Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1911 — GIVE DEMOCRATIC TARIFF PROGRAM [ARTICLE]

GIVE DEMOCRATIC TARIFF PROGRAM

Leaders of Majority Party Map Out Their Course. STEEL SCHEDULE COMES FIRST Thl# Is to Be Followed by Chemical Schedule and Then Sugar, Wool and Cotton Bringing Up the Extreme Rear. Washington,. Dec, 29.—The attitude of the Democratic party in congress toward the tariff board is no longer at all doubtful. Representative ‘Underwood of Alabama, ways and means chairman and majority floor leader, let it be known that the tariff program of the majority party in the house has been pretty well mapped out. Apparently it takes little ccyrizznce of the tariff board,/ According to Mr. Underwood the first tariff bill to go through will be one providing for revision of the iron and steel schedule. The reductions in this bill roughly approximate 30 per cent on tonnage iron and steel and 40 per cent on the higher grades of the manufactured product. After this the chemical schedule will be tackled and then sugar. By that time Mr. Underwood hopes the Democratic clerks of the ways and means committee will have completed the comparison they have teen directed to make between the tariff board’s ’figures and the Democratic statistics upon which the wool bill of the special session was based. After the wool bill has been passed, a similar, comparison win be made between the tariff board’s figures on cotton and the committee's statistics. This comparative tariff program will not be completed, the majority leader believes,-until some time- in March even under the most favorable conditions. Mr. Underwood explains the rushing to the front of the steel, chemical and sugar schedules, which have not been reported upon by the tariff board, and the relegation to the rear of wool, which has been, and cotton, which is about to be,,by the reluctance of the majority to accept the tariff board’s figures as final and to their insistence upon thorough inspection and comparison of the board’s statistics with those already at hand. Leading Republicans charge, however, that the intention of the Democrats to ignore and belittle the tariff board as much as possible is apparent.