THE MAKING OF THE BILL OF 1909
No one can study the drift of public opinion in each of the great
agitations of the tariff question in the last fifty years without
realizing that at least nine-tenths of the people have stood only for
such duties as would produce needed revenue and would give industries
which were trying to prove their ability to exist in the United States,
protection through a limited period. But when it came to the point the
people have never had such duties. To those familiar with the methods of
tariff-making which have prevailed over this half-century, it was
obvious that the bill of 1909 would result as had the bills of 1883, of
1890, of 1894, and of 1897. There were optimists who said that this
could not be. This time the “voice of the people” was too clear, this
time the game was too apparent. But the game was no more clear and “the
voice of the people” no louder than in other years. The preparatory work
for the bill was preceded as always by long months of “Hearings.” The
absurdity of this method of seeking facts on which to frame a bill would
be obvious enough if the country had not grown so accustomed to it. The
reports published of the hearings before the Ways and Means Committee
for the last bill cover something over 8725 pages. It is unbelievable
that any serious body of men would consent to sit day after day to
listen to such a conglomeration of narrow and selfish notions of what
the witnesses’ personal enterprises need to help them along—much less
consent to print them at public expense. White-haired men came to repeat
the pleas that we heard in war times—sons repeated the jargon they had
learned from their fathers. And never has the “infant industry” argument
been more alive. All sorts of little trades sought help; for instance,
from New York State came a cry for duty on basket willows; the suppliant
(a woman) complained that she was obliged to compete with foreign-grown
willows sent into the country by the shipload and sold far below what
willows can be grown for in this country. From Virginia came a cry that
mountain ivy root for making pipes be protected from the competition of
brier wood. There were many more industries like these which in the
nature of the case could affect but a small number of people that asked
that the whole country be taxed that they be taken care of. There has
never been a completer demonstration of how general the notion has
become that no matter how few are benefited by a duty, it is fair to ask
the whole mass to subscribe to the fund. Hundreds of pages of testimony
are given to requests not to disturb the present schedules unless it be
to _increase_ the duty, and when sifted down the reason of the requests
is not protection, but prohibition. How ridiculously lacking the
testimony was in anything like satisfactory proof of the cost of
production here and abroad, one has only to read to see. It was evident
that almost none of the manufacturers knew the facts the committee
needed. All that the great majority could offer were the phrases they
had learned in their youth or had been taught by their predecessors in
business. They were men influenced by a superstition, and it is probable
few, if any of them, will escape from its influence until, like Mr.
Carnegie, they retire from business. Then we may expect some of them to
come, as Mr. Carnegie has done, with ridicule and derision for the whole
system,—to say, as he did, of the duty seekers:
_They are incapable of judging. No judge should be permitted to sit in a
cause in which he is interested; you make the greatest mistake in your
life if you attach importance to an interested witness._
But it was not the character of the information presented which was the
most sinister phase of the “Hearings”; it was the pressure which one
felt the informer could exercise on Congress when the time came. These
hundreds of witnesses, organized or unorganized, all possessed more or
less political importance. They had it in their power to upset local
machines, displace local bosses, defeat Congressmen, hold back campaign
contributions, make endless mischief. They had been trained for years to
expect reward for political support in the shape of duties. They were
not going to give it up in a day. They had behind them bodies of favored
workmen trained to believe that high wages depended on protection, and
these favored workmen were not going to give up their creed in a night.
Congressmen knew this well enough. They knew in 1909, when they began
work on the Payne-Aldrich Bill, that they were in the position they had
been for forty years and more—forced to make a bill with a divided
mind—to fix duties with an eye to what effect it was going to have on
the fall elections in their districts—on campaign funds for the next
presidential election.
The absurdity, even criminality, of these methods, which have persisted
so long, was completely demonstrated in the course of the Payne-Aldrich
Bill in the making of the schedule which for twenty years has been the
most important in our tariff, from a doctrinal and a political point of
view, and that is K, the wool schedule. When the late revision was
undertaken duties were in operation which had been forced from a
reluctant Congress in 1897, solely by the political power of the
combined Wool-Growers Association and the National Association of Wool
Manufacturers. In the decade following the adoption of the Dingley Bill
the power of the former organization waned. The members of the “wool
trinity” who had held so strong a whip over Congress were dead. Ohio,
which had been their headquarters, no longer felt the life-and-death
interest it once had in prohibitive wool duties. But the second
association was as alive and ready for action as ever, and in the fall
of 1908, when Mr. Taft’s promises of tariff revision became reasonably
convincing, the head of the Association, Mr. William Whitman of Boston,
called together those in the business whose interests were identical
with his, and they sought counsel with the growers of wool in the far
West. In October of 1908 the two interests met in Chicago. Mr. Whitman
says that this conference was called at the suggestion of the
wool-growers. For people who had taken an initiative the wool-growers
were very modest. They said frankly they were not prepared to talk
extensively on tariff questions, that they had come to listen. Mr.
Whitman did the talking, and to such good effect that the conference
decided: “it is the sense of this meeting that in the coming revision of
the tariff the present duties on wool and woollen goods be maintained
without reduction.”
Some two months later Mr. Whitman appeared before the Ways and Means
Committee with an elaborate argument for preserving the wool duties. He
made a particular point of defending the duty on raw wool. “Fair Play
for All Interests” is the subhead under which Mr. Whitman asked that the
tax on his raw material be continued. The Bulletin of the Wool
Association puts the principle this way: “The traditions of the
association all condense themselves into the Golden Rule”—“Do unto
others as you would have others do to you; between grower and
manufacturer and as between one manufacturer and another, that has
always been the guiding principle.”
Before Mr. Whitman was excused from cross-examination, however, a
serious questioning of his interpretation of the Golden Rule was
introduced into the testimony. It came from a maker of carded woollens
as distinguished from worsteds, Mr. Edward Moir, of Marcellus, New York.
The carded woollen manufacturers, like many other innocent Americans,
took the results of the presidential election of 1908 as evidence that
the tariff was to be thoroughly revised. “At last,” said they, “we shall
get relief.” Accordingly, soon after the election, Mr. Moir, learning
that there was to be a meeting of the National Association of Wool
Manufacturers, and supposing that the revision of the wool schedule was
to be discussed, presented himself at the gathering. To his surprise he
found that some weeks before the election, about the time, indeed, that
Mr. Taft’s promises of downward revision were most definite and
vigorous, representatives of this association had met representatives of
the wool-growers of the far West, and the two had made what they called
a “solemn compact” to _resist all changes in the wool schedule_! The
inequalities were to stand. The carded woollen mills were to be fed
carpet wool and cotton if they could get them, the man on small income
was to continue to wear cotton worsteds and sleep under cotton blankets,
the well-to-do were to continue to pay $1.50 for cloth they could buy in
England for seventy-five cents. When Mr. Moir protested, he found he
stood alone; _i.e._ he found that the _National Association of Wool
Manufacturers apparently represented the worsted industry_. A little
later, when the Ways and Means Committee began its hearings, Mr. Moir
found that this same association was giving information on what the wool
schedule needed, and that it did not include help for him. Outraged, he
went to work to organize the carded woollen men. Over one hundred were
soon in line, and this body carried its grievance to the Ways and Means
Committee. The reports of the tariff hearings contain some very
interesting explanations from Mr. Whitman of the points of which the
carded woollen men complained. Take the matter discussed in the last
chapter, of collecting 11 cents on every pound of grease wool imported
into the country, regardless of quality or value, or whether it shrinks
15 or 80 per cent. How did Mr. Whitman defend this duty, which is, as
one can see, the very foundation of his advantage over his competitors?
He defended it almost hysterically by the claim that it is only a
specific duty, which will prevent undervaluation at the customs. Mr.
Whitman buys his wool according to its value. He does not insist upon
paying a fixed price through fear of misrepresentation. Wool is a
standard like wheat and corn. Centuries of experience have made men
expert in judging its value. Undoubtedly there would be efforts at
undervaluation if the duty were according to value. But a specific duty
does not prevent fraud—witness the Sugar Trust. Everybody knows that
such cheating is dangerous work. Even the Sugar Trust, with all its
cunning, has not escaped entirely. There would be little chance for the
regular importer to do much cheating, and if there was a percentage of
fraud, what could it amount to compared with a _duty which is always
unfair_, which is actually a _legalized fraud_?
Mr. Whitman’s defence of the amount of compensation allowed
manufacturers for the duty on grease wool was interesting also. It will
be remembered that this duty on wool worth over 40 cents a pound is 44
cents; that is, it is reckoned as if four pounds of grease wool were
used in making a pound of cloth. Mr. Whitman defends this ratio, so
rarely correct, by using the same argument with which Mr. Aldrich met
the attack upon it in 1890 when the McKinley Bill was making.
“It is true that certain wools do not shrink so much, but _whether
they do or not is not the point_. The American manufacturer must be
reimbursed on the basis of the shrinkage of wools used by his
foreign competitors or _available for the latter’s use_.”
This is as hard to follow as the long-standing consolation offered to
the complaining consumer that “_the foreigner pays the tax_.” However,
it is hardly more away from the point than Mr. Whitman’s second defence
of the 4 to 1 ratio, which, in essence, is that it must be right because
it was so fixed in 1867! Curiously enough, while Mr. Whitman defends the
4 to 1 ratio because it was decided on by the compact of ’67, he insists
that 55 per cent ad valorem on cloth is none too much, although in 1867
the manufacturer considered 25 per cent sufficient!
But the carded wool men were not the only branch of the industry which
disputed the soundness of Mr. Whitman’s “fair play for all” schedule. A
few weeks after his hearing, it came out that one great branch of the
woollen industry, the carpet manufacturers, had left the National
Association in a body. They had wakened up to the fact that for some
twenty years or so they had been serving largely as cat’spaws for the
worsted makers’ chestnuts. They had refused to contribute further to the
organization, and frankly bolted Schedule K, asking for a common-sense
adjustment of the duty on carpet wools.
The most sensational and serious attack on Mr. Whitman’s testimony was
made, on the very day he appeared, in a pamphlet distributed to the
committee. It bore an ugly title, “How an exorbitant duty on wool tops
was concealed in the Dingley law by the cunning manipulation of S. N. D.
North and William Whitman.” The name attached to the pamphlet as author
was that of a man well known in wool circles, the editor of the
_American Cotton and Wool Reporter_, Frank P. Bennett. In proof of the
charges he made, Mr. Bennett offered documentary proof of the first
order. Nothing less than extracts from letters which had passed between
Mr. North and Mr. Whitman at the time of the “cunning manipulation.”
To those familiar with the personal relations of the three gentlemen the
substance of the charges was not new. They had been first made by Mr.
Bennett the year after the passage of the Dingley Bill (1898) and in
very precise form. What they amounted to then was that Mr. North,
although the paid secretary of the National Association of Wool
Manufacturers, had worked on Mr. Aldrich’s Finance Committee while it
was busy with the Dingley Bill, as “the paid lobbyist of William Whitman
and one other manufacturer,”—that he had secured benefits for them
“regardless of other interests,” and that “these gentlemen now (1898)
aimed at the control of the United States Census, which they proposed to
secure by having Mr. North (their agent) made director of the Census!”
It was an ugly looking accusation, and naturally the association
appointed a committee to look into the matter. Both Mr. North and Mr.
Whitman made statements. They amounted to a complete denial of all the
charges, and particularly of any tampering with the top duty. Mr.
Whitman showed by the documents he presented that the duty on tops as it
finally appeared in the Dingley Bill was the same as that fixed by the
McKinley Bill. He also showed it had been retained at the request of the
wool-growers. He said that when he discovered this duty was in the
Dingley wool schedule he wrote a letter of protest to Mr. Dingley, in
which he said:
“As tops now stand in the proposed tariff bill, the duty is
absolutely prohibitory.... This places me in a very awkward position
before the community. Nearly everybody in this part of the country
is aware of the fact that the Arlington Mills, of which I am the
treasurer, has just completed an enormous plant for the manufacture
of tops, and everybody will say that, through my influence, there
has been secured upon tops prohibitory duties. Yarn spinners and
weavers will complain, although they may not be directly affected;
but everybody who is at all jealous or envious will charge that this
duty has been imposed at my solicitation.... The objections, then,
that I have to the top rates as now incorporated in the bill are:
“1st. That they are unnecessarily high and will do nobody any good.
“2d. They are so high on the article our mills manufacture as to
create unfavorable criticism.”
This letter and the strong and definite denials of Mr. North and Mr.
Whitman were considered satisfactory by the investigating committee,
which announced that in its judgment the statements of Mr. Bennett were
“malicious and unwarranted,” and that he had forfeited his right to
membership in the association.
The matter probably would have ended there if four years later, 1902,
Mr. Bennett had not sued a Lynn, Massachusetts, newspaper for libel.
When the case was tried the newspaper summoned various witnesses to
prove that Mr. Bennett’s newspaper, the _United States Investor_, made a
practice of blackmailing concerns which did not advertise in it. Among
those witnesses was Mr. Whitman. In the course of his testimony, Mr.
Bennett’s lawyer, Moorfield Storey, saw an opportunity to demand Mr.
Whitman’s correspondence over the years of the making of the Dingley
Bill. The court upheld him, and all of Mr. Whitman’s political letters
of that period—“_My entire private correspondence, embracing
correspondence with every member I have relations with, private and
public_,” Mr. Whitman said of the letters—were turned over to Mr.
Bennett, who at once took copies of those which interested him. It was
nearly seven years before Mr. Bennett found a sufficiently dramatic
moment in which to use the letters he took from Mr. Whitman’s file. It
came finally—the day when Mr. Whitman was explaining to the Ways and
Means Committee why a wool schedule made in 1867 should be preserved in
1909.
As related above, Mr. Whitman had cleared himself in 1898 from Mr.
Bennett’s charge of manipulating the top duty in the Dingley Bill by
publishing a letter he had written to Mr. Dingley protesting _against_
the duty. He had also related that Mr. Dingley had accepted his
suggestion and had put it into the bill, and that the reason it had not
appeared finally was that the wool-growers had objected so strenuously
that the committee had given in to them. This looked all right, but
there was a chapter of which Mr. Whitman and Mr. North said nothing, and
of which Mr. Bennett had no proof until he got hold of the
correspondence, and this chapter was published in the little pamphlet
distributed by Mr. Bennett to the Ways and Means Committee on December
2, 1908.
It seems that when the top duty suggested by Mr. Whitman came to the
Senate Committee in 1897 it struck a snag at once. It was
_prohibitive_—just as the higher one for which it had been
substituted—_the figures were different, but not their effect_. Mr.
North was summoned to explain—the Finance Committee having apparently
accepted him as its wool expert. Mr. North consulted Mr. Whitman and an
agitated correspondence followed. The letters to Mr. North show that Mr.
Whitman was in great alarm lest the duty he had suggested be lowered:
“No possible legislation in connection with the woollen schedule would
be so dangerous to the woollen industry as legislation which would
_favor the importation of tops_.” “You know how important it is, not
only to me, but to the whole wool industry of the United States, that
such rates of duty should be imposed upon tops as will enable them to be
made here _and not to be imported_ from foreign countries.” “The
prosperity of the woollen industry in this country depends wholly upon
the _ability of the domestic manufacturers to manufacture the tops
here_.” “It is of the greatest importance that the Arlington Mills
products (tops and yarns) have the _full measure_ of protection accorded
to associated industries.” These extracts and the context show
conclusively that though Mr. Whitman may not have wanted a rate so high
that it would be suspicious, he was after a duty which would be
prohibitive, and that he was depending upon the confidential relations
of the paid secretary of the wool association with members of the United
States Senate in charge of the tariff bill to secure what he wanted.
Mr. Whitman’s second defence—that it was the wool-growers, not he, that
kept the high duty on tops in the Dingley Bill—loses its weight also
when one looks into the origin of that duty. It first appeared in the
McKinley Bill of 1890, and so far as the writer has been able to
discover from an extended examination of the debates and hearings, the
top duty was _devised_ for the McKinley Bill by Mr. Whitman. Nobody else
ever seems to have had anything to do with it. He advocated it in 1889
before the Senate Finance Committee. He presented it in January, 1890,
to the Ways and Means Committee, explaining and defending it. Mr.
Whitman was the father of the obnoxious top duty. He found it was
suspicious. He revised it so that it would “look better,” but do the
same work!
In spite of ample proof of gross unfairness and trickery in the Dingley
wool schedule, Mr. Payne reported it practically unchanged. As it passed
the House it still gave to Mr. Whitman a prohibitive duty on his tops.
The Finance Committee was equally complaisant, for, as Mr. Aldrich, its
chairman, said later, the schedule as he reported it to the Senate
“followed precisely the act of 1897 in every word.” But when the wool
schedule reached the Senate for debate, its smooth passage was over, for
there on May 5, 1909, it was treated to one of the most searching
analyses of duties which has ever been made in Congress. The significant
fact was that it came from a Republican who had been for twenty years in
Congress, and who had served on the Dingley Ways and Means
Committee,—Senator Dolliver of Iowa, one of a group who, when they had
discovered by the character of the bill reported from the House and by
the attitude of the majority of the party in the Senate towards it that
there was no intention of treating seriously the campaign promises of
revising the tariff downward, had revolted: insurgents, they were
called. These men all believed in the doctrine of protection, and most
of them had been all their political lives under the spell of the notion
that it had created American prosperity. But they were honest men, and
slowly they had awakened to a consciousness that the sacred dogma had
been stretched and twisted in the last fifty years until it had been
made literally to cover a multitude of sins. They saw how its meaning
had been manipulated to justify unscrupulous duties whose only
contribution to prosperity was turning the profits of labor and natural
wealth into some private pocket. They all seem to have taken without
reserve the latest strain put upon the protective formula in order that
it might cover whatever a manufacturer wanted, the form in which it had
appeared in the Republican platform of 1908, insuring the person lucky
enough to have a business which could be protected that he should have a
duty which would not only cover the difference in the cost of his
production, but insure him a profit. The insurgents did not object to
this interpretation, but they saw at once that Mr. Aldrich in reporting
his bill had no intention, in cases where duties had been advanced, of
giving the Senate evidence that the difference in the cost of production
here and abroad made an advance necessary, that the facts he had he
refused to make public. I asked Senator Bristow of Kansas, whom I knew
to be a strong and convinced protectionist, what started his revolt
against the bill? “Red paint,” he replied promptly. “I was interested in
that. We paint our barns with it in Kansas. I saw them putting up duties
which I believed would affect its cost. I wanted to know why. I could
find no reason—no proof that it was necessary. I insisted, and I soon
made up my mind that they had no intention of considering the difference
in the cost of production, that they sneered at the idea, that they were
simply intent on giving their political supporters what they wanted.
Moreover, they intended to force us to be a party to the business. It
was the most dishonest and corrupt work I have ever seen, and I
revolted.”
The insurgents determined to demonstrate to the country the utter
unscrupulousness of the leaders of their own party, and to do this
effectively they divided among themselves the schedules which they knew
to be most important politically and therefore to be most open to
suspicion, the intention being thoroughly to master their intricacies.
Schedule K fell to Senator Dolliver. Now Senator Dolliver had always
been what one may call a McKinley protectionist or prohibitionist. He
had followed that leader with the unquestioning fidelity which the man
had the ability to inspire in many who knew him. His speeches in the
’90’s are brilliant and witty defences of the new interpretation of
protection which the party for political reasons was trying to force on
the country. They are thoroughly orthodox and thoroughly unsound. In
1897 Mr. Dolliver was a member of the Dingley Ways and Means Committee,
which seriously tried to lower the rates in all the schedules, and
particularly in wool. He had seen the effort frustrated by the very
group whom he knew now to be behind the wool bill which Mr. Aldrich
reported. He determined to master the history and the operation of the
schedule in so thorough a fashion that he could go on to the floor of
the Senate or on to any platform and make clear to a popular audience
its tricks and its injustices. He believed that such an exposure must in
the long run kill it. Now the wool schedule is one of the most difficult
in our tariff laws to understand and to explain. It is really the
accumulation of fifty years of active superstition and greed. An ocular
demonstration of the change in its character and its intelligibility may
be had by comparing the wool schedule of fifty years ago and that of
to-day as printed in the official collection of United States tariff
bills. Fifty years ago wool was disposed of in perhaps fifty words,
which anybody could understand; to-day it takes some three thousand, and
as for intelligibility, nobody but an expert versed in the different
grades of wools, of yarns, and of woollen articles could tell what the
duty really is. It is a mistake to suppose that because a man has been
twenty years in Congress and has served for a portion of that time on
the Ways and Means Committee, he therefore understands the tariff
schedules. As a rule, it is safe to say that a Congressman understands
rarely the real meaning of the rates he votes for. What he understands
is that the Committee has made the bill for what it considers sound
party reasons, and that if he does not accept the rate, he or some
colleague is in danger of defeat, and he accepts it without too much
scrutiny. It is a case where it is just as well not to know too much.
Moreover, it takes an amount of hard time-taking study to master a
schedule, which only an occasional man has the will to give. Senator
Dolliver knew that neither he nor any other insurgent understood enough
of wool-growing and wool manufacturing to cope with the schedule. Later
in the course of the debate he illustrated the difficulties he
encountered in spite of his twenty years in Congress. He was told that a
certain paragraph was worded to conceal a trick.
“I had to read it four or five times before I could see the point where
the proposition emerged,” Senator Dolliver said. “I handed it to
intelligent men and asked them if they saw any distinction in that
language between clothing wools and combing wools, and, one after
another, bright men said, ‘I cannot see any distinction.’ If you will
get the paragraph and read it yourself, you will notice with what
delicacy of phrase, worthy of poets and artists, this distinction has
been wrought into the very foundation of the wool tariff.” Now it was
this aggregation of tricks, evasions, and discriminations that Senator
Dolliver determined to master, and master it he did, by months of the
severest night-work. He poured over statistics and technical treatises.
He visited mills and importing houses and retail shops. He sought the
aid of experts, and in the end he knew his subject so well that he went
on to the floor of the Senate without a manuscript and literally played
with Schedule K, and incidentally also with Senator Aldrich and several
other stand-patters whose long experience in juggling with untruths had
destroyed their agility in handling truths.
When he had finished his clean, competent dissection, Schedule K lay
before the Senate a law without principles or morals; and yet, just as
it was, the Senate of the United States passed it, and the President of
the United States signed it, and it went on the statute books, even to
Mr. Whitman’s prohibitive duty on tops.
What made Mr. Whitman so powerful? Probably we shall not go far astray
if we assert that the real reason is that for many years he and his
worsted friends have been one of the main financial reserves of the high
protective wing of the Republican party in New England, and that in
return they have got what they asked for. That is political ethics—or
etiquette. Ever since 1888 it has been a settled and openly expressed
principle in political circles that your protection shall be in
proportion to your campaign contribution. In that year it was laid down
officially that as the manufacturers of the United States got
“practically the sole benefit of the tariff” and in prosperous years
“made millions” out of it, therefore it was entirely justifiable that
those who granted the tariff should, when their time of need came, put
these manufacturers “over the fire” and “fry the fat out of them.”
Mr. Whitman’s individual support is not to be despised, but with it has
always gone the support of his association. It means the support of the
great “wool trust” with William M. Wood at its head, and it means also,
as we have seen, the support of the wool-growers of the far West—not, be
it noted, of _all_ the wool-growers of the country, but of those who,
like the worsted manufacturers, are getting more out of the present
duties than their competitors, and are therefore most anxious to keep
them. These are the men who produce a wool which on an average will
yield only about 44 pounds of clean wool in every 100 pounds sheared
from the sheep. Yet their protection on this 100 pounds is the same as
that of the farmer of the South whose wool yields 60 pounds to every
100, or the Eastern and Middle state farmers whose wool yields 52 out of
every 100 pounds. The protests of these Eastern, Southern, and Middle
West farmers that they are not fairly treated were no more heeded by the
makers of the Payne-Aldrich Bill than the protests of the carded woollen
and carpet manufacturers. The reason is obvious enough. The Western
wool-growers are as loyal and generous in their support of their
Senators as are Mr. Whitman and Mr. Wood of theirs. Each group—the
wool-growers of the far West and the worsted manufacturers of the
East—controls a good-sized block of votes. By uniting these blocks they
control probably the largest and most dependable vote of any
tariff-protected interest in the country. It is a vote which for over
forty years has never bolted. It is a vote which always gets what it
asks, for the simple reason that it is powerful enough to defeat any
duty in a tariff bill if the backer of that duty is hostile, and nobody
doubts it will exercise the power if tried. It is the size and
solidarity of the vote which explains why when, through the boldness of
the insurgents, the most odious features in the wool business had been
laid before the Senate and a motion was made to send Schedule K back to
the committee for revision, it was lost by 8 yeas and 59 nays. It is Mr.
Taft’s reason—given frankly enough after he found the odium of allowing
the schedule to stand was not going to pass. “_The interests of the
wool-growers in the far West_,” said Mr. Taft, “_and the interests of
the wool manufacturers in the Eastern states, and in other states,
reflected through their Representatives in Congress, were sufficiently
strong to defeat any attempt to change the wool tariff, and had it been
attempted it would have beaten the bill reported from either
committee._” Apparently the same combine was strong enough to prevent
the presidential veto the country had a right to expect from Mr. Taft.
Not less significant than the experience of wool in the Payne-Aldrich
Bill was that of cotton.
When Mr. Aldrich reported the bill of 1909 to the Senate on April 12,
there was lively curiosity in many quarters about what the cotton
schedule would contain. Rumors were general that it had been cleverly
manipulated in its passage through the Ways and Means Committee. It was
said that Mr. Payne had declared “in language somewhat exaggerated by
impiety,” as Senator Dolliver afterward put it, that he had been
_fooled_ by the gentleman who had presented the needs of the schedule to
him. It was known that he was so certain of the odium of a certain
paragraph which he had reported that he had risen in the House and
withdrawn it. It was certain that the first publication of the schedule
had drawn down an avalanche of criticism and charges of bad faith, many
of them from the most respectable and best informed trade sources. So
vigorous and authoritative had the attack been that many believed that
Mr. Aldrich would not venture to report the schedule which the House had
sent him.
Schedule I, as the cotton schedule is known, is one of first importance.
In 1905 there were over six hundred and thirteen million dollars
invested in cotton manufactures in this country. The product was
something over four hundred and forty-two million dollars—a big
proposition from every point of view, not one to be lightly or
dogmatically treated. A question of humanity, too, as well as of
economics, for there were over 310,000 persons employed, 125,000 of whom
were women, and 40,000 children under sixteen years of age.
It was not against the entire schedule that charges had been brought,
but against that which concerns itself with woven goods—that is,
sheetings, shirtings, muslins, calicoes. A very large proportion of the
product in cottons comes under this head. Fully three hundred and eight
of the four hundred and forty-two millions of dollars of cotton products
produced in 1905 was in woven goods. Now all woven goods have been
protected for many years, and so well protected that the importations in
1905 were only about eight millions of dollars—or about 2⅔ per cent of
the product. These importations were not scattered over the whole group
of cotton goods—they were concentrated on the higher grades. Of the
cheaper cotton goods there is almost no importation; on the contrary, we
exported over forty million dollars’ worth of them in 1905. What that
means, of course, is that we have come to a point in making the cheap
grades of cottons where we do not need much, if any, protection, since
we can afford to export and sell them in competition with English-made
goods.
With the higher grades of goods it is another story. We cannot make them
as cheap as they are made abroad. We are turning out many really
beautiful cotton fabrics, and our qualities and designs are continually
improving, but they cost us more. The protection given all these better
grade fabrics, however, has been sufficient to permit a great expansion
in this part of the industry, and while it has not prevented
importation, it has probably allowed no more than was a healthy stimulus
to the industry. At least this was the opinion given to the Ways and
Means Committee by the most important witness that appeared before it on
cotton—Henry F. Lippitt, the general manager of the important group of
Rhode Island mills in the Manville Company. Mr. Lippitt is a member of
one of the half dozen or so families in whose hands the textile
industries of Rhode Island are largely concentrated. His father,
grandfather, and great-grandfather were cotton manufacturers. They were
able men at their trade, as he is. They were also, as he is, stiff
protectionists and active Republican politicians. Mr. Lippitt’s father
and one of his brothers have been governors of Rhode Island. He has
always been one of the main stays of the party in the state—a support of
the blind Boss Brayton and one of Mr. Aldrich’s stanchest friends. Since
the passage of the Payne-Aldrich Bill Mr. Lippitt has succeeded to Mr.
Aldrich’s seat in the Senate. Mr. Lippitt’s expression about what was
needed in the cotton schedule was accepted as authoritative, and this is
what he said on December 1, 1908, when he appeared as a representative
of the Arkwright Club of Boston:
“We are going to ask you to leave the duty as it is on the cloth
schedule with the exception of _some very minor points_.
“We ask that the present schedule shall not be materially changed and
that cotton manufacturers be allowed to continue the operation and
further development of this important industry _upon the same tariff
conditions that now prevail_.
“_The importations are not so large that we feel justified in asking
that the duties be increased, but we would not like to see them
decreased._”
Upon this representation of the “wants” of the manufacturers the trade
rested. If Mr. Lippitt asked that the schedule be left as it was, there
was general confidence that it would be done. There seems to have been
little or no curiosity about “the very minor points” to which Mr.
Lippitt referred. He did not make these known to the Committee itself
until some six weeks later. Then in a letter written for the Arkwright
Club of Boston, the leading organization of cotton manufacturers in the
country, Mr. Lippitt and a fellow manufacturer, Mr. J. R. MacColl, the
manager of the Lorraine Mills of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, made certain
suggestions to Mr. Payne. This letter was not read at the public
hearings; it was not published until the Appendix to the hearings came
out. The first the public knew of it was when Mr. Payne reported his
bill to the House on March 17, 1909; and then an uproar began. Far from
“minor” changes having been made, it was declared that radical and
complicated ones sure to bring great confusion had been introduced. To
make the cotton schedule any more complicated than it has been for fifty
years is in itself a severe criticism. Under the Dingley Bill cotton
cloth was subject to _four_ distinct classifications in fixing duties.
These were based upon the number of threads to a square inch, the
weight, color, and value. Duties were graded also according to the
varying fineness, weight, and value, so that there were scores of
combinations in duties possible. If, after all this, the cloth had a
figure worked in it, as so many of the finer goods do, there was an
extra duty per square yard for that.
It would seem difficult to add anything to this complication, but Mr.
Payne’s bill did it. It began by upsetting an established definition in
the cotton trade—a definition accepted the world over as to what the
word “thread” means in appraising cloth. A thread has been a thread,
regardless of how many filaments or ply were twisted together to make
it. This was no longer to be so. The poor appraiser could no longer
apply his magnifying glass to a square inch of cotton cloth and count
the threads: he must untwist a thread and compute the number of ply! Of
course this immediately threw the fabric into a higher classification
than under the old law, and increased the duty on it. A cloth which
counted fifty threads carried under the old law a duty of say one cent
per square yard, but if these threads were three ply—and each ply must
be counted by the new paragraph—then it was at once boosted into the one
hundred and fifty thread class, where the duty is one and one-half cents
per square yard! This was the first of Mr. Lippitt’s “very minor
points.” But this did not end the counting business. There is a great
variety of cotton cloths which have figures worked on to the body. The
swisses and curtain madras are common examples of these. These figures,
of course, increase the value of the goods, and the Dingley Bill
provided for them by giving them an extra one or two cents per square
yard, according as they cost seven or over seven cents a square yard.
But Mr. Payne’s bill went this duty one better by arranging that when
the threads of a cloth were counted not the threads in the body alone
should be considered, but also the _threads in the figure worked on the
body_. Here again the number of threads in a square inch would be so
increased as to throw the fabric into a higher class and so raise the
duty. Another increase came in the matter of color. Heretofore the body
of the cloth had been all that was considered in estimating color, but
the new law proposed that cloth into which colored figures or threads
had been introduced should be called colored. A single colored thread
introduced into a white piece was enough to throw it into the colored
class. One entirely new duty was added, and that was a cent a yard for
cloth which had been mercerized—and a single mercerized thread was
enough to put a piece into this class.
Besides all this reclassification, the duties which in the Dingley Bill
had been added for the value of the cloth were increased and complicated
in a most irritating fashion—by dividing the values into several
classes. There was one duty for cloths worth 12½ to 15 cents, another
for those worth 15 to 17½, another for those worth from 17½ to 20. But
who was to fix the value when the margins were so narrow? It was a
temptation to fraud,—the importer naturally trying to prove that the
cloth worth 13 cents was worth but 12½; his opponent, the domestic
manufacturer, trying to prove that the cloth really worth 12½ was worth
13.
Mr. Payne reported a schedule then which not only raised duties on many
kinds of cotton goods, but multiplied the opportunities for fraud and
added seriously to the work of appraising. Mr. Payne claimed to have
been entirely misled about what the new rates would do—at least about
the changes in counting threads—for when the schedule came up he rose in
the House and asked that the old methods of counting be restored, and he
said with an emphasis which showed his disgust at the way he felt he had
been tricked:
“The committee has not sought to increase the duty by that method. If
they wanted to increase the duty, they _would go in the open to do it_.”
The cotton schedule came to Mr. Aldrich, therefore, under
suspicion—suspicion of having been cleverly and slyly revised upwards by
the advice of one of his strongest and most generous political
supporters, the man who had the credit of managing his last senatorial
campaign and collecting the large sums of money which it required to
reëlect him. Naturally the curiosity was keen about what Mr. Aldrich
would report. What he reported was, with one exception, just what Mr.
Lippitt and Mr. MacColl had asked for. He did not stand for the new
definition of thread which they had invented, but he did provide that
the number of threads and the color should no longer depend on the body
of a cloth, but should be estimated by the figure wrought into it. He
practically asked that if a single colored thread was woven in or
applied to a piece of shirting, it should take the added duty which was
given to colored goods. He also stood by the clause which put an
additional cent on all which had even one mercerized thread in them, and
by the complicated specific duties which had been invented for all goods
costing over 12½ cents per square yard.
Now if Mr. Aldrich believed that the rates on these particular cotton
goods should be raised and complicated in this way, he was justified in
raising them; but there has never been a time in the history of
protection in this country when it was more imperative for a new and
increased duty to be clearly explained. There was never a time when it
was more necessary that all rates should be measured by the fundamental
principles of protection. It was Mr. Aldrich’s business to prove to the
Senate that the new rates were justifiable. But Mr. Aldrich made no
attempt to do anything of the kind. On the contrary, when the charges
were taken sharply to account by Senator Dolliver in an analysis which
must stand as a model of the kind of criticism which every schedule in
the tariff bill needs _from Protectionists_, Mr. Aldrich met him by
asserting that the rates on cotton goods _had not been raised_. That all
that had been done was to readjust duties in such a way as to restore
the “_intent_” of the Dingley Bill, which, he said, had been largely
destroyed by certain court decisions. It is easy to show how far from
the fact Mr. Aldrich was in his statement. The fabrics which had been
referred to the courts were few in number, including the goods known as
etamine and Madras curtain goods. There had been no court decision
whatever affecting the great bulk of plain cotton goods, white or
colored; and yet the tables estimating duties which are to-day in use by
one of the largest and most respected importing houses in this country
show that the increase in duties on colored cotton cloths of from 100 to
150 threads per square inch are all the way from about 2 to 42 per cent,
and as usually happens the 2 per cent increase is on the _highest
priced_ goods. If these same goods were mercerized, the increase in
duties is from about 12 to 56 per cent. In the next higher grade of
fineness (over 150 and not over 200 threads) the duties have increased
from 2 to 24 per cent—if mercerized, from 14 to 38 per cent. White goods
of the ordinary weaves of the same grades of fineness as those above
have like increases. Not one of these cloths _was touched or could be
touched by the court decisions Mr. Aldrich hid behind_.
It was inevitable that when the effect of the changes was made clear
there should have been at once a cry raised that Mr. Aldrich, in
allowing these increases of duties, was rewarding Mr. Lippitt for the
able work it was known that he had done in the last senatorial campaign.
It was pointed out that the goods affected were not common coarse goods.
They were the higher grades which are made in the Manville Mills, and
well made. It was also said that Mr. Lippitt was adding to his mills a
big mercerizing plant. “He expects to pay for it out of that extra
cent,” the cynical said. It was certainly natural and necessary that Mr.
Aldrich should resent these charges, but Mr. Aldrich went a little too
far in his denials, and, taken _seriatim_, they look queer, at least.
“No manufacturer has been before the Committee on Finance in regard to
this schedule. Every change that was made in it was made upon the
recommendation of the government experts and nobody else.”
But later Mr. Aldrich said: “They (the new rates) are the creation of
the _committee itself_, and no man was consulted either on the Board of
Appraisers or anywhere else with reference to these provisions until the
committee had decided what they should be”; and again—“The _committee_
having decided what to do, they turned the matter of _regulating_ the
schedules to the experts of the government, and never to any
manufacturer at any time.”
It is probably true that Mr. Lippitt was not before the Senate
committee. It was not necessary. His suggestion made to the Ways and
Means Committee had been used by Mr. Aldrich almost intact. Moreover,
the work of the “experts” to which Mr. Aldrich referred had been done
with Mr. Lippitt. It was an open secret in Washington that Mr. Lippitt
spent weeks with Messrs. Sharretts and De Vries, the government experts,
whom Mr. Aldrich said first had made every change in the cotton schedule
and whom, a little later, he said had done nothing of the kind, but
simply _regulated_ them.
Moreover, reference to “experts,” coming from Mr. Aldrich at that point
in the making of the bill of 1909 did not inspire confidence. Something
of the character of the work “experts” had done for him in 1897 had been
sufficiently demonstrated by Frank P. Bennett, in the matter of William
Whitman and his top duty. If that was what Mr. Aldrich understood by
experts, then it was certain it was the kind of tariff-making which the
country had set out to correct—a species of jugglery in the interests of
some good campaign contributor made by a specialist willing to turn his
knowledge to adroit manipulation. That there was a general suspicion
around Washington that one of the “experts” who aided Mr. Lippitt, and
was now aiding Mr. Aldrich, had done something of the same kind of work
for the Senator in regard to sugar in 1897, only added to the severity
of the criticism which greeted his effort to unload the cotton duties.
However, in falling back on “experts” Mr. Aldrich was only taking us at
our word. We have all talked more or less volubly about “tariffs made by
experts.” Mr. Aldrich gave us an example of what it may be in the cotton
schedule. It turns out that it can easily be something like the familiar
“business administration” of municipalities—administrations ably
conducted to give the conductors what they want.
In defending the charges against the cotton schedule Mr. Aldrich made
the following statements:
“The existing law, by a series of undervaluations on the part of
importers and of erroneous construction on the part of the general
appraisers and the courts, has been so emasculated that the interests of
the cotton manufacturers of the United States have been largely
destroyed in some lines. This is shown by the fact that the importation
of cotton manufactures increased from $23,000,000 in 1898 to $73,000,000
in 1907.” Mr. Aldrich was mistaken in his figures. The cotton
importations in 1898 were over $27,000,000, and 1898 was an “off-year.”
The average importations in the decade 1896–1905 were over $40,000,000.
Moreover, nobody knows better than Mr. Aldrich that not over $12,000,000
of the $73,000,000 imported in 1907 referred to cotton cloths—the only
thing in dispute. The other $61,000,000 was duty on our large
importations of cotton laces, embroideries, and small goods like
handkerchiefs and hosiery. It was a misleading statement, not unlike the
statements by which the duty on mercerized goods was defended. The task
of defending this fell to Mr. Lodge in the main,—the senior Senator from
Massachusetts, and Mr. Smoot from Utah, being the senatorial team which
backed up Mr. Aldrich in the tariff debate. Mr. Lodge’s speech was most
interesting. He had been admirably coached on mercerization, and he had
his samples with him. He told how it had become a general process since
the Dingley Bill was made—that it required new and expensive machinery
and skilled labor—hence for labor’s sake and the honor of our cotton
trade we should give it a special duty. What Mr. Lodge did not say was
that this process, in so far as it adds anything to the value of a
cloth, was already provided for in the Dingley Bill. That under the
protection there provided, it had become in some ten years firmly and
successfully established in the United States. The latest textile
directory gives a list of fifty-seven concerns which do some form of
mercerizing. Some of these are on a large scale. When Mr. Lippitt
appeared before the Ways and Means Committee one of the strong reasons
he gave for not changing the Dingley duty was that under it the trade
had been able to develop on artistic lines and to employ new processes,
such as mercerization. He repeated that the Dingley duty was sufficient.
Mr. Lodge’s speech would lead one to believe that we had been unable to
mercerize goods, that it was an infant needing protection, whereas
fifty-seven establishments announce that they do the work! Moreover, Mr.
Lodge failed to prove that a cent a square yard was necessary to protect
the process. As a matter of fact, it was shown by Senator Dolliver that
the process costs nothing of the kind. Bills for mercerizing were shown
in which the charge was but ⅛ of a cent a square yard. Other figures
were quoted, but none higher than ¾ of a cent. It is probable that the
process is actually cheaper here than in England or Germany, though we
do not as yet do work of as high grade. All the evidence, indeed, leads
one to believe that there was no sound protectionist defence of the
extra duty on mercerized goods, that it was an abuse of power from start
to finish.
The duties on cotton cloth in the Payne-Aldrich Bill were adopted not
for lack of ample information of their nature, but in spite of it. The
members of the responsible committees, the members of Congress and the
Administration, not only had the debates to guide them; they had laid
before them repeatedly, by the Wholesale Dry Goods Association of New
York, graphic “object lessons” of what the new rates would do.
Discovering that Congress was unmoved by its showings, as a last resort
the Association appealed to the President for a hearing. They believed
that if they could prove to him the effect of the duties on common
goods, he would not permit the wrong. But the President would not see
them. It is probable that Mr. Taft, knowing that it was futile to oppose
the cotton duties, spared himself the ordeal of having to say to
gentlemen who had a just grievance, “I can do nothing for you.” It was
what he had done in the case of the carded woollen men. And if Mr. Taft
had offered any explanation of his inactivity, as he did in the case of
the wool schedule, he would probably have said:
_The interests of the cotton manufacturers of New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania, reflected through their representatives in Congress, were
sufficiently strong to defeat any attempt to change the cotton tariff,
and had it been attempted it would have beaten the bill reported from
either committee._
What made the cotton manufacturers so strong? Their alliance in tariff
matters with the worsted manufacturers—nothing else. Side by side with
worsted in New England and New York and Pennsylvania, in all the textile
centres, is cotton. The worsted manufacturers use larger and larger
quantities of cotton in their cheap goods. Worsted manufacturers are
also frequently cotton manufacturers. The tariff interests of cotton and
of worsted manufacturers are identical. Everywhere we find them
supporting the same political combinations. Senator Aldrich has always
been as liberal in supporting what the wool men wanted as he was in 1909
in carrying out Mr. Lippitt’s suggestions. So loyal is he to the wool
schedule that in 1909, when the attack was made by his own party
colleagues on its inequalities, he made the following extraordinary
statement:
“_There is no Senator sitting upon this side of the Chamber, there is no
person who is acquainted with the tariffs of this or any other country,
who does not know that an assault upon the wool and woollen schedule of
this bill is an attack upon the very citadel of protection and the lines
of defence for American industries and American labor. If the Senate
destroys the relation in that schedule or destroys the schedule itself,
you demoralize the whole protective system; and you destroy every line
of defence which the people of this country have who believe in the
protective policy._”
Now what does this mean? We have seen that the “assault” on the wool
schedule was merely the demand that its discriminations be adjusted:
_there was no demand for lowering duties_; but Mr. Aldrich declared if
this readjustment should be made, it would “demoralize the whole
protective system”—destroy the “citadel” and the “lines of defence for
American industries.” Can this mean anything at all but that it would
break up the wool “bulwark,” the combination of politicians and favored
wool-growers and worsted manufacturers fattening off the competing
branch of the industry? It can mean nothing else. Destroy the
combination which has kept the old wool schedule in vogue so long, and
you destroy a chief financial support of many congressmen. Break down
this combination in Congress, and what would happen to cotton? It has no
such wide power as wool. It could not count on getting what it wanted
quietly and unostentatiously as it has always done. Allied with wool,
its case has always been easy. And it was a good alliance for wool,
although not a vital one, for cotton is rich, and when it comes to funds
to return high tariff Senators, it is generous.
The fact is that this great politico-industrial alliance of cotton and
worsted has been the backbone of protection. Not of protection as the
country understood it, but of _protection as Mr. Aldrich understood it_.
To Mr. Aldrich protection never has been a set of principles to be
applied with care and candor. It has always been a trading system. I
think it is entirely fair to Mr. Aldrich to say that from his first
connection with Congress he saw that the tariff, properly worked, was
the surest road to power and to wealth that this country offered to a
politician. He saw the trading possibilities in it, and he intelligently
and persistently gave his great ability to developing them. The backbone
of the system he worked out was this alliance between cotton and
worsted. In that alliance he had a dependable block of votes with which
he could carry to success almost any duty which would strengthen the
party, oblige a friend, or help his own pocket. This block of votes was
behind practically every increase, and manipulation in the bill of 1909.
To Mr. Aldrich’s credit let it be said that he has made as little
pretence that he was not carrying on a traffic in duties as any man in
the business. On the whole, he may be said to have been frank about it,
especially in private.
The tariff bill of which these schedules were the backbone became a law
on August 5, 1909. There was something distinctly tragic in the
reception the country gave the new law. Depressed, cynical, sneering
comments were heard on all sides. Congress went home anything but proud
of itself. Here was a piece of legislation which had cost the entire
time of a large body of legislators for more than a year, to which an
extra five months’ session of Congress had been given, and from it
nobody carried away enthusiasm, pride, a sense of triumph,—nothing but a
disagreeable coppery taste of barter and jugglery, the depressing
feeling that he who has gets, as a rule, in the Congress of the United
States. The only satisfaction was the negative one that at least it was
over.
The pity of it was that they had had so fine a chance to do a real
thing. It was a task for statesmen. The nature of it was clear enough.
Nobody was for upsetting a reasonable protection. But practically
everybody but the beneficiaries were for cleaning up the tariff. The
evils inherent in it—and nobody of intelligence ever denied that they
were many—were big, easily seen:
Enormous profits to the few; steadily increasing prices to the many;
one-sided development of the country; factories growing like gourds and
no ships of our own to carry the goods in; the country sacrificed to the
city, the peace of God to the blare and the roar of the steel furnace.
These ungrateful children of protection had grown until they threatened
to crush us. And then the political enormity—the support given to a
great number of over-high duties in order to secure in return the
campaign funds and local influence of those who profited. These things
stared us in the face on every side, and had become hateful to the
people. It looked, in fact, as if they were coming to be about all there
was of the protective system. There could be, and there was, no quarrel
among honest men about the necessity of doing a fair housecleaning job.
The method seemed as clear as the task. The definition of protection
accepted by the majority in this country was a reasonable one. There is
scarcely a doubt that every intelligent voter knew about what it
was—that it included tariff for revenue and tariff for moderate
protection, until such time as an essential industry was on its feet.
Now the application of such a definition ought not to be—and would not
be—puzzling, if it had not become tangled with the proposition of tariff
for politics only. It requires, to be sure, a large amount of exact
information, but such information is obtainable through experts. It
requires, too, firm and consistent rating through all the schedules. The
work obviously demands to be done by disinterested persons, those who
have no object except to do an honest task. That this was the only way
to get a satisfactory revision everybody knew. And in the face of this
perfectly clear proposition, we got a bill perpetuating all of the old
abuses and made in the same old way.
This is not saying that there was not some very good tinkering in the
bill of 1909. It should not be forgotten that hides and petroleum were
made free, that the duties were lowered on rough lumber and print paper,
and on coal and iron ore, that a temporary tariff commission was
secured; but at no point did Congress or the President show a real
understanding of the human cry that was at the heart of the movement
which had driven them to undertake the revision.
_There was a great human cause—easing the burden of our vast laboring
class—knocking at the door of Congress, and it was not heeded—if,
indeed, it was heard._ True, there was talk of an “ultimate consumer”—a
kind of economic manikin introduced for convenience in demonstration.
But that this ultimate consumer was a flesh and blood person there was
no recognition.
Mr. Taft seems no more to have understood his great chance than did
Congress. The only case in which he used his executive power to force
Congress to correct a duty which was obviously an abuse was hides. Mr.
Taft withstood a fierce attack for this duty from the forces to which he
yielded in the far more important matter of wool and cotton. But it was
not high-class bargaining, in which, by virtue of his office and his
power of veto, he was able to wrest a few concessions, that the country
had a right to ask from Mr. Taft. Leadership was his business. It was
for him to make clear the great need, to inspire the great action, to
create the atmosphere for high endeavor. One big ringing appeal from Mr.
Taft, showing that he felt for the masses of this country and meant, if
possible, that there should be a fairer division of burdens, that he saw
the shame of bartering legislation for political support and meant to
break the practice if he could, would have been worth many times the
concessions obtained. It was the spirit of tariff reform, the zeal for
honest schedules, the determination that discriminations should be done
away with, indignation at the wretched and shameless alliances back of
the bills, that it was for Mr. Taft to feel and to foster. But it is
evident that he did not feel these things, and so could not foster them.
He had an opportunity to lead in a great moral awakening on the most
serious matter since the days of slavery. He did not understand the
issue. He saw merely the chance of doing some tinkering, which he did
manfully and effectively.
Tariff reform calls for more than lowering a duty here and there, more
than appointing a Tariff Board, more than negotiating a Reciprocity
Treaty, good as all these may be. It calls for an intellectual and moral
revolt against the entire system of protection as we know it. No leader
can accomplish the work needed who does not go to the fight hot with
indignation at the intellectual jugglery which has swamped the
protective principle and weakened the country’s capacity for sound
political thinking and its keenness for distinguishing moral values.
Never until such a revolt comes will the clutch of the greedy
beneficiaries of the system be wrenched loose. The wrong done to mind
and morals is a far more serious matter than any damming up of trade the
policy produces. That at most can endure but a few generations. The laws
of trade are too powerful to be long interrupted by unnatural barriers
like prohibitive tariffs. They finally flow over them as a river over a
dam, and eventually toss them aside like the drift they are. That is,
all tampering with liberty and truth comes sooner or later to naught.
True, in the meantime the people bear the burden. True, the end of all
industrial progress, that is, the fair distribution of a production
sufficient to keep in health and happiness the people of all the earth,
is put off; but that is less serious than the deterioration of
intellectual and moral integrity which it has required to build up our
dishonest and inhuman tariff laws.