EDITORIALS
The Skirmish in the House WHAT is the net result of last week's struggle in the House of Representatives? A resolution was adopted providing for the appointment of a new committee on rules of which...
...Before the passage of any tariff bill-—and it was especially true before the passage of the Payne-Aldrich bill—importers watch the progress of events like hawks...
...Cannon will not be a member of the committee, but the System will be as potential on that committee as though Cannon were its chairman...
...Cannonism without Cannon is just as hurtful to the country as Cannonism with Cannon...
...In fear of the approaching elections, some of the System congressmen deserted Cannon and voted with the insurgents...
...Taft, in his Winona speech rejected them and adopted a batch of figures which so far as authority is concerned, might have accidentally blown in from the corridor...
...His offensive arrogance, his coarse personality, will be less conspicuous...
...This is not a class in mathematics...
...Candidates must be nominated and elected who will vote against Cannon and his type, without flinching, and against Cannonism in every form...
...and Mrs...
...It will control the new committee on rules...
...Perhaps he will yet do so...
...Cutting Down the Meat Bill HERE is a bit of cheering news for Mr...
...So far as it has developed, nothing has been brought to light but suspicions, innuendoes and intimations...
...Disclaiming all desire to pass on the correctness of these, let OS look them over a bit...
...They will be tried many times in this session...
...This does not change the plan of organization of the House at the beginning of each Congress, or deprive the Speaker of his absolute power of appointing, and hence packing, all of the standing committees on legislation, or change the method of conducting business in the House...
...The gathering storm of public resentment caused them to abandon the camp of the enemy and join the insurgents...
...Ultimate Consumer, and the little Consumers, too...
...Watch their records...
...so there was not only a reduction of duty on imports of about 12 per cent., but also an enlargement of about the same percentage of the free list...
...Heretofore it has been appointed by the Speaker...
...In addition to much general information, this manual contains fifty recipes of savory dishes, which, we are assured, "require no technical knowledge to compound...
...Yet the cheaper cuts may be made appetizing and palatable—if you only know how...
...Let them come...
...The people must understand that Cannonism is a short definition of government by that System...
...We cannot expect absolute accuracy when the case is so very embarrassing...
...The Department of Agriculture has figured out a way of cutting down the meat bills...
...Sheltered behind the committee, he will be as effective an instrument for wrong as though he were still its head and front...
...Seein' Things SECRETARY BALLINGER says, "The so-called insurgent movement of the West is something like a fantasy one sees on the plain—a sort of mirage...
...Then a President seeking to show that we had revision downward by the Taft method could have done so by showing that nothing had paid any duty, and hence we had adopted free trade...
...A resolution was adopted providing for the appointment of a new committee on rules of which the Speaker will not be a member...
...But this is not all...
...So that during the first six months of any tariff, goods inevitably come in under the lowered or stationary duties more freely than under the ones raised...
...Heretofore he has been its chairman...
...The new committee on rules will have the same power as the old committee on rules, that is, whenever a majority of its members so determine, it is privileged to present for the consideration of-the House a special rule or motion with respect to some particular bill or proceedings...
...But now, the windblown tables are fortified by those more legitimate ones emanat-ing from the Bureau of Statistics...
...The Republican majority of this committee on rules will be named by a Republican caucus...
...The insurgent movement has been greatly magnified...
...The American people must understand that this has been only a skirmish...
...for when their figures showed that it was revision upward Mr...
...It will consist of ten members...
...He may be even more dangerous...
...When you are riding on the plains a cow on the horizon looks forty feet high, but when you come to it, it is only an ordinary cow...
...The victory will strengthen the morale of the progressive organization...
...It will demonstrate that the System can be beaten...
...Let them be tested...
...Aldrich and Cannon would have little power for evil if a majority of the Republican majority in both the Senate and the House represented public interest instead of special interests...
...These men are making a record upon which to go before their constituents...
...The effect of this contest in the House has been greatly exaggerated...
...It dominates both branches of Congress...
...It may be obtained without cost by writing to the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington...
...This should please the statisticians of the Bureau...
...And just to tell Mrs...
...There appears to be one person in the United States who believes that—and his name is Richard Achilles...
...Wherever a schedule is to be advanced, they rush goods in...
...But it will be clearly understood that little was achieved besides the temporary humiliation of an old man of bad eminence, whose successor the System must, at all events, soon put forward...
...Will Speaker Cannon please step forward and tell what he knows about this "mirage" of which Ballinger speaks so contemptuously...
...The action taken, therefore, makes the following changes,— no more, no less: The new committee on rules will be selected by caucus...
...The Speaker will not be a member of this committee...
...By their fruits ye shall know them...
...One scarcely knows what to call this sort of thing—coming from a President, * * * KSaid Secretary Ballinger, referring to the "Ballinger-Pin-chot controversy": "That whole affair is a gigantic conspiracy...
...The real battle is still to come, and that must be fought out in the primaries and the elections between now and November...
...Relying on the well-born figures now, the President asserts that— "During the first six months of the operation of the Payne Law, the average rate of duty paid on all imports was 21.09 per cent, ad valorem...
...And we need not state that if anyone but the President of the United States had used such arguments as he makes from those Bureau figures, they would have been laughed at...
...But we may call attention to the controlling fact that comparisons between the first six months of a tariff and the corresponding six months of normal years is not rich in proof...
...It is called "Economic Use of Meats in the Home...
...This would show that the reduction in the Payne Law is 2.94 per cent, of the value of the goods, or that the reduction below the previous tariff rates is 12 per cent., showing a downward revision of this extent in those goods which are dutiable...
...Consumer how this can be done, the Department has prepared a little manual of economy in meat cooking...
...It speaks through Aldrich in the Senate and through Cannon in the House...
...The average rate of duty paid on all imports for the same six months for the four preceding years under the Dingley Law was 24.03...
...President Taft should not have forgotten that—or he should have shown that in this case it is not true...
...Statistical Sleight-of-Hand THE data of the Bureau of Statistics have been adopted by the President in his Lincoln Day attempt to show that the Payne-Aldrich tariff is revision downward...
...Wherever it is to be lowered they clean out stocks to save themselves loss...
...It has always had that power...
...The steel trust, the sugar trust, the beef trust, the cotton trust, in short, the System, will control in that caucus by an overwhelming majority...
...Heretofore there have been five...
...Under the Payne Law, 51.6 per cent, of the gross imports for the six months have been entered free, while under the four years preceding for the same six months, the free list amounted to 45.46 per cent, of the total importations...
...Experts have shown that the cheaper cuts of meats are more difficult to prepare for the table than the expensive portions of the carcass...
...If the duties had all been raised to prohibitive heights, there would have been no importations except of things on the free list...
...If for diplomatic reasons it places an insurgent Republican on the committee, it will be strong enough to balance that appointment with a Tammany Democrat...
...When the cheering and the excitement over the nominal defeat of Cannon and his machine shall be succeeded by calm deliberation, the American people will inquire how much has really been won, how far afield the standards of true representative government have been advanced...
...Let us not quibble with the methods by which President Taft takes credit for the free importations twice—first as reducing the average rate of import duty, and second as enlarging the free list...
...So long as the Republican majority in the House serves the System, it will make little difference whether or not Cannon is a member of the committee on rules...
Vol. 2 • March 1910 • No. 12
