Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1911 — TAFT’S WOOL MESSAGE. [ARTICLE]

TAFT’S WOOL MESSAGE.

An important point in connection with the President’s message on the woolen schedule has escaped attention. It is this: Mr. Taft is giving the people a discourse on wool instead of cheaper woolens. Whether the President’s message, which doesn’t tell Congress any more about the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad than it knew before, will be accepted by the country as a satisfactory substitute for cheaper and better clothing, which he promised in his preelection speeches, and was in a position to give but flatly refused by vetoing the Underwood-La-Follette wool bill, remains to be seen. Here are some facts which will aid the reader to reach a conclusion as to whether the President is now, ever was or ever will be in good faith with the public when it comes to interferring with the profits of the tariff trusts which make big campaign contributions to the Republican party: When the Payne-Aldrich bill was passed Mr. Taft said the woolen schedule of that measure was “indefensible,” and that he would like to see it revised and revised downward. At the extra session of congress democrats and progressive republicans passed a bill reducing the abnormallyhigh tax on wooleens in a sin 7 cere anil patriotic attempt to lighten the burden of taxation to the users of woolens. Had| the President signecj this bill it j would have meant a reduction this winter in the price of woolen clothing of all sorts for men, I women and children.; also in the' prices of blankets and other j forms of woolen manufactures J needed for warmth by the gener-. al public. . But the President vetoed this bill affording the very kind of relief he had declared to be in sympathy with, forcing the American people to continue toj yay a subsidy in artificial prices io the wool industry of approxi-i inately $100,000,000 a year. “I must veto this bill,” de-, dared the President, “but after the tariff board reveals -the dif-' ferences in the cost of production at home and abroad I will ‘favor downward revision of the wool schedule.” i This report is now in, has been read and analyzed, and- found to contain practically nothing more on the subject-of difference in the "•'Co&L. of production at home and abroad than the Democratic Ways and Means’ committee was in possession of when it framed the Underwood bill. The joke is on the public again. The people asked for cheaper clothing,, and all they get, so ’far as Mr. Taft, is concerned, is a . nicely worded but useless message; words as a substitute for relief from the extortionate prices exacted by. the tariff trusts. , ' - .