Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1913 — REPUBLICANS SAY BILL IS DELUSION [ARTICLE]

REPUBLICANS SAY BILL IS DELUSION

Declare Radical Tariff Revision Submitted by Democrats is Inexcusable and Uncalled for. • ’ Washington, Auril 20.—Ad valorem duties such as are proposed in the democratic tariff bill “are a delusion and a snare”; that the radical tariff revision submitted by the democrats is inexcusable and uncalled for and that an accounting will come for its enactment into law are contentions of the republican mgmbers of the ways and means committee in a minority report to be reported to the house tomorrow. “There is no excuse for the radical change in our revenue system proposed by this democratic bill” says the report, which is signed by Representatives Payne, Fordney, Gardner, Moore, Green and Anderson. ‘The people have not asked it. The party proposing it is in power, not by the grace of a majority of the American people, but by a division in the ranks of the majority on other questions than that of protection. The administration has the power to enact this legislation. The accounting for the abuse of that power will come later.” The report contends that the bill has caused intense and widespread alarm in business circles, and quotes the message of Democratic Governor Foss to the Massachusetts legislature describing the proposed act “as a non-protectivc tariff for revenue orily, unreciprocal, destructive downward revision.” Asserting that the democratic bill “seems to meet with unoversal approval on the other side of the Atlantic,” the report declares that the protective feature has been entirely eliminated in the framing of the bill. “No one will accuse the democratic committee,” it adds, “of seeking to make up the difference in cost fiere and abroad, or even of trying to put the industries here on a competitive basis with the industries abroad.” Attacking the ad valorem system, the report says it imposes a greater tax when prices are high and competition not so keen and a lesser tax when prices are low and competition is keener and' much more injurious to the American producer, and “that it bears more heavily on the honest importer and favors the man who by perjury and fraud undervalues his goods and escapes his fair share of taxation.” Defending the existing Payne-Al-drich tariff, the minority asserts that in the last four years “the people of the country have been more prosperous than ever before in our history.”