Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1908 — GREED WED TARIFF [ARTICLE]

GREED WED TARIFF

Public Interest Ignored In the Dingley Schedules. THE PROOF HAS LEAKED OUT I ■. “ ■ JU 1 • X Professor Edward A. Ross, Economist and Author, Now at Wisconsin University, Says Principle, Not Party Contributions, Must Control. The question of tariff revision is not a covert attack on protection. The thirteen inch guns of the protectionfree trade controversy need not be wheeled into line in this fight. For some of us the point is this: It is well known now that the present tariff was framed at a time when special interests held the national legislature with a grip that is shocking to contemplate. Enough has leaked out to prove that tn the making of the schedules the greedy, alert private interest had its way, whereas the general public interest was consistently ignored. Now that the people are awake to the importance of protecting vast diffused interests against the aggressions of small concentrated interests, as is evidenced by meat inspection, pure food laws, anti-child labor legislation, corporation control, forestry and conservation, they demand that the schedules imposed upon them Ln those evil times of favoritism be overhauled by men alive to the public interest and recast according to some principle. Almost any rational principle will lead to a tariff more acceptable than the unresisted thrust of selfish interests that shaped the Dingley tariff. A system of protective duties honestly built up on the principle of allowing for the difference in labor cost between the United States and competing countries would be infinitely preferable to schedules dictated to many instances by the heavy contributors to the party chest in the campaign of 1896. EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS.