EDITORIALS
THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGES PRESIDENT TAFT'S letter accepting his nomination and his speeches throughout the campaign dealt with issues vital to the public interest. His views were clearly and frankly...
...Joseph G. Cannon of Danville, Ill...
...The first test came when Congress was convened in extraordinary session to revise the tariff...
...The public condemns the legislation...
...In the December 18 number appears a two-page article which (to quote from the leading editorial) demonstrates: "1...
...He had almost a monopoly of Seattle law where political favors were essential...
...It looks very much as if some of them had crossed the line of legal danger...
...Men are asking questions on the trains and in the hotels and are thinking intently about the last election and the future as they go about their work day by day...
...You can find nowhere a better standard with which to guage the activities of the present Secretary of the Interior...
...If the President expects to advance the Roosevelt policies, he will do well to go about it promptly, and not leave Congress and the public to infer, as they well may, after the experience of the extra session, that he is awaiting the program of Aldrich and Cannon...
...Congress was convened on March 15, because the occasion was deemed extraordinary within the meaning of the Constitution...
...Read it carefully...
...Secretary, that the way to bring fresh meats within reach of the pocket-book of the man of average income is to "socialize" the retailing of meat...
...The President promises special messages later in the session, when he will discuss conservation of natural resources, interstate commerce amendments, and the Sherman Act...
...No pretense can be made that serious effort to ascertain the cost of producing the articles of any schedule at home was ever attempted, and the German report on wages in various occupations in that country, furnished upon the request of the Roosevelt administration, was deliberately suppressed in committee...
...Or are they to be held intact as the people's birthright, to be conserved and developed for the benefit of all...
...To ascertain the cost of producing an article involves many elements: the capital invested,—not the inflated capitalization,—the cost of maintenance and renewals, the cost of raw material delivered at the plant, the salaries of officers, the wages of men, the hours and efficiency of labor...
...That Senator Heyburn, Commissioner Dennett, and other officials are deep in trouble along with Ballinger...
...It was believed that the trained mind of the lawyer and judge when seriously applied to these complex modern problems would find the right solution and apply the remedy, without flinching...
...They remembered that in almost every paragraph of Mr...
...Until then, let us hope that now, as when he prepared his speech of acceptance, he is giving his best thought to "the practical constructive work of devising ways and means by which the high level of business integrity and obedience to law which Mr...
...It gives facsimiles of the original drafts of "The Star Spangled Banner," of "Yankee Doodle," "Hail Columbia," and "America...
...They are sure to make a deep impression even upon the thrice-buttressed stronghold of Special Privilege in Washington...
...It was manifest that he had not made special study of the questions discussed...
...The people elected Mr...
...J. G. Cannon is still Speaker of the House, and expects to live and comfort his friends for many years...
...Let's see...
...In the face of popular demand for downward revision, the pampered cotton manufacturerers made off with an increase of twenty-five per cent...
...Are they to become the easy prey of private monopoly...
...It was therefore a matter of supreme importance that the tariff should be revised in compliance with the platform promise as interpreted again and again by Mr...
...The one thing especially emphasized in the brief executive note was that out of regard to the business interests, the tariff bill should be passed with dispatch...
...But for the "Roosevelt policies" Congress and the public must await his further consideration...
...That Glavis's article in Collier's merely tapped one vein...
...For one thing, it showed that the difference between the wholesale price of beef and the price paid by the consumer is 38 per cent...
...Taft during the campaign, that is, strictly "upon the basis of the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad...
...Or, to quote the preface, it "brings together the various versions both of text and music with notes as to the historical evolution" of the songs...
...Ten or a dozen years later, with competition suppressed and prices fixed arbitrarily by combination, it had become absolutely necessary to safeguard the rights of the consumer to limit duties to the difference in the cost of production, so that any undue raise in prices by trusts would admit foreign competition as a check to such unjust advances until prices were again lowered to represent the real difference in production cost...
...It is at the beginning of the session that any message gets its best hearing...
...The message is silent, where it should have spoken strongly...
...At the beginning of the session Congress is more receptive, less occupied and absorbed than at any time later...
...A vigorous message for tariff revision, based upon the difference in the cost of production, at the beginning of the extra session would have been productive of very different results...
...But the book itself is not forbidding...
...Secretary Wilson does say, however, that: "Much more productive of costliness to the retail distribution of meat is the overdoing of the retail business...
...What boots it that the tariff wall has been raised, that prices have advanced...
...Will nothing satisfy the greed of Big Business...
...It is pointed out that this great difference does not represent excessive profits for the retailer, since a large portion of it goes to pay the extra expenses attached to the special delivery of meats...
...A Christmas Suggestion HERE is a present that you can buy without over-working the shop girl...
...that dividends continue to soar merrily upward...
...The book, which is bound in red cloth, may be obained for 85 cents from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. * * * The Cost of a Steak SECRETARY WILSON'S investigation into the high price of meats disclosed some interesting facts...
...Instead of representing one client, and that slightly, as the President was induced to say, his relations to such business were well-nigh numberless...
...Everywhere thoughtful men were anticipating a great state paper, recognizing the changed economic and industrial conditions, in the face of which, for the first time, tariff revision, was to be undertaken...
...Do You Realize What This Means...
...The President does stand for Postal Savings Banks, publicity of political contributions in the elections of members of Congress, an appropriation to assist in suppressing the "white slave" trade, a national bureau of health, and a commission to expedite procedure in the courts, all of which are to be commended...
...Garfield last week at The University of Wisconsin and before the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of Milwaukee...
...From the point of view both of politics and of criminal law it is more serious...
...Garfield's article, printed elsewhere in this issue...
...Collier's on Ballinger COLLIER'S is striking brave and well-directed blows in its fight on land-grabbers, robber barons, and Richard A. Ballinger...
...The cotton schedules of the new tariff caused something of a scandal...
...The cotton industry is one of the most favored beneficiaries of high protection in the country...
...It was to be expected that the paper would be conservative and judicial in its tone, but the country did not expect an extended narrative of well known foreign relations and a recapitulation of departmental reports...
...The people were anxious to see in definite official form his declarations for legislation...
...At the end of two minutes the clerk stopped...
...Men looked into each other's faces in amazement...
...We regret to say that the message is disapppointing...
...It deserves a wider audience...
...On Tuesday, December 7, President Taft's message on general legislation was presented to Congress and the country...
...Taft's campaign fund unless the investigations were stopped...
...Taft's speech of acceptance and in his addresses during the campaign is twice referred to in this message...
...The tariff was a bad job, and the Ballinger situation grows more and more tense, as the truth is known...
...Have you an answer for it...
...Our National Riches WHAT FATE awaits the coal and oil fields, the timber and phosphate lands, the water power sites still remaining in the possession of the people...
...But there was a directness of statement whieh indicated the sincerity of character and purpose, with which he was credited...
...A feeling of uncertainty prevails...
...This article is the text of an address delivered by Mr...
...So much for the President's first message and the legislation of that session...
...Beginning with the Glavis article some weeks ago, this militant magazine has been publishing a sort of cumulative index to the life and works of Secretary Ballinger...
...His views were clearly and frankly expressed...
...Expectation was keen-edged, the country over...
...The multiplication of small shops is a burden to consumers and no source of riches to the small shopkeepers...
...Back of 1897, when competition regulated the prices of protected products, the conditions were entirely different...
...That there is good reason for Cabinet and Senators to urge President Taft to do all he can to smother evidence, one of the reasons being that Ballinger tried to stop Glavis's investigations at one point in order to help Mr...
...It expected a strong, able, vitally interesting state paper on the great national problems which have come into the life of the present generation...
...Without a thoroughgoing investigation along these lines conducted with the aid of the most efficient experts, no approach to the real true cost of production could possibly be made...
...Senators and Representatives sat with fixed attention as the clerk began to read President Taft's first message to Congress...
...Taft's speech acccepting the nomination, his support was pledged again and again to "the policies of Mr...
...Cannon executed by Zelaya in Nicaragua is not Mr...
...On the 16th the Senate and the House assembled to receive the message of the President...
...The President will not get the same attention from the public later, and this is important, for it counts in the final result...
...This trouble is not merely moral...
...The people were content to suspend judgment as to the President and await his annual message at the opening of the regular session...
...The Music Division of the Library of Congress has just issued a 250-page book which bears the somewhat forbidding title, Report on "The Star Spangled Banner...
...Now they would push down still closer to the line of bare existence the wages of their employees...
...When twenty or more small shops divide the retail business within the area that could be served by one large shop, the expenses of the many shops for labor, horses, rent, and other things that are in excess of what would be sufficient for the one shop must go into the retail prices of the meat sold...
...You have raised a question that goes deep into the political economy of the nation...
...Never in a time of peace was Congress confronted with a more difficult undertaking...
...To many anxious inquirers we hasten to answer that the Mr...
...It was all over...
...Or do you suggest that a private monopoly be formed to take over this class of business in the interest of "economy of operation...
...Roosevelt has established, may be maintained...
...Greed IT IS reported that 'Fall River and New Hampshire cotton mills are openly getting ready to reduce the wages of mill operatives...
...and keep it where you can refer to it from time to time as developments unfold in the Ballinger case...
...and its present status in Washington...
...Upon the more important articles of general use, rates were increased, and prices are steadily advancing...
...Taft's election...
...Once as "my predecessor" who directed attention to the "outrageous conditions in the workhouse and jail" of the District of Columbia, and again where President Taft says that following the course of "my distinguished predecessor, I earnestly recommend to Congress the consideration and passage of a Ship Subsidy Bill...
...Roosevelt," and that he recognized as his first and highest obligation "the practical constructive work of devising ways and means by which the high level of business integrity and obedience to law, which Mr...
...That Ballinger's railroad and mining connections are intricate and extremely in need of explanation...
...Does this mean, Mr...
...Perhaps you have a friend who is interested in the national songs...
...The man so often quoted in Mr...
...The claimants would not help contribute to Mr...
...It is an admirable statement of the purposes of the conservation movement...
...The exactions from which the people sought escape through revision, continue...
...The bill was passed...
...The tariff was not revised upon the basis of the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad...
...It is a document of forty pages...
...A Query for the Ultimate Consumer AMANUFACTURER of colored "picture post cards" recently sent out a circular letter soliciting business, in which appears the following: "The tariff bill which is now in effect, has increased the cost of foreign made Post Cards from $2.50 to $4.00 per thousand...
...Taft in the belief that he would hold fast all that Roosevelt had gained for the public, sustain his forces in the field, reinforce and support them, revoke no orders, reverse no action, but apply himself to crystalizing into statute law the public opinion which President Roosevelt organized as a great creative force throughout the land...
...If the tariff was to be honestly revised in compliance with the platform pledge of the Republican party, such revision was bound to be upon the basis of the difference in production cost at home and abroad...
...As additions are made to this biographical sketch, evidence of a more and more serious nature is unfolded...
...It tells how all these came to be and how their scores have been modified from time to time...
...There are still more profits to be squeezed out of the workingmen's wages...
...This question is discussed vigorously and interestingly in Mr...
...We believe it a mistake to delay the presentation of these or any important subjects...
...What is given here is more far-reaching...
...Roosevelt has established may be maintained...
Vol. 1 • December 1909 • No. 50
