EDITORIALS
Was Taft Elected on an "Implication"? IN HIS Lincoln Day speech, the President discussed the tariff, in what may be assumed to be a definitive and official way. Senator Hale would surely not have...
...It is the only way to justify it...
...Through it the people are given the first comprehensive view of men and methods in Minnesota law making...
...These are luxuries—President Taft says so...
...These things, oh luxurious fellow-citizens, must give the lover of his country pause...
...Haines has told the story frankly and fearlessly...
...He did not dare, and the party managers did not dare, to risk the event of the election on any equivocation...
...He said, for instance, "We did revise the tariff...
...We as a nation should avoid luxury...
...As the primary election comes in, the Flints go out...
...Therefore, if the revision is upward only on luxuries, and downward on necessities, we may not be able to prove that it was "downward revision," but we may well cease cavilling, and let it go as a good thing anyway...
...Nothing was expressly said in the platform that this revision was to be downward revision...
...Is that the only way in which the "implication" was given—that indirect, roundabout, argumentative way, through which it could not have reached the mind of one voter in ten thousand...
...It must have seemed like another slash at the moral cables binding the party to its pledges...
...A lot of water has flowed under the bridges, at Washington and elsewhere, since we were out shouting for Taft and the Roosevelt policies in the fall of 1908, but in spite of the lapse of time we seem to recall the fact that the party promise on the matter of downward revision was not left to stand on "implication...
...The Payne Committee's tabulated publication of "Estimated Revenues" adopted a theory of luxury for the American people...
...Taft, if the memory of the nation serves it aright, promised revision downward...
...This was reassuring...
...Let us keep the record straight on that...
...In that address the President said some important things...
...for, the books tell us, luxury caused the decline of Rome, and has been the disease of nations throughout historic time...
...President Taft has in his New York speech made that theory his owe...
...We can afford as a natisn to make those who indulge their passion for luxury pay the piper...
...Payne's fatherless figures as to "consumption value," is bleached cotton cloth having 100 to 150 threads to the inch, and valued at over 11 cents per square yard...
...It is good to know that its publication has resulted in a storm of protest from the public and maledictions from the unmasked politicians who are responsible for the conditions revealed...
...Senator Flint of California announces that he will not again be a candidate for United States senator...
...Senator Hale would surely not have made it a part of the Congressional Record, had it not been such a discussion...
...In relating the party obligation back to some shadowy "implication,'' the President is both too modest and too subtle...
...Do not, let us implore you, indulge yourselves, nor your wife, nor your maid-servant, in cotton cloth costing over a shilling a yard...
...The next "luxury" taxed in this schedule is the same cloth when dyed, stained, colored, painted or printed, and valued at over 12 1/2 cents per square yard...
...The n xt "luxury" according to this standard, which the President has adopted along with Mr...
...But note the manner in which to the President's mind this "implication'' was given...
...The first "luxury" in the cotton schedule is cloth "not exceeding 100 threads to the square inch, counting warp, and filling —not bleached, dyed, colored, stained, painted, or printed, valued at over 7 cents per square yard...
...It should be read by everybody who seeks an understanding of The System in legislation...
...He was elected on his own direct assurances that the platform meant revision downward...
...This utterance is illuminative as indicating the administration definition of luxuries...
...Luxury is a dreadful thing...
...An Official Standard of Luxury "I REPEAT," said President Taft in his Lincoln Day speech, since made official by Senator Hale's publica- tion of it in the Record—"I repeat, therefore, that this (the Payne-Aldrich Bill) was a downward revision...
...This unique book, "The Minnesota Legislature of 1909," was reviewed in a recent number of La Follette's by Judge Lewis R. Larson...
...The implication that it was to be generally downward was fairly given by the fact that those who uphold a protective tariff defend it by the claim that after an industry has been established by shutting out foreign competition, the domestic competition will lead to a reduction in prices so as to make the original high tariff unnecessary...
...It was not downward with reference to silks or liquors or high-priced eottons in the nature of luxuries...
...Spreading the Truth FROM MINNESOTA comes the pleasant news that Lynn Haines' story of the legislature of 1909 is stirring the state from one end to the other...
...Really...
...He justifies the Payne-Aldrich Bill by saying so...
...We seeem dimly to remember that William Howard Taft made a speaking campaign in which, recognizing the tariff situation as acute, and following the precedent of Alton B. Parker on the gold standard, he made his own platform, and amended that of the party by direct construction ©f the platform as meaning revision downward...
...But the President added: "The implication that it was to be generally downward, however, was fairly given...
...But by all means avoid luxuries...
...This must have sounded rather startling at first—coming from the President...
...Go to the store, a humbled and rebuked citizen, and buy clothing at less than 12 1/2 cents a yard and if you can't find any, in this era of high cost of living, the first ash barrel will mayhap serve to send you home decently, if not comfortably...
Vol. 2 • March 1910 • No. 9
