Tariff While the Sun Shines

...Sprawled in comfortable leather upholstered chairs arranged at intervals around a huge green-covered mahogany table are some fifteen or twenty of the nation's most distinguished political leaders...

...he speaks his piece, his words are taken down by the official stenographer, and he goes his way...

...There are two important reasons for this uncertainty...

...The tariff bill has been a very fruitful source of official denials...

...Among serious thinkers there is little divergence of opinion on this subject...

...So far the smoking-out process, designed to induce the President either to defend the bill or to disapprove of it, has been an entire failure...

...For weeks, long, sultry, torrid weeks, they have been considering the bill and many more weeks stretch out before them with the end not in sight...

...From abaca, which is Manila hemp, the first commodity in alphabetical order, to zirconium, the last commodity listed, the Committee must sit and listen to witnesses...

...Such is the view presented to the audience, but behind the scenes it is a different picture...

...That one-vote margin has been the subject of prayerful consideration by the Republican leaders...

...Witnesses come by the hundreds, from across the continent and from the great metropolitan centres of industry and commerce, seeking to impress the Committee with the justness of their demands...

...Perhaps some member of the Committee has heard him and perhaps not...

...Out of it all comes the suggestion that perhaps the tariff, too, is a noble experiment which must be worked out constructively...

...The remedies proposed range from shoals of psychiatrists to funds from philanthropists, and from centralized bureaus to "properly sensitized" school superintendents...

...Perhaps it is needless to say that what he can get has no relation to any statements he may make during the public hearings...

...Within less than two hours there was an inspired denial from the White House that the President had said anything about "yardsticks" or "adequate protection...

...if he is a manufacturer or a producer of raw material, he wants the tariff increased...

...The Senate hearings bid fair to be equally voluminous...

...This long-considered project has received fresh impetus from China's request for help in outlining a practical course of training for Chinese mothers in the home, and from Belgium's invitation to co6perate with her Ligue de l'Education Familiale in the instruction of parents everywhere for their mission as educators...

...Senator Watson of Indiana, the majority leader, and Senator Reed of Pennsylvania, had breakfast at the White House and returned to the Capitol to spread the news that the President wanted a "sane and sensible" tariff bill based on "the yardstick of adequate protection...

...Nevertheless, the hearings go on...

...Really it makes very little difference, for every member of the Committee knows the substance of what every witness is going to say before the latter has opened his mouth...

...It was estimated variously that the increases provided for by the House bill would raise the cost to the consumer by from $6oo,ooo,ooo to $8oo,ooo,ooo a year, and the cry went up that this was a general tariff revision...

...Also, they know that one of the Democratic votes which they received on that occasion was prompted by no more substantial reason than personal animosity toward the author of the resolution, and that this animosity will not be effective when the time comes to vote on the provisions of the bill itself...

...The public hearings are the thunder that accompanies the tariff lightning...

...To complete the performance, on the following day Senator Watson received a telephone call from the White House denying that the earlier denial had been issued...

...THE FIRESIDE SCHOOLMA'AM By ELLA FRANCES LYNCH ee IF EACH of us would sweep the street in front of his own house, the whole street would be clean," says a Chinese proverb...

...But when the Senator voiced that opinion publicly there was a prompt denial from the White House that the President had expressed any such views...

...It will be recalled that just before the Senate took its summer recess to give the Finance Committee time to whip the tariff bill into shape, Senator Borah of Idaho introduced a resolution to instruct the Committee to restrict its consideration of the bill to the agricultural and directly related schedules...

...In the first place, the Republican majority in the Senate is a very unstable thing...

...The Borah resolution was rejected by a margin of only one vote, and it would have been adopted had not several Democratic senators joined with the Republicans against it...

...This admonition out of the contemplative East will point the moral of the National League of Teacher-Mothers, which is fostering a world-wide movement to enlighten parents concerning their duty and privilege as the true educators of their children...

...ever and anon they mop their majestic brows with tired looking handkerchiefs...

...Each is granted a theoretical hearing...

...At the far end of the table a man stands and talks...

...From that time on, the efforts of both Democratic and Republican senators to ascertain the President's attitude on the tariff have provided the most diverting summer entertainment in the national capital...

...Probably they never will know unless President Hoover tells them...

...Senator Jones of Washington, assistant majority leader, went to the White House for a conference and came away under the impression that the President wanted a bill restricted to agricultural commodities and a very few other schedules...

...But Republican senators have had no better luck...

...Then came the Borah attempt to restrict the scope of the Senate Committee's consideration, as previously related, and the defeat of that attempt by virtue of administration votes in the Senate...

...That will be determined later by the majority members of the Committee in secret sessions, and in cloak-room conferences where the ancient pastime of log-rolling comes to its finest flower...

...The Committee on Finance of the United States Senate is considering a tariff bill...

...The reformation of human beings is a difficult, complicated, expensive and uncertain process, whereas the forming of characters during the plastic years is a simple process of wise parental guidance and control, as inexpensive as it is heart-satisfying, and as certain of success as any known undertaking...

...Their collars are in various stages of wilted defeat...

...The Democrats, with that lack of reverence customary on the part of minorities when dealing with majorities, have sought to smoke the President out by making all manner of charges to the general effect that the House bill constitutes legalized extortion and highway robbery...

...Occasionally, there is a bit of byplay to keep the senators awake...

...Senator Borah was called to the State Department and told by Secretary Stimson that the administration was very much disturbed by representations made by the Canadian minister against the proposed duties on shingles, lumber and feeder cattle...

...If the right training of children were generally understood and faithfully practised, our chief problems would be solved normally by the fostering in early childhood of the habits which constitute upright character...

...Unfortunately they do not know, and freely admit it...

...When the story was printed Secretary Stimson issued a formal statement denying "unequivocally" that any protest had been received from Canada, and on the same day it was announced by the Cana.dian government at Ottawa that the attitude of Canada had been made very clear to the Washington administration through the Canadian minister there...

...We understand from the newspapers that there is such a problem and that our ablest criminologists and penologists are completely baffled by its solution...

...a Democratic member will seek to make a manufacturer admit that he is making enormous profits under the present tariff, and a Republican member wit1 come to the rescue at once with leading questions designed to show that the witness is on the road to the poor house unless there shall be additional tariff protection...

...If the witness is a consumer or an importer, he wants the tariff lowered on the articles in which he is interested...

...After an analysis of Chicago crime it is reported that eminent authorities have placed the blame for lawlessness on low mentality...

...That seemed to be plain enough at the time...

...HE scene is a stately room in the white marble Senate Office Building at Washington, but the stateliness ends with the room itself...

...The confusion began, however, when the House of Representatives, which is absolutely controlled by the administration leaders, 378 T H E C O M M O N W E A L August I4, t929 passed a bill including literally hundreds of changes-chiefly increases--in the tariff rates...

...they gaze longingly out of the open window through which comes an infrequent breeze to whisper temptingly of well-kept fairways and manicured greens and limpid pools...

...August I4, I929 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 377 TARIFF WHILE THE SUN SHINES By WILLIAM C. MURPHY, JR...

...In every case the measure of the increase or decrease he wants is exactly all he can get...

...Many of the solutions appear to the unsensitized cynic quite as dynamic as the recent world-shaking discovery that left-handedness is related to the curve of a person's hair...

...Without some reference to a crime problem, the magazine article of today presents an unfinished mien...

...It is usual and convenient to speak of "mental defectives" as of poor human beings...

...furthermore, that the New York State Committee on Mental Hygiene asserts there are in New York City public schools Ioo,ooo mentally deficient children, or one-tenth of the entire enrolment...

...When the President called Congress into special session, he said in his message that he favored a tariff revision restricted to the products of agriculture and a few other commodities with respect to which emergency conditions could be shown to exist...

...In the second place, that majority, such as it is, has been unable so far to make up its mind as to just what it wants to do...

...A few wear coats, more are in shirt sleeves with the sleeves rolled up...

...They know that a margin so slender is no margin at all, for practical purposes...

...That one-tenth of our children are congenital mental defectives will not be granted by responsible students of human life...

...Although he is talking to the distinguished gentlemen grouped around the table, he is far from their consciousness...

...When the tariff bill was before the House Ways and Means Committee, the testimony of witnesses filled more than eleven thousand pages, printed "at a cost of not more than $.2 5 per printed page" at government expense...

...Perhaps he is talking about acetaldol, or lignum vitae, or rutabagas, or, perchance, locomotives or mouse traps...

...But even with the handicap of an exceedingly small majority, the administration senators would be in a much happier frame of mind if they knew just what they want to do about the tariff...

...There is no record that anyone was ever struck by thunder...

...Never in the history of tariff-making has there been so much real uncertainty as to the final outcome...