Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-04-26
EACH NEW TARIFF
GETSA NEW NAME
First 1t Was High" or Low
or "f0r Revenue
Only
Star Bureau,
Metropolitan National Bank Bldg,
WASHINGTON, April 90.

WASHINGTON, April 90.
Just as We thought we were get
ting line on the different party
views of the tariff, the President and
Oscar Underwood have sprung a
brand-new specimen of the article.
Every time the country undergoes
an attack of tariff tinkering, tradi-
ton requires that the authors of the
latest tax rates shall supply US with
a batch of new words and phrases.
We've come to look for these things,
and even in these days of precedent
and tradition smashing, this is one of
the customs that is not lightly to be
overlooked. Nor has 1t been.
In the old days, when people were
either just plain Republicans or just
plain Democrats, you were either for
high tariff or a low tariff, and there
was an end of it, so far as most of
us were concerned, although even
back as far as Jefferson's time there
were real free-traders, who viewed
with alarm the protectionist faint
which led him to fiirt with "discrimi-
mating duties" in reprisal against
countries which levied this sort of
duties against us.
High tariff, and the higher the
fewer imports and the better for
American producers, was the Repub-
lican idea, pure and simple, until
Blaine and Mckinley embellished the
protective doctrine with the reciproc-
ity codicil. In the meantime, the
Democratic idea had evolved the
term tariff for revenue only as
If ha nj
tariff slogan, and used it with cam
paign success and legislative and ad-
ministrative disaster, in the election
of Cleveland and the enactment OF
the Wilson tariff.
Maximum and Minimum.
In the making of the Payne
Aldrich imposition, when they re-
vised the tariff downwards with up
ward tendencies on most rates, we
came to learn lot of new phrases.
Under the maximum and minimum"
idea, we were shown an application
of reciprocity which worked back
wards, and the Republicans split up
hopeIessly on the old definition of
protection, with the ultra high tarin
standpat wing still proclaiming for
the highest taxes possible, and the
insurgents shouting their new deli
milton of protection as difference in
cost of production" while the Demo-
Gratis still chung to the revenue
tariff slogan, and denounced all pro-
lection and protectionists alike.
And in the campaign of last fall,
while the Republicans continued their
high tariff preachment, and the Pro-
grcssives chung to the cost of pro-
duction' theory as the true measure
of protection, the Democrats hung
grimly on to their ancient faith in
the revenue tariff notion. All pro-
lection, they affirmed. was a device
of the evil one to breed thrusts, which
are his legitimate offspring. Protec-
ton, they wrote into the Baltimore
program, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and on
the stump they shouted for the abol-
ishment of all tariff favors.
Now the old Democratic revenue
tariff idea is that the only excuse for
having a tariff is to raise money to
pay the expenses of government, and
that to get this money everything inn
ported into the country should pay a
duty. "A fat duty of 10 or 20 per cent.
on everything that comes into our
ports would be the ideal revenue
tariff. And, of course. the lower the
duty the more goods we would be
likely to import. 4
While the tariff was in the making
a prominent revenue tariff Demo-
crat urged that the ony legislation
necessary or that could be properly
and consistently undertaken under
the Baltimore declaration was the en-
actnnent of a brief ma ira ami dpc1a1--
ing that a 10 per cent. ad valorem
duty should be levied on all imports,
and there are not a few Democrats
in Congress today who would like to
vote for just that kind of a bill. They
are the Simon-pure revenue tariffers.
The Latest Wrinkle,
But when Mr.. Underwood and his
colleagues got up against the job of
writing a real tariff bill that was