The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1913-04-11
Tariff Reform Only Is Subject
of Communication.
Protection Principles of Twenty Years Ago Are
Entirely Out of Date---Would Place BQsi-
ness On Its Merits and Stop Amor
NAL Protection of Monopoly.

To the Senate and House Of Repre-
sentatives:
have called the Congress together
in extraordinary session because duty
was laid upon the party now In power
at the recent elections which II ought
to perform promptly, in order that me
burden carried by the people under eN
listing law may be lightened as soon az
possible and in order. also, that me
business interests of the country nay
not he 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 WnoIe
country that the tariff duties must be
altered. They must be changed to meet
the radical alteration in the condltlofs
of our economic life which the country
has witnessed within the last genera
ton. While the whole face and method
of our Industrial and commercial LIE
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 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 escape from
suffering from the facts and the sooner
our men of business will be free to
thrive by the law of nature (the nature
of free business) instead of by the law
of legislation and artificial arrange
ment.
We have seen tariff legislation wan
der very far afield in our day-very
far indeed from the field in which our
prosperity might have had normal
nd cit, LOT n VIII
looks the facts squarely in the face or
knows anything that lies beneath the
surface of action can fail to perceive
the principles upon which recent tariff
legislation has been based. We long
ago passed beyond the modest notion of
protecting" the Industries of the coun-
try and moved boldly forward to the
idea that they were entitled to the d.
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 preceded
tive have sought in our tariff sched-
ules to give each group of manufacture
ers or producers what they themselves
thought that they needed in order to
maintain a practically exclusive mar
ket as against the rest of the world.
Consciously or unconsciously, we have
built up set of privileges and exemp-
was easy by any, even the crudest,
forms of combination to organize mo-
nopoly; until at last nothing is normal,
nothing is obliged to stand the tests OF
efficiency and economy, in our world of
big business, but everything thrives by
concerted arrangement. Only new prin-
ciples of acting will save us from a
final hard disqualification of monopoly
and a complete loss Of the influences
"a nnic1xon opfarnriSo kann in6Q.
pendent energy alive.
1t is plain what those principles must
be. We must abolish everything that
bears even the semblance of privilege
or of any kind of artificial advantage,
and put our business men and producers
under the stimulation of constant ne
cessity to be efficient, economical and
enterprising, masters of competitive
supremacy, better workers and mer-
chants than any in the world. Aside
from the duties laid upon articles which
we do not, and probably cannot, pro-
duce, therefore, and the duties laid up
on luxuries and merely for the sake of
the revenues they yield, the object of
the tariff duties henceforth laid must
be effective competition, the whetting
of American wits by contest with the
wits of the rest of the world.
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 at our own invi-
tation. 1t does not alter a thing to
upset 1T and break it and deprive it of
a chance to change. 1t destroys 1t. We
must make changes in our fiscal laws,
in our fiscal system, whose object is
development, a more free and whole
some development not revolution or
upset or confusion. We must build I'D
trade, especially foreign trade. We
need the outlet and the enlarged field
of energy more than we ever did be-
fore. We must build up industry as
well, and must adopt freedom in the
place of artificial stimulation only so
far as it will build, not pull down.
In dealing with the tariff the method
by which this may be done will be a
matter of judgment, exercised item bv
item. To some not accustomed to the
excitements and responsibilities of