Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1914 — PROGRESSIVE PARTY COLUMN. [ARTICLE]

PROGRESSIVE PARTY COLUMN.

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This year, Mr. Voter, you vote for United States Senator direct. The names of the candidates for United States Senator, for the first time in history, will appear on the ballot, and you can take your choice among the men. The name of Albert I. Beveridge will be on the ticket, just as the name of the state candidates win be on the ticket. No legislative or local issue will stand between you and your senatorial choice. Make your choice, Mr. Voter, on the record and relative efficiency of the men. You know the qualifications of all the candidates. Vote for Indiana and the well-being of her people. Send Albert J. Beveridge back to Washington to do duty again for the people. Mr. Beveridge today is at the height of his powers. He has had precisely the experience that is needed, and he adds to that experience a commanding ability, an aUbundiiig energy, a tireless Industry’ and a wonderful capacity for getting things done. Mr. Beveridge knows the Washington game. Not only that, Mr. Beveridge in 1915 and in the years to follow, would have at his back a public opinion which has been developed in the last sixteen or twenty years in the United States, and that sane and compelling public opinion would enable him to achieve greatly more remedial and beneficial legislation than could be put over in the period of his former service. The time is ripe for progress at Washington, and the time is here for the people to send to the front their ablest and bravest champions. This means Mr. Beveridge in Indiana. This is one thing the average voter already concedes. —:o:—,— ■' This country has got to have, and in time will have a non-partisan tariff commission, with power in the law to get the facts and to report the truth as to tariff needs to the public, to the President and to the Congress. Nobody says that the power to make revenue laws abides in the national House. Nobody attempts to take that power from the House. It is urged, simply, that a business matter, the tariff, shall be dealt with by experts and not by politicians. Members of the House and Senate are not elected because they are tariff experts. Far from it. In many

cases they are there because they are expert politicians, which_-is another thing. But the non-partisan members of a tariff commission would be appointed for the one and only reason that they arte experts. This would be the case t if the tariff commission law were honestly drawn and honestly passed. The spirit of the whole business tariff proposition calls for tariff experts who shall be as nonpolitical and as non-partisan as the officers of the army and navy, and as patriotic and as loyal as the men at arms. Having the facts, getting the truth and laying the truth before the people, before the President and before Congress, the tariff commission would have served well to pave the way for honest tariff legislation. For the commission, with its report, would make recommendations. With an informed jmblic. and with a public opinion backing it up, the tariff commission could and would make its impress upon the Congress, no matter how reactionary or how recalcitrant the politicians might try to be. After all, it is only when the people know what is going on that good laws can be forced through the old party machines that dominate Washington affairs. This has been true for many years. It is only through giving the people the advantage of expert and exact knowledge of conditions that honest tariff legislation can be had. In short, the Progressive idea is to take the tariff out of the hands of the politicians and to put the making of an honest tariff in the hands of experts who, basing their recommendations on the facts, can prepare for congressional action in a sane and Orderly and non-partisan way. Having taken the tariff-making job out of the hands of politicians who do not know how to make an honest tariff, the Progressive idea then is to revise one schedule at a time, without reference to any other schedule, to the end that log-rollers for one schedule may not be enabled to trade votes with log-rollers for some other iniquitous grab. All this is simplicity itself. It works well in Germany, and has worked well there for years. It is applied gumption. That’s all.