The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1922-05-06
Minority Report Filed In
the Senate Shows How
the People Have To
Pay the Heavy Burdens
Imposed By a Measure
Classed AS Vicious and
Full of Dangerous Pos
sibilities

/ SAASAAASA
Washington, May 6.-The taxes that
would be imposed by the pending
Fordney tariff bill would be as real
as those imposed by the revenue bill
and probably as great, from three to
four billions of dollars, Senator Sim
mons of North Carolina, ranking
Democrat on the senate finance COM
mittee declares in minority report
filed today in the senate.
"They must be paid by all the
people, the report says, 'just as
those in the revenue bill must be paid
by all the people, and not by the
benefciaries who have demanded and
got them. The people must not only
pay the taxes on imports which go
directly into the treasury, but they
must pay the resulting increase in
prices for all things they buy and
consume. Speaking the views Of
special interests who asked for these
taxes and got them. and of the peo-
pie who pay them, differ widely in
their appraisement of the measure
and its effect upon the national pros
perity.
ION the other hand, the people view
this bill as a measure full of mischief
and dangerous possibilities, loaded
with innumerable burdens for them
and their posterity.
when the Fordney bill passed the
house the general public regarded it
as monstrosity so grotesque and
absurd that they took it more as
joke than as a serious attempt at
tariff revision. 1t did not excite in
them any great degree of alarm, be-
cause they felt sure the senate would
rewrite it, and they expected from
this body saner action in their be-
half.
in these expectations the people
have been grevously disappointed.
That disappointment has grown as
they studied the bill, first into sur
prise and then into indignation, at
the audacity of the assault upon their
fpocketbooks, and in finally culminat-
ing in a grim determination to resist
tc the utmost this attempted spoila-
ton.
in these circumstances the peo-
pie will be satisfied with nothing
short of a full exposure through dis
cussion Of this attempted outrage in
spired by the desire to placate the
subsidized interests at their expense.
No blanket of silence, no threat OF
long sessions, no charges of filibuster
: or cloture must be allowed to smoke
screen and divert the exposure of
the iniquities which lurk in the tax
laden schedules and paragraphs of
1.-THE 43S pages of the amended Ford
;ney bill an act, if properly titled,
to mortgage the country and its re-
sources to the protected and monop-
olized industries.
THE selling prices here includes
the profit" he says. $50 that the ef
feet is to protect and maintain pres
ent high profits and make the people
pay the increased profits plus tax
for the benefit of the profiteer.'
AS to the flexible tariff, the report
says the power to further increase
the rates vested in the president
will operate as an invitation to in
woke the exercise of these extra leg
islative powers when the prescribed
rates are not sufficient to safeguard
the protected producers against the
; risk of foreign competition in case
they may desire to raise their prices
above the level of the protection
against such competition afforded by
the rates written in the bill"
4 Senator Simmons says the state
ment in the majority report that pur-
pose the bill to permit American in
dustry to pay wages sufficient to en-
able American working men to main
tani the American standard Of living
sounds rather strange, in view of
the fact that these self-same indus
tries are today engaged in an inten-
sive drive to reduce present wage
standards He adds that the STAN
dard of wages in foreign competing
countries is today more nearly equal
the American standard than ever be-
! fore; that the cost of products bears
| a much slighter relation to the daily
wage paid to labor than in former
years, and that profits constitute a
far larger element in selling prices
both in this country and abroad than
all other elements entering into the
cost of production.
Referring to the argument of the
majority that unless the bill is pass
ed American markets will be seri-
! ously invaded by foreign producers,
/ the report says American goods are
, sold in foreign markets in competi-
: ton with the world and that IL Amer
( ican producers can compete in those
markets with foreign manufacturers
j they should be able to compete IN the
American market