Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1913 — LIVE STOCK, OATS AND WHEAT FREE [ARTICLE]

LIVE STOCK, OATS AND WHEAT FREE

Senate Finance Subcommittee Reconsiders Former Action to Levy . • Moderate Duty.

Washington, June 3.—Reversing its former action in voting to place wheat, flour, oatmeal and fresh meats on the dutiable list, the senate finance subcommittee in charge of the agricultural schedule voted late today to place live stock, oats and wheat on the free list.

This action, is was authoritatively stated, was taken to meet the views of President Wilson, Senator Simmons, chairman of the finance committee, and other administration leaders, who disapproved the decision announced yesterday to tax meats 10 per cent, compensatory to a duty on cattle in the Underwood bill, and to assess a compensatory duty on both flour and oatmeal. The vote to reconsider was taken inthe subcommittee on a motion made by Senator Simmons, ex officio member of all the subcommittees handling the various tariff schedules, when he returned to the Capitol from a conference with the president.

In this enlargment of the free list President Wilson is known to have taken a leading part, as he did in the matter of raw wool and sugar before the ways and means committee. As he still is standing uncompromisingly for the wool and sugar schedules, so it is declared, he will Stand firm for free eat tie, sheep and hogs, and free wheat and oats now that this has been determined upon as the party policy. Senator Simmons conferred with the president last week about his views on the method of equalizing the Underwood*bill with regard to these raw materials and their products. - -

After leaving the White House, Senator Simmons called on Senator Williams, chairman of the subcommittee, and told him of the sentiment for free cattle and free wheat. Then the subcommittee was called together and its former action reversed. “The matter is settled now,” said Senator Simmons, “and that is the way the schedule will go to the senate.” The inquisitorial clause of the Underwood bill, which aroused foreign protest, has been giving the Williams subcommittee considerable trouble, and in trying to work out a modification of its provisions it has had the aid of Secretary McAdoo, Secretary Bryan and John Bassett Moore, counselor of the state department.

The proposal to place for the-first time in the country’s history a tariff on raw or undressed furs. has aroused loud protests from furriers, and the subcommittee headed by Senator Johnson which has the sundries schedule under consideration, is studying the situation. The Underwood bill proposes a rate of 10 per cent on raw furs. One brief filed with the committee by Joseph Ullman, of New York, stated that a duty, no matter how small, on raw furs, would completely destroy an international trade which United States fur merchants have built up. Fur skins are free in all foreign countries, except Russia, which has a very small specific weight. The brief set forth that under the most favorable circumstances the estimated amount of revenue from such a duty, which the ways and means committee put at $1,400,000, would (all decidedly below one-half of this amount and insisted that the tariff would result in a loss to American merchants of $6,000,000 annually.