THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES Tariff in Hands of "Friends WHILE the tariff bill is in conference, there is general speculation as to the results. This speculation will continue even after the...
...It is in this part of the bill that the principal interests of "Big Business" are affected...
...But Aldrich can do better than that...
...Now they find in the conference an opportunity to yield to the Senate conferees, under the necessity of passing a bill at all and thus accomplishing much of what they would like to have accomplished in the first place and escaping, (maybe) responsibility...
...This will mean a loss of power for the high and mighty Cannon-Payne-Dalzell combination...
...IT IS THEIR BILL...
...Space does not permit a presentation of the full evidence bearing on this "packing" of the conference in the interest of stand-patism...
...None of the Senate conferees have been heard during the tariff debate to admit that the tariff should be revised downward, or to admit that there is a widespread public sentiment demanding reduction of the tariff...
...Aldrich himself is the youngest of these men...
...He is in his sixty-eighth year...
...They have seen public sentiment form and pass and be forgotten and they judge of the future by the past...
...Burrows, of Michigan, is over seventy-two years of age and has been a Senator fourteen and a member of the House twelve years...
...Calderhead (Kans...
...This is more than the standpatters dared hope a year ago...
...At any rate it clearly gives away the game...
...He can concede a few "concessions" that look well in print and "get away" with the bulk of his legislative grab...
...Y.) McCall (Mass...
...There are many indications that they were hampered and restrained in their tariff flights by the necessity of getting their bill through a legislative body that is answerable once in two years to the people...
...Cullom, of Illinois, is in his eightieth year, has been a Senator twenty-six years and was a member of the House six years...
...They are: Payne (N...
...This bill of Chairman Payne and his "associates" of the House Committee on Ways and Means was probably not as high a tariff in many particulars as they would like to have fixed...
...Many increases were put in the bill by Aldrich, and it was said at the time in the Republican cloak room of the Senate that they were being put in for trading in conference...
...On the House committee, Hill of Connecticut and Needham of California outranked Calderhead of Kansas and Fordham of Michigan...
...The major part of the tariff schedules in the pending bill are a re-enactment by both Houses of the Dingley rates and are not subject to readjustment in conference...
...Excepting Penrose, the conferees on the part of the Senate—the senior members of the Finance committee—are men who a generation ago passed the formative period of life after which men do not as a rule adopt new or progressive ideas...
...He has been twenty-eight years a senator and was two terms in the House before he came to the Senate...
...The conference has no jurisdiction to consider or change any rate that has been agreed upon by both Houses...
...Theoretically the conferees of both Houses are supposed to stand out for the legislation of their respective Houses...
...These men who have exercised the powers of government for a generation of time have come virtually to regard the powers which they exercise as inherent prerogatives...
...Those who are acquainted with the Aldrich heads-I-win-tails-you-lose trading methods will expect no more...
...Chairman Payne is said to have complained some about this...
...For Aldrich is in a position to dictate the terms of the trade...
...The House conferees were appointed by Cannon from the members of the Committee on Ways and Means...
...Many of the Dingley rates were increased by the House and the increases agreed to by the Senate...
...Boutell (III...
...From the House conferees more might be expected...
...But one looks in vain in the Record for any evidence of a purpose on the part of the House machine to redeem the pledge of the Chicago platform...
...In the case of the Senate conferees there can be no doubt that they will adhere to this duty at every point that is at all material to the bill as they have made it...
...But in this case they were appointed in the order of their stand-patism...
...The following brief quotations from the speech of Mr...
...These two classes of rates which represent to that extent a repudiation of the platform pledge and which are not subject to conference, measured by the value of imports to which they apply, aggregate probably over 70 per cent...
...It is theoretically their duty to stand firm against the Senate increases...
...Fordney (Mich...
...Public opinion will not move them and as for Presidential opinion,— Presidents may come and Presidents may go...
...In his speech in the House on March 26th he said: "I know of no industry in the United States that is producing an article for consumption on which I want to see the duty reduced to a point that the foreigner can come in and enjoy our markets...
...It is a basic tenet of their political modus operandi that "the people forget...
...If they are conscious of the existence of such a sentiment, it apparently has no weight with them...
...There is nothing in the personnel of the committee to support a belief that the cutting of rates will be real and substantial...
...The Bill as it went to conference was the work of Aldrich and his "associates" on the Finance Committee, the more immediate of whom with himself constitute the Senate conferees...
...he is a standpatter of the extreme type...
...These rates are not subject to conference...
...At another point he declared: "If I had my way about it, I would not make a change in the Dingley law by the crossing of a 't' or the dotting of an 'i'" Referring to the few reductions which were made by the Payne Committee from the Dingley rates he said, "I sweat blood every tome they reduced a schedule" * * With final revision in the hands of these men, it will be well for the friends of a genuine lowering of duties to examine carefully the schedules agreed upon in conference...
...But they go on forever...
...Yes, there were some Democrats appointed on the conference from both Houses but it is not necessary to know who they were for when the conierence met and Aldrich took charge the Democrats were dismissed...
...of the entire tariff schedules...
...The scope and purpose of a conference committee is confined to the adjustment of those matters in the bill upon which the two Houses have taken diverse action...
...So far as the Senate conferees are concerned they offer little hope for downward tariff revision in conference...
...Fordney will show why he was selected...
...From his own lips, he is in favor of protective tariff that is prohibitive...
...The Payne bill as passed by the House was, on the average, a slight increase over the Dingley tariff...
...It is perhaps possible to arrive at an estimate from a knowledge of the conference methods and the conferees before the report is made, as nearly correct as from the report itself after it is published...
...It was not in any sense a redemption of the party pledge...
...Dalzell (Pa...
...A decent respect of public sentiment they denounce as demagog-ism...
...Modern progressivism that seeks to reflect in government the actual will of the people is to them a strange heresy...
...Some were increased in the Senate...
...It is in this part of the bill that the greatest increases have been made...
...Hale, of Maine, is past the seventy-third milestone and has been twenty-eight years a Senator and ten years a member of the House...
...There are many ways in which a lowering of rates may be made apparent to the public, without the least basis in fact...
...Some of them were made originally in the House and afterwards further increased in the Senate...
...But Cannon passed over the former and appointed the latter...
...Not that Hill and Needham have not been faithful to Cannon, but that Calderhead and Fordney have been more faithful...
...The enactment of this bill probably will mean a Democratic House in the next Congress...
...It is customary to appoint in the order of seniority...
...This speculation will continue even after the conference report is published for it will take careful and patient investigation to establish just what is the effect of the changes that may be made...
...Concessions" of this kind will be made so far as it will appear necessary to give a semblance of revision downward and secure executive approval...
...Probably not one of them is held to account by his state for his legislative conduct...
...and he favors a tariff higher than the Payne bill...
...He can get at least the Dingley tariff, because if the higher tariff which he has passed in the Senate is vetoed the Dingley tariff continues in force...
...With reference to that part of the bill that is subject to conference agreement, there is probably even less prospect of downward tariff revision...
...Because of a few important commodities which it placed in the free list and because it proposed in some instances a more equitable distribution of the tariff burdens as between the industries affected, it received the votes of progressive Republicans in the House...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 29
