The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1913-04-08
PRES. WILSON READS MESSAGE TO CONGRESS
Was Anxious to Meet the Nations Law
makers Personally and Assure
Them His Cooperation.

recent tariff legislation has been based
We long ago passed beyond the modes
notion of protecting the industries
of the country and moved boldly for
ward to the idea that they were en-
titled to the direct patronage of the
government. For 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 schedules to give
each group of manufacturers or pro-
ducers what they themselves thought
that they needed in order to maintain
a practically exclusive market as
against the rest of the world. Con-
fsciously or uncOnsciously, we have
built up a set of privileges and ex-
|emptions from completion behind
which it was easy by any, even the
crudest, forms of combination to or
ganize monopoly; until at last nothing
is normal, nothing is obliged to stand
the tests of efficiency and economy, in
our world of big business, but every
thing thrives by concerted arrange
ment. Only new principles of action
will save us from final hard crystal
loss of the influences that quicken en-
| terprise and keep independent energy
alive.
TT is plain what those principles
must be. We must abolish every
thing 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 necessity to be efficient,
economical, and enterprising, masters
of competitive supremacy, better
workers 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 henceforth laid must be effective
competition, the whetting of American
wits by contest with the wits of the
rest of the world.
at would be unwise to move toward
this end headlong, with reckless haste,
or with strokes that cut at the very
us by long process and at our own in
vitation 1t does not alter thing to
upset it and break it and deprive it OF
a chance to change. 1t destroys it. 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 up
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 |
we'll, 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
matter Of Judgment, exercised item by
item. To some not accustomed to the
excitements and responsibilities OF
greater freedom our methods may in
some respects and at some points seem
heroic, but remedies may be heroic
and yet be remedies. 1t is our busl-
ness to make sure that they are gen
line remedies. Our object is clear. Ii
our motive is above just challenge and
)nly an occasional error of judgment
S chargeable against us, we shall be
ortunate.
1--WE are called upon to render the
a great service in more mat
ers than one. Our responsibility 1
hould be met and our methods should
,e thorough as thorough as moderate
nd well considered, based upon the #
acts as they are, and not worked out
q if we were beginners. We are to ,
eal with the facts of our own day, +,
yith the facts of no other, and to make
avs which square with those facts
t is best, indeed it is necessary, to {
egin with the tariff. ! will urge
othing upon you now at the opening :
t your session which can obscure that t
rst object or divert our energies from t
nat clearly defined duty. At a later G
me may take the liberty of calling /
our attention to reforms which lie
hould press close upon the heels of a