Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1909 — TAFT’S SHIP SUBSIDY SCHEME. [ARTICLE]

TAFT’S SHIP SUBSIDY SCHEME.

President Has Added Another Burden to Load of the Next Congress. President Taft has added steamship subsidy to his extensive program for the next session of congress. There Is no question as to the loglcal'conslstency of his position when he asks why we should not have steamship subvention as well as a protective tariff. Why not, Indeed? When hundreds of millions are extorted from the earnings of the masses of the American people to sw’ell the coffers of the steel trust, the sugar trust and other greedy tariff beneficiaries, why balk at a few millions a year for ship owners? Mr- Taft asks for a subsidy of only $6,000,000 or $8,000,000 a year as a beginning. This is a mere bagatelle compared with the tariff spoils. If it should tend, however, to the creation of a great trust on the high seas such as those that Infest the land, so much the better in the estimate of our alleged economists, who regard the great combinations to monopolize trade and industry as the highest material development of modern civilization, although the

rest of the world is fai;, from being convinced of it. But the serious drawback to the success of President Taft’s subsidy plan will be in the difficulty to obtain a majority of the house In its favor. While the Democrats of the the house are a unit in opposition to ship subsidy in all its forms, the Republicans of the middle west are more hostile to it than ever. With the senate the thing will be easy, as usual: but what Mark Hanna could not accomplish in the popular administration of McKinley and what Roosevelt himself failed to attain will hardly be In reach of Taft In the growth of the country's repugnance to this whole system of robbery. The argument which he draws from the tariff is far from tending to strengthen the plea for subsidy with the people, who detest the Payne-Aldrich bill. It Is evident from the tenor of President Taft’s subsidy speech that he has his own misgivings on the subject. That the instroduction of his ship subsidy scheme will widen the breach in the Republican majority in congress there is no question.—Philadelphia Record.