Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1916 — NEW ERA OF BUSINESS [ARTICLE]

NEW ERA OF BUSINESS

The panacea of Mr. Hughes for the future ills of the country’s business, of which there are no signs yet appearing, is in a high protective tariff. The President’s view is that the country’s business shall be organized to meet the balance of the world in the markets of the world and leave the matter of the tariff to the commission he will soon appoint to determine what the tariff ought to be. Speaking of the tariff, the President says: “We have admitted that on the one side and on the other we were talking theories and managing policies without sufficient knowledge of the facts upon which we were acting.” To correct this the tariff commission was provided and he expresses hope that he “can find the men who will see the facts and state them no matter whose opinion those facts contradict.” That will shock tariff standpatters and we even doubt that Mr. Hughes will know what to make of it. It does not take into account what the Cranes and Penroses and Smoots most certainly will have to say about the tariff if they should have the making of another outfit of schedules for the country. But we believe what the President says expresses the view of business in the country today. The President, in his speech of acceptance, said that the closing of the old world war might raise for this country problems that would require seme radical revisions of policy and the event may do that,

but there will be no saturnalia of schedules for selected privilege. The tariff is out of politics, and as the President repeated to the grain dealers, “the tariff commission is going to look for the facts, no matter who is hurt.’’ That sounds a little better than the dictum of Mr. Hughes that, regardless of conditions, indifferent to needs, and for the sake of the thing itself, the tariff has got to go up. Business free, business stimulated, business efficient, business militant, and business abroad in the world of conquering markets and doing good make up Hie President’s program for American business. American business skulking behind tariff ramparts and depending on government favor and special privilege to loot at home and play the cut-throat abroad form no part of that prospect. It is a new era and it will be the greatest era American business ever has had.—Carroll County Citizen-Times.