not tariff experts. !" =
'And that is true; they are not. If
had been appointing board Of
tariff experts I could not have got a.
long with less than twenty-five in
order to do justice to all branches of
the subject. What I undertook to do
was to make up board of trained
investigators, capable of managing a
thorough inquiry into costs of pro-
duction and of analyzing its elements.