Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1908 — IS FIXED BY FACTS [ARTICLE]

IS FIXED BY FACTS

Senator Beveridge Presents Tariff Question From Viewpoint of Common Sense and Experience. HOW TO GET AT THESE FACTS Indiana Senator Points Out to the Country the Absolute Need of the Complex Subject Being Given Into •4 :• the Hands of a Body of Qualified Experts. Washington, Feb. 6.—Senator Albert Jr Beveridge of Indiana Wednesday afternoon delivered a speech in the senate on his bill for the creation of a tariff commission. _ The galleries ‘were filled long before the gan his speech. The Hoosier senator is one of the most entertaining orators in the senate, and he is always greeted by crowds whenever he speaks. The senator said in part: "The tariff is fixed by facts; how to get at these facts is the first question in the whole tariff problem. Common sense and experience answer that question; we should create a body*of experts to find out these facts for us. “If we thought it wise for the president to send a commission to find out the facts in so simple a matter as a strike at Goldfield; If it is wise in litigation for a chancellor to appoint special examiners and commissioners to find out and report the facts in single cases; if the senate directs the bureau of corporations to find out the doings of a slngld trust in a single branch of its activities; if congress creates a body of men to find out the facta about any great business which the president thinks should be investigated, and if its work is so wise that no man in any party asks that that work be stopped how much wiser and more necessary is the same plan as to our tariff, which Is more important, more Intricate, more difficult than all these other things put together.” The senator said the congressional committees cannot work on the tariff question all the time. He cited Several Instances showing the committees had more work than they could accomplish. He continued: “I have carefully gone over the bill that Mr. Dingiey reported to the house and which the house passed;' also the bill which Mr. Aldrich reported to the senate, aDd have tabulated the duties which these two bills fixed on the ■ime articles. The duties fixed on most of them by the house bill differ widafo from thoie fixed by the senate bill. Kid In many cases the differences are » wide apart that they are startling. 1 ' The senator gave a list of duitable articles showing the differences. He said: “These are only a few examples: there are hundreds like them. In the cotton and woolen schedule, the steel and iron schedule and the glass schedule the bouse and senate differ on nearly every item. Frequently the bouse fixed specific duties, the senatead valorem duties. Sometimes the bouse and senate put articles on the "free list” and the conference committee put heavy duties on those very articles. Sometimes the conference committee disregarded the duties of both senate and house and fixed different duties and on a different basis; yet the conference committee was in session only five days. If thqge committees bad the same facts, why these Wide differences? Tor the majorityof" both committees were as high protectionists aa I am. Had these facts been carefully gotten up by a body of experts. specially fitted for that work and with plenty of time to do the work, could there have been these astounding differences? "The want of classifications of our tariff is as bad as the want of facta. Nearly all our tariff classifications are more than a generation old. This is because each time the tariff has been revised the committees have taken the language of the old classifications. Not one of them is systematic, accurate and up to date. The result is that the importer frequently does not know what classification his imports are under, and therefore what duty he must pay. The appraiser first decides this question, then the importer appeals to the general board of appraisers, and finally to the courts. There have been 600,000 such disputes since the present law* was enacted. Deciatoaa of the treasury department on the subject of the tariff fill seventeen great volumes; the decisions of the courts add tnaay more; add. remember that two-thirds of bur imports arw for tht Use of 'American manufacturers. TttU' ban cost importers and the government millions of 4olU»; the importers maay millions more. It has disturbed business. . which has not known what to depend upon. And the whole coat has finally fallen on the pdbple. For want of plain classification In our tariff our appraisers are compelled to claaaify an astonishing variety of articles in a purely artificial manner under the same heading, and so actually legislate where congress has failed to legislate. Will anyone contend that a simple article like nails should have the same rate aa an electric dynamo? la there any logic in olasalng bub tons and stoves together? Should bullets and buggies, should automobiles and bull's-eye lanterns pay the same duty? Ara farm implements and gold boxes

In the same bias*? Ia there any* connection between carriages and dress trimmings? Is there any reason why cannon for war and crosses for churches should be classified alike? ‘ Yet all these are in the same classification and pay the same rates; but more absurd than this is the fact that they are put in the same etassifleation by the appraisers and the courts passing on each article because congress did not classify them at all. Nobody knew what duties these articles would have to pay until the guess of the appraisers and the courts filled up the holes In the law. *-—t rr Compared with the scientific, Clear, accurate classification of the German schedules, for instance, our classificattons are confused, uncertain," chaotic. The German classification reduces confusion and doubt to the minimum; our classification raises confusion and doubt to the maximum. How did Germany make her tariff classifications so much clearer, simpler and more accurate than ours? By the common-sense plan 6f having an expert commission arrange these classifications. But that was only a part of the work of the German commission. Years ago Germany saw that only a body of experts could get the facts and arrange the schedules for her tariff; she saw that the only work which the reichs'tag could do was the fixing of duties to the items which the expert commission classified and upon the facts which the expert commission found out and laid before the reichstag. So Germany selected for this work thirty of the best-fitted men to be found in the empire. This commission consulted more than 2,000 trade and industrial experts. It investigated every phase of every industry in the empire which might bear upon the tariff. It carefully studied the tariffs of other countries. It gave due weight to Germany’s export trade. It spent almost six years at this work. The facts thus gathered ahd the scheduled classifications thus made were laid before the relchstag, and the reichstag then finally fixed the duties, after Its committee corresponding to the ways and means committee of our house of representatives, had spent ten months In continuous work examining the recommendations of the commissions ■ The German empire, with an area nineteen times smaller than the United Statea, and parts of its land poor and unproductive, and with a population less than two-thirds as great as ours, nevertheless exports more than one and a half billion dollars wqrth of German products, more than two-thirds of which are manufactured articles, whereas we export sl,717,953,000 worth of products, most of which are raw material. Only $480,000,000, or 27 per cent, of our exports are manufactured articles, and $228.000,000, or U per cent, are semi-manu-factured articles, and of these nearly all are steel, copper, and petroleum, requiring so little skilled labor that they are nearly raw material. It is her foreign markets that gave Germany her industrial prosperity. Indeed, 'it is her foreign markets which enable Germany to live. The time is here when foreign markets for our manufactures are becoming almost as important to American industry as they are to German industry. This one fact alone commands us to take the same up-to-date scientific steps with our tariff that Germany has taken with her tariff. But far greater facts compel it still more. For example, the cost to our ninety millions of people of what they must buy compels to make our tariff, which so vitally affects this cost of living, with a full and true knowledge of all the facts. We must have more foreign trade. We must open foreign markets to our live cattle, which are now kept out of those markets. Our manufacturers ask the same advantages in foreign trade that the German government gets for German manufacturers. American producers demand that the doors of other nations which are open to their rivals shall no longer be closed to them. We cannot open these doors by a purely revenue tariff, because such a tariff merely gives other nations trade advantages with us without getting from those other nations any trade advantages In return. We must have a system that gives us the same weapons that our rivals have by which we can get for our producers the same favors that our rivals get for their producers. We must have a maximum and minimum tariff, the firs t to apply to all nations that wfli not give our producers special favors in their markets, and the last to apply to thoee nations that will give our producers favors fn their markets. By this plan German producers are selling ufore German foods abroad than any other nation: If w# eoaaider aiqa, wealth, history and all ether elements pf, the probiam, German producers are selling more. German goods abroad than any other five nations la the world put together. Qe rman y' Jhpan and the world followed our plan of a single protective tariff, ’ahd then logically 'developed that plan into a double protective plan. We must be as wise now 4h they were then; end just ns they took the single protective plan -from us, so now we must taka the double protective plan from them. Oar manttfaetutaera, our cattlemen, our agvUraUnriets, our miners, our whole producing classes aak only the same advantages that their rivals have in the ntarkets of the world. They demand no more this, but thwy will accept no less than this. Tariff for trade; trade for prosperity; common sense methods for both—thede must henceforth be the American watchwords in the worldwide contest for oommeroe.