The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-03-06

human welfare SO long as We are
| true to that faith, so long as we fol-
| low those traditions. our party is
| necessarily the party of progress
| Privileged and special interests have
no place under such code.
| Let me point out to you briefly two
| or three of the vital achievements
| which seem to me to identify Mr.. Taft
with this cause. I shall not attempt
a summary of his constructive work.
| / shall merely indicate several of the
| typical accomplishment which, to
my mind, identify his administration
| with the progress of the Republican
party and of the nation.
Tariff Reform.
In the first place, wish to empha-
| size the accomplishment in connec-
ton with which he has been most
| falsely vilified and abused. I
mean his accomplishment in getting
his party and the nation on to the
right track in regard to tariff re-
form. This is not only a progressive
achievement; if it is adhered to by
the party. if the president is sup
ported in it, it removes the one active
and dangerous tendency which during
the past thirty years has been under
mining the real principles of the par
t. and tending to turn it into a party
of reaction. The productive tariff of
Alexander Hamilton was intended to
be an instrument fer the welfare of
the nation as a whole. His tariff
]
general constructive fiscal policy of
which it formed part, was intended
to build up Self-dependent, vigoF-
Gus and prosperous nation, wherein
the welfare of each individual was
inseparably bound up in the prosper
ity of the whole. This national the
DRY of a protective tariff the Repub-
lican party adopted, although under
the exigencieS of the great Civil war
they were Obliged to use it as war
measure for the collection of revenue.
But with the lapse of time after the
war was over, when a protective tar
if tariff had become fixed IIstitu-
ton, there gradually grew up under
it privileged interests who fattened
upon it as upon a bounty. The the
DRY of national welfare gradually be-
came replaced by sense of vested
right on the part of those who bene-
fitted by the tariff. The hold OF these
beneficiaries upon the party ard the
nation grew stronger and stronger.
Under the established methods of tar
iff legislation, the protected interests
had a tremendous advantage over the
consumer in making their desil es felt
in the halls of congress. Every time
that the tariff was revised, it was re-
V1sed upward, in spite of the fact that
with the increase and diversity of our
manufactures the need for such pro-
lection was rapidly diminishing One
has only to follow the figures of the
successive tariff laws between 1876
and 1903 to see the regular and steady
rise in unnecessary protection every
time the Republican party touched
the tariff.
At the same time, there was a real
aread OF the business disturbance
which would follow a revision of the
tariff according to old methods. The
people dreaded, and with good reason,
not only the repellent spectacle which
followed every general revision of the
tariff in Washington-the pulling and
a min n ir1cr Of
the various protected interests=but
they knew only too well the paralyz-
ing effect upon business which newt
ably followed any such unscientffic
and wholesale tinkering with the tar
iff- 1t had become almost a politi-
cal axiom that tariff reduction would
be either impossible or fatal to any
administration, however strong.
Now. in a word, what has President
Taft accomplished?
In the first place, the steady yield
ing OF his party to the pressure of the
beneficiaries of the tariff has been
stopped; the steady upward rise of
tariff taxation has ceased; the corner
has been turned and a marked begin
ming made in the process of reduction.
That alone is an achievement which
none of his Republican predecessors
have ever accomplished.
In the second place, under his Wig
orous initiative a method has been
found and laid before the people
winch Will eliminate the evils of the
past and which will provide a scien-
tific method for the future. He and
his party now stand for revision
schedule by schedule, so as to make
trading between protected interests
imp possible. He and his party now
stand for a revision to be made upon
the scientific information acquired by
an expert board instead of the ex
parte statements made by the bene-
ficiaries of the tariff. Under this sys-
tenn for the first time the consumer
has an adequate hearing, while at the
same time it is rendered impossible
for an ignorant or ill-eonsidered re-
duction to be made which would de-
stroy a legitimate industry. AS he
himself has expressed it in his veto
him last summer by the Dem ocrats:
The important thing is to get our
tariff legislation out of the slough of
guesswork and 1ogrolling and ex parte
statements of interested persons, and
to establish that legislation on the
basis of tested and determined facts, |
to which shall be applied, fairly and
openly, whatever tariff principle the
people of the country choose to
adopt
Is not this a tremendous achieve
gress-to completely rescue his party
from the methods and influences
which, if uncontrolled. would newt !
ably turn it into a party of special in
terest and reaction? Is he not right
in standing to the utterm ost, even to
the exercise of all of the executive
powers of veto, against the old priv I
ilege- breeding methods of tariff re-
vision employed by the Democratic