The daily telegram. [volume] (Clarksburg, W. Va.) 1901-1926, 1913-04-08
WILSON ASKS
(cootinued iron. page one. J

quired to adjust themselves.
Revision imperative.
1T Is clear to the whole country that
the taritI 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 generation.
While the whole face and method OF
our Industrial and commercial life
were being changed beyond recogni-
ton the tariff schedules have remained
what they were before the change be-
gan, or have moved in the direction
they were given when no large cir
cumstance of our Industrial develop
ment was what it is today.
/ Our task is to square them with
the actual facts. The sooner th.t is
done the sooner we shall escape from
suffering from the facts and the soon
er our men OF business will be free to
thrive by the law of nature (the ma
I ture OF free business) instead of by
the law of legislation and artificial ar
! rangement,
Far Afield.
I'VE have seen tariff legislation
wander very far afield in our day
! very far indeed from the field in which
our prosperity might have had nor
NAL growth and stimulation. No one
who looks the facts squarely in the face
or knows. anything that lies beneath
the surface of action can fail to per-
eeefve the principles upon which recent
tariff Legislation has been based. We
long ago passed beyond the modest
notion Of protecting" the industries
of the country and moved boldly for
ward to the idea that they were entitl-
ed to the direct patronage of the gov
eminent. ~ mi KRl
For long time-a time SO long
that the men now active in public
policy hardly remember the condi-
tons that preceded tive have sought
in our tariff schedules to give each
group of manufacturers or producers
what they themselves thought that
they needed in order to maintain a
practically exclusive market as against
the. rest of the world. Consciously
or unconsciously, we have built up a
set Of privileges and exemptions from
competition behind which it was easy
by any, even the crudest, forms of com
binations TO organize monopoly; UNI
til at last nothing is normal, nothing
is obliged to stand the test of efficiency
and economy in our world of big bust
ness, but everything thr,yes by con-
certed arrangement. Only new prin-
}ciples of action viii save us from a
final hard capitalization of monopoly
and complete loss of the influences
that quicken enterprise and keep in
dependent energy alive.
Must Abolish Privilege.
1T is plain what those principles
must be. We must abolish everything
that bears even the semblance of priv
ilege or of any kind of artificial ad-
vantage, and put our business men
and producers under the stimulation
of constant necessity to be efficient,
economical, and enterprising, masters
OF competitive supremacy, better work
ers and merchants than any in the
world. Aside from the duties laid
upon articles which we do not, and
probably can not, produce, therefore,
and the duties laid upon luxuries and
merely for the sake of the revenues
they yield, the object of the tariff
duties hencerorth laid must be eff
I've competition, the whetting OF Amer
lean wits by contest with the wits of
the rest of the world. t'3
1T would be unwise to move toward
this end headlong, with reckless haste.
or with strokes that cut at the very
roots of what has grown up amongst
us by long process and ut our own
invitation. 1t does not alter thing to
upset it and break it and deprive it of
chance to change. 1t destroys it.
We must make changes in our fiscal
laws, in our fiscal system, whose OBJ
ject is development, more free and
wholesome development, not revolu-
ton or upset or confusion. We must
build up trade, especially foreign
trade. We need the outlet and the
enlarged field of energy more than we
ever did before. We must build up in
dustry as well, and must adopt free
dom in the place of artificial stimula-
ton only as far as it will build. not
pull down.
Genuine Remedies.
In dealing with the tariff the meth
cd by which this may be done will be
matter of judgment, exercised item
by item. To some not accustomed 70
the excitements and responsibilities
of greater freedom our methods nav