Tariff reform

“ Whatever may be its shortcomings as a complete measure of tariff reform, it must be conceded that it has opened the way to a freer and greater exchange of commodities between us and other countries, and thus furnished a wider market for our products and manufactures. ”

“ When, therefore, the best methods of Federal taxation are broached, the reform of the tariff stands first in importance. It is necessary to bring it more into line with the industrial conditions of to-day, which call for foreign markets rather than a domestic or closed market; and for a liberal commercial policy in place of one that regards the products of other countries, whether imported in the crude or manufactured forms, as constituting a menace to American labor and American interests. ”

“ 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 330system 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. ”

“ Moreover, the Democratic position had the disadvantage of being an attempt to meet a condition and one not of their making. They might be free traders as a few of them were; they might be tariff-for-revenue only men, as most of them were, but when it came to making a tariff bill they felt themselves obliged to fix duties not only with revenue and reform in mind, but with protection as well. The Republicans could taunt them with inconsistency and cowardice and describe their revenue duties as disguised protection to their own friends. ”

“ The tariff issue did not become prominent during the last period of depression, because then the financial problem seemed to have the closest relation to our economic condition. But when the next comes, the tariff will probably be the only great economic question before the country. Revenue reform will then be apt to present itself to the people in a new light, and to become an exciting topic. ”

“ Moreover, nations will not buy freely of nations that close their doors. The country was beginning to feel this fact. We were antagonizing the foreign market. The member of the Harrison Administration who saw this fact most clearly was James G. Blaine, Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine had been guilty of some curious quakery in the campaign for tariff reform, which Mr. Cleveland had forced. His treatment of the surplus and the trust in their relation to the tariff had been superficial. But to the question of our foreign trade he had given serious thought. ”

“ The combination of the two documents caused something like a split in Republican ranks. The Chicago Tribune and a number of other Western papers came out with as strong a commendation of Mr. Cleveland as the New York Nation, and in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa particularly, many leading Republicans publicly approved it. Nevertheless, the final effect on the party was to solidify the varying degrees of protectionists into one body. Cost what it might the Democrats must not be allowed to reform the tariff. Nothing was better campaign capital for Republicans than the charge of “free-trade.” ”

“ General Brinkerhoff and Professor Arthur L. Perry, of Williams College, the author of a book generally used at the time, “Elements of Political Economy,” spending much of the fall and winter in discussing the need of tariff reform. At the same time a group of strong Republican newspapers, including the Portland Advertiser, the St. Louis Democrat, the Pittsburg Commercial, the Cincinnati Gazette, and the Chicago Tribune, one of the very ablest papers in the country, turned their batteries on the tariff. The last-named led in the campaign and led well. ”

“ No tariff reformer indeed could have asked a better platform than that on which the Commissioners claimed they had worked. Early in their deliberations, they said, they had come to the conclusion that a substantial reduction was demanded—that it was necessary for general industrial prosperity. “No rates of defensive duties,” declared the commission, “except for the establishment of new industries which more than equalize the conditions of labor and capital with those of foreign competitors, can be justified. ”

“ Every true Democrat and every sincere tariff reformer knows that this bill in its present form and as it will be submitted to the conference falls far short of the consummation for which we have 232long labored, for which we have suffered defeat without discouragement, which in its anticipation gave us a rallying cry in our day of triumph, and which in its promise of accomplishment is so interwoven with Democratic pledges and Democratic success, that our abandonment of the cause or the principles upon which it rests means party perfidy and party dishonor. ”

“ We shall have nothing for the sinking funds—we must put more taxes on tobacco and spirits, more duties on molasses and sugar, and 80we must restore the 10 per cent reduction on manufactured goods. It was urged by the tariff reformers that if revenue was wanted the repeal of the 10 per cent reduction would help but little—that the restoration of the duty on tea and coffee was the simplest and fairest—but the protectionists were determined to get back their 10 per cent, and they did it, though only after a hard fight and a close vote. ”

“ Yet there is scarcely a major problem in our national life—agriculture, industry and labour, merchant marine, international debt and even disarmament—that does not involve the question of the tariff.
A tariff is a tax on certain goods passing from the producer to the consumer. It is laid on these goods rather than other similar ones because they originate abroad. This is obviously protection for the producers of competing goods at home. Peasants who live at lower levels than our farmers, [Pg 178] workers who are sweated to reduce costs, ought not to determine prices for American-made goods. ”

“ Men have been struck, students of this matter, by an entirely new departure. The new doctrine of the protectionist is that the tariff should represent the difference between the cost of production in America and the cost of production in other countries, plus a reasonable profit to those who are engaged in industry. This is the new part of the protective doctrine: "plus a reasonable profit." It openly guarantees profit to the men who come and ask favors of Congress. The old idea of a protective tariff was designed to keep American industries alive and, therefore, keep American labor employed. ”

“ I have long believed, and I still believe, that the worst evil which has afflicted the interests of the American artisans and manufacturers has been the tendency to extremes in our tariff legislation. Our history for the last fifty years has been a repetition of the same mistake. One party comes into power, and believing that a protective tariff is a good thing establishes a fair rate of duty. Not content with that, they say: ‘This works well, let us have more of it,’ and they raise the rates still higher, and perhaps go beyond the limits of national interest. ”

“ It costs the people five times more than it produces to the treasury, obstructs the processes of production, and wastes the fruit of labor.
83It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials, and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all custom-house taxation shall be only for revenue.
It is evident from what we have seen of the record of the Republican tariff-reformers that no great number of them would follow the Democrats in any such radical program as Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is hardly a thing he consumes which this bill forgets to raise the duty upon. Every prominent necessity of life, food, fuel, shelter, and clothing, is embraced and made more expensive to the consumer throughout the country. Even on boys’ pocket-knives the duty is increased about three times—600 per cent—one member of the committee tells me. And yet it is said this is a tariff for mere protection. Why, sir, you are protecting the American people until they will not be able to buy one solitary thing that is protected if this goes on. ”

“ I warn those who insist so pertinaciously upon a retention of these high duties upon necessary articles of consumption that they only hasten the time when a more radical change will be made in our tariff laws. What manufacturers need most of all is stability in legislation, avoiding sudden and sweeping changes. The changes which I have proposed would reduce the revenue only a few million dollars, while to the consumers of manufactures produced they would reduce the cost of those products many million dollars. ”

“ Unless our expenditures can be kept within the revenues then our revenue laws must be readjusted. It is as yet too early to attempt to outline what shape such a readjustment should take, for it is as yet too early to say whether there will be need for it. It should be considered whether it is not desirable that the tariff laws should provide for applying as against or in favor of any other nation maximum and minimum tariff rates established by the Congress, so as to secure a certain reciprocity of treatment between other nations and ourselves. ”

“ We have come to recognize in the tariff as it is now constructed, not a system of protection, but a system of favoritism, of privilege, too often granted secretly and by subterfuge, instead of openly and frankly and legitimately, and we have determined to put an end to the whole bad business, not by hasty and drastic changes, but by the adoption of an entirely new principle,—by the reformation of the whole purpose of legislation of that kind. We mean that our tariff legislation henceforth shall have as its object, not private profit, but the general public development and benefit. ”

“ The manufacturing interests were suffering; all branches of industry were drooping. Said the Committee, to whom the subject was referred, in their report, “A well regulated tariff, on a scale sufficient for the wants of the government is the only effectual remedy for the evils the government and the people are now suffering. It will inspire confidence throughout the country. It will again set every wheel in motion. It will improve and enlarge the currency. It will send out its life, giving influence to the extremity of the nation, and give vigor and activity to the whole system. ”

“ The result of the recent election must be accepted as having introduced a new policy. We must assume that the present tariff, constructed upon the lines of protection, is to be repealed and that there is to be substituted for it a tariff law constructed solely with reference to revenue; that no duty is to be higher because the increase will keep open an American mill or keep up the wages of an American workman, but that in every case such a rate of duty is to be imposed as will bring to the Treasury of the United States the largest returns of revenue. ”

“ As an occasion for such charges scarce any other form of legislation serves as well. Even the people themselves are easily assumed by their neighbors to weigh their opinions upon a tariff measure by their personal interests.
The indirect influence of a new tariff law upon the industries of a country can scarcely be foreseen. So interlocked are all the varieties of manufacture and trade that a change in price of any one article of commerce may affect hundreds of others, sometimes much more than the article restricted. ”

“ As I have indicated, it is increasingly clear that to obtain and maintain that equity and substantial equality of treatment essential to the flourishing foreign trade, which becomes year by year more important to the industrial and commercial welfare of the United States, we should have a flexibility of tariff sufficient for the give and take of negotiation by the Department of State on behalf of our commerce and industry. ”

“ Conservative, put him in the Senate and you keep him there.
We have what is called a protective tariff in this country. It is a law which, in the name of protecting the workingman, robs him and every other consumer. If you are a conservative, you are in favor of maintaining this law.
The tariff schedule was drawn up by a committee of Congress behind closed doors. That is, the doors were closed on those who have to pay the tariff, but open to those who were to be benefited by it. ”

“ It would be better for Congress, the law-making power, after determining the amount to be raised, to sanction and adopt a careful tariff bill, framed by an impartial commission, large enough to represent all sections and parties, all employers and employees. Hitherto, the tariffs framed by Congress have been rejected by the people. Each party, in its turn, has undertaken the task with a like result. Let us try the experiment of a tariff framed, not by a party upon a party platform, but by the selected representatives of the commercial, industrial, farming and laboring classes. ”