Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1913-10-31
MQkinQ an Experiment

Making an Experiment
A new economic law, destined to materially AFFECT
~favorably or unfavorably, the prosperity OF a nation
can inspire but one feeling among its people. Inc
act being consulnmated party lines must disappear
in the universal wish that the inevitable change VIII
he for the better and not the worse. When the Sen
ate passed the tariff bill, which had previously passe;
the House, and was certain to be approved by the
president, because largely of his own making, an
economic revolution in the United States was practl-
cally completed. All business was set on q new basis.
The presidents signature became but a legal formal
ity needed to effect the revolution. Conditions OF
trading were changed. Values were unsettled ana
prices of labor, material, and all the elements OF cost
in the making Of products were opened to readJust-
ments. Competition was enlarged without a compen'
sating enlargement of the opportunities OF laoor, uh'
less the new competition in prices can be met and
overcome. The REIMBURSEMENT is so sweeping and pro-
nounced that We need hardly quote the Democratic
leader, MI Underwood of Alabama, for the indication
OF it's radical character.
But Nj. Underwood is well worth QUO. ing il any
indication OF what has been the standard of the read
justmcnts now effected. He points out that tariff
reduction in the new law has gone much further than
in the last previous REIMBURSEMENT Of this kind. made
in the Democratic tariff law of the middle '90s. The
new rates more nearly approximate the Democratic
tariff law of 1916. We are accordingly going further
now than the Democrats were willing to go under the
last Cleveland administration in applying old econom-
ic theories to new industrial. conditions. We are en-
tering upon the experiment Of displacins all economic
law, which, in its application to these new industrial
conditions, has given the country half a generation
Of large prosperity, to return to one made for other
conditions and under the operation of which no equal
degree OF prosperity ever was attained. 1t cannot
be denied that we are making an experiment, and a
dangerous one. We have contended that it is also an
unnecessary one. Had the business of the country
been depressed, under existing law, had its industry
been PROSTATE and its exchanges OF commodities Ian
gushing, had its purchasing power been at a low ebb.
and the activities of lis people greatly reduced, the
party in power, even though a minority party, would
have had warrant for experiments in revolutionary
fiscal legislation. The end could then have been fairly
claimed to justify the means. The fact that the re
verse of all this has long been and is now true, is
the fact taking the new Law out of the realm OF
s~tatesmanship aud putting it in that of political ec~A-
omy as taught in the universities.
Out OF this fact grows, also, a hope that til" expert
ment may not be as disastrous as it was in the sos.
Under nearly two decades of uninterrupted pro,ec-
ton, the country has developed such resources that
1t may be able to Withstand the shock OF a more
violent REIMBURSEMENT than that OF twenty years ago.
with less Of loss. We are now too near the event to
make prophecy advisable, nor would anyone care, al
ter having resisted the making Of the experiment., to
fall into the f%oreboding Of how its failure must justify
their wisdom. II crying is futile when milk is actually
spilled it is even worse before the bucket is seen to
be kicked over. There will be earnest and active
cooperation among men Of all classes and conditions
in life to make this experiment a success. There is
no man who will not earnestly seek to readjust him
self and his affairs to the new conditions. Things
must get better or they must get worse. II that was
not the view Of the administration why was the pros
porous condition of the country tempered with by a
party in a minority Of much more than a million votes
on the issue between it and all of its divided oppon-
ents? The Democrats have legislated ina sincere
hope OF making good better. All that American in
genuity and enterprise can do under the new condi-
tons is going to be done to justify Mr.. Wilson's
optimistic belief tina. opening all our ports to the
world will open all the worlds ports to us, if we meet
our new competitors there, as here, with prices cut
to lower levels of cost in production. We have, as
official statistics prove. already been invading .nans
foreign markets with our wares by reducing the cost
price, that Mr.. Wilson'S ex pertinent can be tried,
particularly when he has power to make US try it.