The New York herald., 1922-05-09
TUESDAY. MAY Q. 1922.
Democrats and the Tariff.

DciuOCIdIS dIlu lAaC dAAAs
Senator SIMMoNs's minority report
against the Fordney- -McCumber tariff
proposals has been carefully prepared
as Democratic electioneering dodger
rather than an economic treatise. In
respect of that fact it does some
shooting that is as wild as some Of
its truths are bitter.
The Democratic party by and large
would no more welcome to-day the
complete exposure of American in
dustries to the cheap labor competi-
tion of aggressive foreign producers
than would the Republican party.
Louisiana is as rabid protectionist
in behalf of cane sugar as Michigan
or Nebraska is in behalf of beet
sugar. North and South Carolina
have come to have as big stake in
preserving their textile manufac-
lures as New England. Georgia. Ala
bama and Tennessee would welcome
unrestricted imports of British, Ger
man and French steel products with
as much enthusiasm as Pennsylvania,
Illinois and Indiana.
Tariff or no tariff, the great staple
cotton industry of Texas is secure.
In the whole world there is nobody
that can raise cheaper cotton than
our own American crops. But
there have been no stronger pro-
tests against throwing any industry
to the free trade wolves than those
from the Lone Star State against the
sacrifice of its rice business, while
the Texan voice has been clamorous
for duty on oil, which never ought
to be. And the agricultural interests
of the Democratic South yoked up
joyously a year ago with the agri-
cultural interests of the Republican
West to haul through the emergency
tariff on farm products-and pulling
together they got just what they
wanted.
But while a reasonable protective
policy has become more and more ac-
ceptable to the Democratic industrial
States as they have steadily built up
their great industries under such a
national policy, Democratic states
men like UNDERWOOD and SIMMONS
and GLASS are quick to see the ad-
vantage they can gain for their
party in the approaching elections
out OF an assault upon extravagant
Fordney tariff schedules and McCum-
ber tariff amendments that from the
point of view of both economics and
politics are nothing less than ira
tional.
So the Democratic minority in
Congress puts it up to the American
people that the sky high Fordney
duties and the sky high McCumber
duties alike would drive up the pub
lies cost of living; and that is the
fact. They put II up to the Ameri-
can people that the excessive duties
and higher costs would kill off still
more of our export business; and
that too is the fact.
But 1t is not the fact that the coun-
try needs or that the country could
stand an extreme national policy of
holding our tariff doors wide open to
cheap labor competition from abroad
while our own labor costs continue,
many of them, at the war peak. The
Democratic statesmen, putting out
their minority tariff report, know 1t
is not the fact. But IL the Republi-
can tariff trainers in Congress cannot
make themselves realize that what
the country needs and what the coun-
try must have is the mean of sane
--ctection and not the extreme of a
prohibitive Chinese tariff wall, then
80 much the worse for their own po-
Iitical careers and so much the worse
for the future OF their party.