THE ROLL CALL: THE ALDRICH TARIFF OUTRAGE
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES The Aldrich Tariff Outrage THE ALDRICH tariff bill has passed the Senate in all substantial particulars just as the Senator from Rhode Island dictated it. In...
...It is accessory to the extortion of the lumber trust by continuing the duty on rough lumber with differential duties added for finished lumber that exceed the mill cost of finishing...
...It increases the duties on high-grade electric light carbons— a commodity of universal use—for the benefit of a self-confessed and absolute monopoly...
...It provides for the establishment of a new court of customs appeals which is expected to increase tariff duties by judicial construction and incidentally to add more than $100,000 a year in salaries to the "fat jobs" in the customs service...
...There is hardly a powerful special interest or great trust combination in the country that is not made its special beneficiary...
...It "protects" the woolen trust by the imposition of duties of 100, 120 and up to 150 per cent.,—duties which clothing manufacturers say will increase the cost of clothing one-fourth,—including a so-called "compensatory duty" which is a fraud upon the wool farmer and the public alike...
...It perpetuates excessive duties for the benefit of a few cutlery manufacturers in New York and New England...
...All efforts to harmonize its schedules with any recognized principle of tariff legislation are hopeless, for it is not based upon principle but upon greed and graft and "pull...
...The reductions, for most part, represent merely the lopping off of a little of the excessive duty that the trust doesn't really need...
...In substantially the same form it will become a law...
...Bacon Crawford *Hughes *Owen *Bailey *Culberson *Johnston *Shively *Bankhead Cummins La Follette *Simmons Beveridge *Daniel *McLaurin *Smith (S...
...Time and again the vote was demanded and paragraphs jammed through without explanation, without opportunity for Senators to investigate their effect and even without a chance for Senators in the Chamber to inform themelves upon the vote...
...They mean no reduction of price to the consumer...
...It was framed in the dark and in willful ignorance of facts which by the platform pledges of the Republican party were bound to control in the framing of this legislation...
...It is a Repudiation of Party Pledges and a Violation of Public Trust...
...Brandegee du Pont Lorimer Smoot Briggs Elkins McCumber Stephenson Bulkeley Flint *McEnery Sutherland Burnham Frye Nixon Warner Burrows Gallinger Oliver Warren Burton Gamble Page Wetmore Carter Guggenheim Penrose Clark (Wyo...
...It was framed in secret conference with the representatives of special interests...
...This tax is an admitted subterfuge and is a legislative recognition of corporate combinations heretofore under the interdiction of the criminal statutes and is designed to remain in force only long enough to serve its evil purposes but not long enough to be of public benefit...
...Its passage in the Senate was promoted by cheap trickery, jobbery, chicane and manipulation...
...Hale Against the bill—34...
...Davis *Rayner *Tillman *Clay Dillingham Richardson Cullom Lodge Root Curtis *Paynter * Smith, Md...
...It inaugurates a program designed to prevent for all time a federal tax upon the incomes of the wealthy...
...On the passage of the bill in the Senate the vote was as follows: (Democrats are indicated with a star...
...It will stand as the crowning infamy of its sponsor and it will hang as the "old man of the sea" upon the neck of the political party responsible for its enactment...
...It perpetuates the "Dutch Standard" graft of the criminal sugar trust, which secures to the trust a practical monopoly of refining with the power to levy toll on all the cane sugar consumed by the American people...
...It enacts enormous increases in the duties on cotton goods and taxes every household in the land for the benefit of a clique of cotton manufacturers who are active in "big business" and influential in Republican politics in Rhode Island and some other New England States...
...Clarke, Ark...
...c.) Bristow Dolliver *Martin Stone Brown *Fletcher *Money *Taliaferro Furkett *Foster Nelson *Taylor *Chamberlain *Frazier *Newlands Clapp *Gore *Overman Not voting—13...
...The increases are of great importance to the consumer while most of the decreases, like those on sugar and iron and steel, are of no value to him for they leave the duties still prohibitive of any foreign importation as a regulator of domestic prices fixed by monopoly...
...It re-enacts the duties of the Dingley law applying to 75 per cent, of the total of dutiable imports and increases the duties on more than half of the balance...
...These are but a few examples showing the character of the legislation as a whole and are by no means a complete catalog of its atrocities...
...Aldrich Crane Heyburn Perkins Borah Depew Johnson Piles Bourne Dick Jones Scott Bradley Dixon Kean Smith (Mich...
...It rejects the inheritance tax provision proposed by the House to take for the support of the government at the rich man's death a part of the great fortune which he has piled up partly by evading just taxes during his life...
...For the bill—45...
...It protects the smelter trust by a differential duty on pig lead over and above the duty on lead in ore which exceeds the cost of smelting...
...It maintains exaggerated duties on sewing machines, typewriters, machine tools, and similar mechanical appliances of which the American manufacturer dominates the markets of the entire world and which he sells abroad for a fraction of the price at which he sells to the consumer in this country...
...It restores the duty on hides, which the House had repealed, and thereby gives strength and encouragement to the beef trust for the continuation of its unlawful depredations upon the industrial liberties and independence of the people and upon the rights of honest business...
...It is a slap in the face of the overwhelming public demand for tariff revision downward...
...Iron ore, placed on the free list by the House, it makes dutiable to the benefit and upbuilding of the steel trust...
...It increases the burdens of the consumer by the imposition of a tax upon corporate earnings to be shifted by the corporation through increases of its prices and charges to the public...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 28
