The Billion-Dollar Gamble
THE BILLION-DOLLAR GAMBLE WE HAVE neither knowledge nor courage to pre-dict the final consequences of the tariff act, in which, it may be suspected, we are as one with the Senate itself. Indeed we...
...For this bill which they have at last approved cannot fail to work changes in our economic organization from the bottom up, yet it was passed without any great conviction that those changes are necessary...
...The system which demands log rolling and vote trading to get anywhere is simply a gamble...
...But of course we know nothing about it...
...In commodity prices it will cost the consumer not less than half a billion a year, and very probably twice that sum...
...Favored industries already prosperous will be more prosperous," he said...
...Other industries, including agriculture, already distressed, will be more distressed...
...With such recommendations we are handed the highest tariff ever imposed upon a land of high tariffs...
...The reversal of the votes on sugar and cement did not mean that certain senators had changed their minds as to the justice of the rates sought for those items...
...This we conclude from the sentiments expressed by the senators themselves...
...We are aware only that the bill which has been imposed upon this country after it had grown weary of protest is certain to make a difference in the pay envelope of every wage-earner within a year, and we have an idea that the difference will be qualitative, not quantitative...
...Indeed we are persuaded that not more than a score of senators have given much thought to these consequences...
...nor whether the exporter will manage to make up in other ways for the curtailing of his foreign market...
...A billion dollars is passed about in Washington as casually as though it were $.10...
...We suspect this bill principally because of the way in which it has been passed...
...who shall say that it is an unreasonable decision...
...Our objection to leaving the tariff in the hands of politicians is that where so much is at stake every risk that can be eliminated should be eliminated...
...For instance, it is reported that France has already decided for a prohibitive import tax against American automobiles...
...The opinion of the majority is that no better bill could be drafted "under the circumstances," which is hardly an enthusiastic defense, and Senator Connally's bitter summary occasioned little reply...
...perhaps we should say more reckless...
...if events pursue a normal and predictable course, or if we have bad luck, we lose...
...There is a routine of legislation, but there is no legislative conviction...
...And since those results so obviously reflect a last-minute political expediency rather than an honest and genuine persuasion, many now realize as if hearing it for the first time what observers at Washington have constantly said: that the representatives of the nation seldom, and only for brief moments, attain to a perspective of themselves and their proper jobs...
...if we are wrong, they are bolder spirits than senators traditionally have a right to be...
...It seems to us that a tariff bill should be written out of an appreciation of the real needs of the country at the time, without regard for anything else whatever, and not as a schoolboy writes his first composition, in the wild hope that this jumble of words, meant to reexpress ideas which are without significance to him, will in the end make sense to someone else...
...What in the world can this indicate except that the Senate as a whole knows no more about the fairness of the Smoot-Hawley-Grundy tariff than we do, and cares less...
...The Senate gave six arduous months to the tariff bill, but so far as the final results are concerned, the wishes of the Old Guard may almost as well have been conceded in six days...
...About as much conviction is exerted on the drafting of a tariff bill as enters into a game of checkers...
...He was thought to be painfully obvious...
...There is a technique of politics, but there is no political philosophy...
...If we have good luck, we win...
...But the further consequences which lie within these immediate effects cannot so easily be extracted and brought to light...
...it will arouse the resentment of every other industrial nation, and in some cases inspire reciprocal action against American products...
...Today no one can tell whether the consumer will be able to take that heavy loss and grin about it...
...In the votes on oil, lumber, aluminum, pig iron and hides only eleven senators stuck to their original positions...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 23
