The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1912-03-28
TEE PRINCETON UNION: THURSDAY, MARCH IS, 1919.

thursday, MARCH %,
TAFT JUSTLY CRITICIZED.
President Taft failure to. carry out
the behests Of his party, as expressed
in the platform adopted by the ma
tional republican convention Of 1908,
with reference to tariff revision, is the
subject of an exhaustive and eminently
fair criticism in the American Review
Of Reviews for March. We quote
few pertinent paragraphs: n.
"The legislative duties of presi-
dent are comprised in his communica-
lions made to congress in his mes
sages. and to his acceptance or rejec-
ton of bills which have passed both
houses and have come to him for his
signature. When a great party
adopts platform in national conven.
ton, chooses a presidential candi-
date, and in the following November
elects not only it's president but also a
large majority of the members of con-
gress, it is expected that certain prin-
ciples set forth in the platform will
not only guide congress but will also
have the active and passive support
of the chief executive. The republic
can platform, upon which Mr.. Taft
was elected and upon which the sixty
first congress had a large republican
majority, promised to give the country
a real revision of the tariff. There
was not the slightest doubt as to what
the country understood by that
promise. The Payne Aldrich tariff
did not in any sense meet the
country's reasonable expectation. In
his inaugural address, Mr.. Taft said
that the republican party had
promised to revise the tariff to the
point where there would remain pro-
tective duties equal to the difference
between the cost of production abroad
and the cost of production here -
X x K X X
"The Canadian bill was an after
thought, had not been proposed in the
republican platform, and was stoutly
opposed by a majority of the republic
can congressman. General tariff re-
vision, on the other hand, was
party pledge, was demanded by the
sentiment of both great parties alike,
and would have been accepted by
congress. A real revision of the
tariff in 1909 would have taken the
tariff question out of politics for some
years to come, would have spared the
republicans their crushing defeat in
1910, would have led to wise nation
al control of great business corpora
lions, and would further have paved
the way for republican victory in
1912. Yet such, apparently, we're Mr..
Taft's political and personal preoccu-
pations, during the strenuous weeks
of tariff revision in the spring of
1909, that his one great opportunity
to act as the voice of the country and
the leader of his party was thrown
away. The tariff-making secured his
attention only in the final stages,
when in conference committee there
was deadlock over the treatment of
lumber and several items on the free
list. The great textile schedule had
gone virtually unrevised, and so had
most of the other parts of the elabor-
ate measure.
1.-The president, however, signed the
bill and then went out on the stump
and proclaimed it not only as a SUBJ
stantial ful6llment of the party g
promises, but as the best tariff the
country had ever enacted. And now,
in 1912, the distressed and disturbed
business interests of this country
must again 60 into quadrennial po-
litical campaign, with the tariff ques-
ton unsettled and under agitation.
The republicans of the country showed
their dissatisfaction, at the first op-
portunity, by electing a democratic
congress in 1910. If ever party had
clear call to revise the tariff, it was
the democrats when the present con-
gress effected it's organization, with
Champ Clark as speaker and Oscar
Underwood as chairman of the ways
and means committee. The series of
tariff bills prepared by the democrats
went through the house by a majority
of 2 to l. They made their way
through the republican senate with
clear and substantial majority. Those
trained in the study of the currents of
public opinion in the United States
knew that the country thought very
we'll OF these tariff bills, and desired
to have them placed upon the statute
hnnHc M, Taft bo-o1o, 1ok@o1