Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — Who Made the Bill. [ARTICLE]

Who Made the Bill.

The committee appointed by the Reform Club to draft a proposed tariff bill consists of E. Ellery Anderson, Hon. Charles S. Fairchild, Thomas G. Shearman, Prof. David A. Wells. Hon. John Dewitt Warner, Everett P.Wheeler, and Jacob Schoenhof. Mr. Anderson, the chairman, i 9 an expresident of and a big contributor to the Reform Club Mr. Fairchild was Secretary of the Treasury during Cleveland’s first administration, and is now President of the Reform Club. Mr. Shearman has for a third of a century been one of the most successful of customs attorneys in New York. He was Beecher’s attorney during the famous Beech-er-Tilton trial. He Is eminent as a lawyer, statistician, and philanthropist Prof. Wells has written more books and pamphlets on the tariff question than any other American. His “Becent Economic Changes” is regarded as one of the two or three great books of this generation. Congressman Warner is widely known as a writer and speaker on tariff and financial questions. He is the author of many of the Reform Club’s most telling pamphlets and, more than any other man, has been the backbone of the Club since its origin In 1887. Mr. Wheeler, is well as a lawyer, writer and speaker on economic questions. He is also an ex-president of the Reform Club. Mr. Schoenhof was Consul to Tunstal, England, under Cleveland, and is the author of several works on the tariff and wage question. It would be difficult to get together seven men better qualified to frame a tariff bill than these gentlemen. They are all successful business men; all have studied the needs of the people for many years; from their intimacy with different industries they know about what reductions are necessary and safe. They owe nothing politically to any protected manufacturers, and are in league with no clique of office-holders or spoilsmen; they have demonstrated their unselfisiiness and devotion to principle by giving their money, time an 1 thought to the tariff and other reforms; they have no ax to grind in proposing a new tariff bill, and do so only to educate the people, keep the Democratic party in line, and see that the promises made to the people are carried out in good faith. But little impression can be made upon such a committee by calling its members “theorists,” “cranks,” “hobbyriders” or “imbeciles,” and yet protectionists are compelled lo put up some kind of opposition to a bill that would actually stop the greater part of the tariff robbery. Their case is certainly desperate.