White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1913-04-13
TARIFF REFORM IS
FIRST GREAT DUTY
PRESIDENT WILSON IN FIRST
MESSAGE URGES UPON CON-
GREsS IMPORTANCE OF Full
FILLING PARTY PLEDGE.

congress and established a new pre-
cedent by delivering his message to
that body, instead of having it read
by another. The message, which
dealt almost entirely with the sub
ject of tariff reform, was as follows:
II am glad to have this opportuni-
ty to address the two houses directly
as wish to verify for myself the i'm
preston that the president of the
United States is a person and not a
mere government department, hail
ing congress from some isolate stand
of jealous power, sending messages,
not speaking them naturally and with
his W voice. letting you know that
he is a human being trying to CO.
operate with other humans in a COM
mon service"
To the Senate and House of Repre-
sentatives:
] have called the congress together
in extraordinary session because a
duty was laid upon the party now in
power at the recent elections which
it ought to perform promptly. in or
der that the burden carried by the
people under existing law may be
lightened as o as possible and in
order, also. that the business inter-
ests of the country may not be kept
too long in suspense as to what the
fiscal changes are to be to which they
will be required to adjust themselves.
1t is clear to the whole country that
the tariff duties must be altered.
They must be changed TO meet the
radical alteration in the conditions of
our economic life which the country
has witnessed within the last genera
tion. While the whole face and
method of our industrial and com
mercial life were being changed be-
yond recognition the tariff schedules
have remained what they were be-
fore the change began, or have NOV
ed in the direction they were given
when no large circumstance of our
industrial development was what it
is today. Our task is to square them
with the actual facts. The sooner
that is done the sooner we shall es-
cape from suffering from the facts
and the sooner u men of business
will no fraA - thrfro hv fha Iavr -
nature (the nature of free business)
instead of by law of legislation and
and artificial arrangement.
We have seen tariff legislation
wander very far afield in our day
very far indeed from the field in
which our prosperity might have had
a normal growth and stimulation.
No one who looks the facts squarely
in the face or knows anything that
lies beneath the surface of action can
fall to perceive the principles upon
which recent tariff legislation had
been based. We long ago passed be-
yond the modest notion of protect
ing" the industries of the country
and moved boldly forward to the
idea that they were entitled to the di-
rect patronage of the government.
For a long time-a time so long that
the men now active in public policy
hardly remember the conditions that
precede tive have sought in our
tariff schedules to give each group of
manufacturers or producers what
they themselves thought they need
ed in order to maintain a practically
exclusive market as against the rest
of the world. Consciously or I'M
consciously, w have built up a set of
privileges and exemptions from com
petition behind which it was easy by
any, even the crudest, forms of COM
bination to organize monopoly, until
at last nothing is normal, nothing is
obliged TO stand the tests of efficiency
and eneonomy. in our world of big
business, but everything thrives by
concerted arrangement. Only new
principles of action will save us from
a final hard capitalization of mono
poly and a complete loss of the in
fluences that quicken enterprise and
keep independent energy alive.
1t is plain what those principles
must be. We must abolish every
thing that bears even the semblance
of privilege or of any kind of arti-
fetal advantage, and put our bust
ness men and producers under the
stimulation of a constant necessity to
be efficient. economical. and enter
prising, masters of competitive sup
|remacy, better workers and mer-
chants than any in the world. Aside
from the duties laid upon articles
which We do not, and probably can
not, produce, therefore, and the