Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1911 — SPEAKER CLARK’S ANSWER. [ARTICLE]

SPEAKER CLARK’S ANSWER.

As President Taft in his recent speech directly attacked the record made by the house Democrats, it is fitting that Speaker Clark should reply. And he does reply, and most effectively. We do not think that the President’s sense of gratitude for Democratic support of reciprocity sheuld have kept him from criticising the action of the Democrats, if it deserved criticism. Nevertheless, it is well to remember that without Democratic support Mr. Taft would have lost his great reciprocity fight. For a majority of his own party in both house and senate repudiated his reciprocity agreement, and also repudiated his leadership. His victory was won by Democratic votes. It was by those votes that he was saved from a humiliating defeat. The realization of that fact should have restrained the President from unfair criticism. And it was unfair .to charge that in their efforts to reform the tariff the Democrats were inspired solely by political motives. The Democrats, as Mr. Clark very truly says, honestly tried to keep faith with the people and to “religiously redeem the promises we made in order to win the election in 1910.” Mr. Taft’s intimation that the wool bill was “rushed through without due consideration” is erroneous. The Democratic caucus met January 19 last, and chose the ways and means committee. That committee began work at once on the wool bill, which was not reported to the house till the middle of April. Three months were thus devoted to one schedule, while the Republican ways and means committee devoted only a little more than four months to the consideration of the fourteen schedules of the Payne-Aldrich tariff. Mr. Clark further reminds us that the bill was thoroughly discussed in the house, and that the debate continued as long as any one wished to talk. “It was.” says the Speaker, “one of the most thoroughly and carefully considered tariffAbills ever presented to any President for his signature.” It was quite good enough for Mr. Taft to sign. This demand for care and deliberation, and for a “scientific” tariff comes with poor grace from the head of a party that enacted a tariff that is so unscientific as to be already, within two years of its enactment, out of date.

We think that the Speaker is right again when he says that if the so-called tariff commission is to be used for the purpose of delaying tariff revision it should be done away with. The truth js that this whole theory of difference in cost of production is illusory, as Representative Redfield showed in one of the clearest speeches ever delivered in the house of representatives. The Democrats honestly tried to do something to relieve the people. The President blocked all their attempts. That is the truth of the matter. Mr. Clark’s interview is a very clear and correct statement of the issue. Mr. Taft lost one of the greatest opportunities that ever came to a President when he refused to sign the wool bill.—lndianapolis News. Job printing of the better class type, ink and typography in harmony—The Democrat office