_My Fellow-Citizens_:
At the special session of the Senate held in March the Cuban
reciprocity treaty was ratified. When this treaty goes into effect,
it will confer substantial economic benefits alike upon Cuba, because
of the widening of her market in the United States, and upon the
United States, because of the equal widening and the progressive
control it will give to our people in the Cuban market. This treaty is
beneficial to both parties and justifies itself on several grounds.
In the first place we offer to Cuba her natural market. We can confer
upon her a benefit which no other nation can confer; and for the very
reason that we have started her as an independent republic and that
we are rich, prosperous, and powerful, it behooves us to stretch out
a helping hand to our feebler younger sister. In the next place, it
widens the market for our products, both the products of the farm and
certain of our manufactures; and it is therefore in the interests of
our farmers, manufacturers, merchants, and wage-workers. Finally,
the treaty was not merely warranted but demanded, apart from all
other considerations, by the enlightened consideration of our foreign
policy. More and more in the future we must occupy a preponderant
position in the waters and along the coasts in the region south of
us; not a position of control over the republics of the south, but
of control of the military situation so as to avoid any possible
complications in the future. Under the Platt amendment Cuba agreed
to give us certain naval stations on her coast. The Navy Department
decided that we needed but two, and we have specified where these two
are to be. President Palma has concluded an agreement giving them to
us—an agreement which the Cuban legislative body will doubtless soon
ratify. In other words, the Republic of Cuba has assumed a special
relation to our international political system, under which she gives
us outposts of defence, and we are morally bound to extend to her in a
degree the benefit of our own economic system. From every standpoint
of wise and enlightened home and foreign policy the ratification of
the Cuban treaty marked a step of substantial progress in the growth
of our nation toward greatness at home and abroad.
Equally important was the action on the tariff upon products of the
Philippines. We gave them a reduction of twenty-five per cent, and
would have given them a reduction of twenty-five per cent more had it
not been for the opposition, in the hurried closing days of the last
session, of certain gentlemen who, by the way, have been representing
themselves both as peculiarly solicitous for the interests of the
Philippine people and as special champions of the lowering of tariff
duties. There is a distinctly humorous side to the fact that the
reduction of duties which would benefit Cuba and the Philippines as
well as ourselves was antagonized chiefly by those who in theory
have been fond of proclaiming themselves the advanced guardians of
the oppressed nationalities in the islands affected and the ardent
advocates of the reduction of duties generally, but who instantly
took violent ground against the practical steps to accomplish either
purpose.
Moreover, a law was enacted putting anthracite on the free list and
completely removing the duties on all other kinds of coal for one year.
We are now in a condition of prosperity unparalleled not merely in our
own history but in the history of any other nation. This prosperity is
deep rooted and stands on a firm basis because it is due to the fact
that the average American has in him the stuff out of which victors
are made in the great industrial contests of the present day, just
as in the great military contests of the past; and because he is now
able to use and develop his qualities to best advantage under our
well-established economic system. We are winning headship among the
nations of the world because our people are able to keep their high
average of individual citizenship and to show their mastery in the
hard, complex, pushing life of the age. There will be fluctuations
from time to time in our prosperity, but it will continue to grow just
so long as we keep up this high average of individual citizenship
and permit it to work out its own salvation under proper economic
legislation.
The present phenomenal prosperity has been won under a tariff which
was made in accordance with certain fixed and definite principles,
the most important of which is an avowed determination to protect the
interests of the American producer, business man, wage-worker, and
farmer alike. The general tariff policy, to which, without regard to
changes in detail, I believe this country is irrevocably committed,
is fundamentally based upon ample recognition of the difference
between the cost of production—that is, the cost of labor—here and
abroad, and of the need to see to it that our laws shall in no
event afford advantage in our own market to foreign industries over
American industries, to foreign capital over American capital, to
foreign labor over our own labor. This country has and this country
needs better-paid, better-educated, better-fed, and better-clothed
workingmen, of a higher type, than are to be found in any foreign
country. It has and it needs a higher, more vigorous, and more
prosperous type of tillers of the soil than is possessed by any other
country. The business men, the merchants and manufacturers, and the
managers of the transportation interests show the same superiority
when compared with men of their type abroad. The events of the last
few years have shown how skilfully the leaders of American industry
use in international business competition the mighty industrial
weapons forged for them by the resources of our country, the wisdom of
our laws, and the skill, the inventive genius, and the administrative
capacity of our people.
It is, of course, a mere truism to say that we want to use everything
in our power to foster the welfare of our entire body politic. In
other words, we need to treat the tariff as a business proposition,
from the standpoint of the interests of the country as a whole, and
not with reference to the temporary needs of any political party. It
is almost as necessary that our policy should be stable as that it
should be wise. A nation like ours could not long stand the ruinous
policy of readjusting its business to radical changes in the tariff
at short intervals, especially when, as now, owing to the immense
extent and variety of our products, the tariff schedules carry rates
of duty on thousands of different articles. Sweeping and violent
changes in such a tariff, touching so vitally the interests of all of
us, embracing agriculture, labor, manufactures, and commerce, would
be disastrous in any event, and they would be fatal to our present
well-being if approached on the theory that the principle of the
protective tariff was to be abandoned. The business world, that is,
the entire American world, can not afford, if it has any regard for
its own welfare, even to consider the advisability of abandoning the
present system.
Yet, on the other hand, where the industrial conditions so frequently
change, as with us must of necessity be the case, it is a matter of
prime importance that we should be able from time to time to adapt
our economic policy to the changed conditions. Our aim should be to
preserve the policy of a protective tariff, in which the Nation as
a whole has acquiesced, and yet wherever and whenever necessary to
change the duties in particular paragraphs or schedules as matters of
legislative detail, if such change is demanded by the interests of the
Nation as a whole.
In making any readjustment there are certain important considerations
which can not be disregarded. If a tariff law has on the whole worked
well, and if business has prospered under it and is prospering, it
may be better to endure some inconveniences and inequalities for a
time than by making changes to risk causing disturbance and perhaps
paralysis in the industries and business of the country. The fact
that the change in a given rate of duty may be thought desirable does
not settle the question whether it is advisable to make the change
immediately. Every tariff deals with duties on thousands of articles
arranged in hundreds of paragraphs and in many schedules. These duties
affect a vast number of interests which are often conflicting. If
necessary for our welfare, then of course Congress must consider the
question of changing the law as a whole or changing any given rates
of duty, but we must remember that whenever even a single schedule
is considered some interests will appear to demand a change in
almost every schedule in the law; and when it comes to upsetting the
schedules generally the effect upon the business interests of the
country would be ruinous.
One point we must steadily keep in mind. The question of tariff
revision, speaking broadly, stands wholly apart from the question
of dealing with the trusts. No change in tariff duties can have any
substantial effect in solving the so-called trust problem. Certain
great trusts or great corporations are wholly unaffected by the
tariff. Practically all the others that are of any importance have
as a matter of fact numbers of smaller American competitors; and of
course a change in the tariff which would work injury to the large
corporation would work not merely injury but destruction to its
smaller competitors; and equally of course such a change would mean
disaster to all the wage-workers connected with either the large or
the small corporations. From the standpoint of those interested in the
solution of the trust problem such a change would therefore merely
mean that the trust was relieved of the competition of its weaker
American competitors, and thrown only into competition with foreign
competitors; and that the first effort to meet this new competition
would be made by cutting down wages, and would therefore be primarily
at the cost of labor. In the case of some of our greatest trusts such
a change might confer upon them a positive benefit. Speaking broadly,
it is evident that the changes in the tariff will affect the trusts
for weal or for woe simply as they affect the whole country. The
tariff affects trusts only as it affects all other interests. It makes
all these interests, large or small, profitable; and its benefits can
be taken from the large only under penalty of taking them from the
small also.
To sum up, then, we must as a people approach a matter of such prime
economic importance as the tariff from the standpoint of our business
needs. We can not afford to become fossilized or to fail to recognize
the fact that as the needs of the country change it may be necessary
to meet these new needs by changing certain features of our tariff
laws. Still less can we afford to fail to recognize the further fact
that these changes must not be made until the need for them outweighs
the disadvantages which may result; and when it becomes necessary
to make them they should be made with full recognition of the need
of stability in our economic system and of keeping unchanged the
principle of that system which has now become a settled policy in our
national life. We have prospered marvelously at home. As a nation we
stand in the very forefront in the giant international industrial
competition of the day. We can not afford by any freak or folly to
forfeit the position to which we have thus triumphantly attained.