THE ROLL CALL
FOR THE 90,000,000 CONSUMERS WHEN THE ALDRICH TARIFF bill was before the Senate in the last Congress, the Progressive Republicans made an attack upon the wool schedules that resounded all over the...
...Pairs: Bacon and Frye, Oliver and Nixon, Stone and New-lands, Chilton and Root, Tillman and Page, Gallinger and Davis, McCumber and Percy, Smith of Michigan, and Lea, Richardson and Johnson, Sutherland and Rayner, Thornton and Curtis, Briggs and Terrell...
...No opportunity for stifling...
...Then the committee reported it back to the Senate, WITHOUT RECOMMENDATION...
...If we will make reductions in the woolen and cotton schedules which we can safely make—reductions which will wrong no manufacturing interest, reductions which will leave a margin of safety above the line of difference in production cost between this and the competing countries—with the loss of only a modest revenue, we shall save to the purchasers the better part of $200,000 annually...
...La Follette Silences Democratic Taunts AUNTS WERE FLUNG across the...
...I do not believe it serves any good purpose to indulge in that sort of political practice upon either side of this chamber...
...Senator Gcre moved that this bill be referred to the Committee on Finance WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO REPORT IT BACK ON OR BEFORE JULY 10...
...President, speaking for myself, I am prepared to vote at this time on the tariff bill revising the duties on wools and woolens, which passes...
...Protests, wails, beating of the air by the Old Guard...
...The vote is deeply significant...
...We will perform our duty according to our lights as you perform yours according to your lights...
...Then came the downward revision of the wool schedule...
...the House of Representatives on yesterday and was received by the Senate today, I believe that every Senator is ready to record his vote upon this bill...
...President, believing that the Senate is in possession of all the facts necessary to act upon this bill, and that the public interest will be subserved by its adoption as it will bring to a speedy determination the questions that are pending before the Senate, I shall support it...
...At that time I analyzed that schedule, presented a series of amendments to revise it upon a basis which I believed to be, and I think demonstrated to be strictly in accord with the Republican platform of 1908...
...Mr...
...Is this a Republican Senate...
...Question: Shall the Finance Committee be instructed to report this bill back to the Senate on or before July 10th...
...President, in my judgment, having in mind the public record of the Progressive Republican senators, I believe a reasonable tariff revision along the lines which I have suggested can be made a part of the President's bill, and that when so amended the bill will receive the same support upon its passage...
...Sir, this would be a great service to the people of this country everywhere...
...I believe he will think it unwise to withhold approval of a bill that enacts into law his particular measure—this Canadian pact which is not reciprocity in any sense—because we have amended it, even though not to his liking...
...Progressives Have Not Wavered "I REGRET the course—in one respect—which this discus-sion has taken this afternoon...
...Whether we agree with the views of the majority or minority of the Supreme Court in these cases, or with the member of it who voted on both sides of the questions, the quotations above set forth show that the question really in the minds of the judges was the expediency or propriety of the income tax raw, and not whether it conflicted with any part of the Constitution...
...They will stand, I will say to the Senator from Mississippi on the tariff question, now and hereafter just where they stood when the Payne-Aldrich bill was before the Senate...
...With it is coming a new day for the Ultimate Consumer...
...Meanwhile the Finance Committee of the Senate was hold-in open hearings on the trade agreement bill...
...Progressive Republicans, following consistently the course they mapped out so clearly during the Aldrich revision, to the end that the excessive duties should be lowered, joined in support of it...
...I do not permit any Senator to question my Republicanism because I do not happen to agree with that Senator upon some phase of the tariff question...
...He demands that the Senate of the United States enact a law that will force the farmers of this country to sell what they produce in a free trade market, and still buy what they need in a highly protected market...
...So thinks Heyburn...
...These were promptly met...
...The vote that is cast on this question of protection," he announced, "or the manner of legislating upon this question of protection will show the people of the country whether or not the Senate is Republican...
...This Canadian Tariff bill, passed just as the President desired it, will benefit nobody but Canada, the railroads, a few trusts, and the newspapers...
...Senators refused to admit that any such intimation had been made...
...President, the course which I have marked out is the only way to insure at this session real tariff reductions which will be of any substantial benefit to the consumers of the country...
...The Ultimate Consumer is now heard in the United States Senate...
...No Senator here has the right or power to determine my political status or my political standing...
...I make this statement, not because I am commissioned by Progressive Republican senators to announce their votes upon this bill, (and I certainly do not assume to deliver any votes upon any proposition,) but I know something of the views and the records of Progressive Republicans and their controlling purpose to serve the public interest, and I state what I believe the results will fully confirm...
...It was signed by President Taft...
...Heyburn's Futile Performance AND AGAIN was revised the old bugbear of party regularity—a bugbear that has failed more than once when used by the Administration and its reactionary allies to intimidate the Progressives, and the constituents of the Progressives...
...The Old Guard saw the handwriting on the wall...
...Boss Aldrich appealed for support on the plea that it was the very "citadel of protection...
...Senator La Follette took the floor...
...But Senator Bailey observed: "If it is true that to amend the reciprocity bill with the free list bill would defeat them both, then it absolutely means that the free list bill has no chance whatever to become a law unless we do attach it to that bill...
...clamored Heyburn...
...But it was ratified on the certain knowledge that other tariff revision would follow—revision aiming at some measure of justice both to the farmers and to the consumers, whose interests are so shabbily treated in the President's pact...
...The machine that formerly responded so effectively to the subtle touch of Aldrich was put out of commission...
...Now the Senate is called upon by President Taft to pass a bill giving force and effect to his tariff deal with Canada which he has given the alluring name of "reciprocity...
...Why the People Distrust the Courts (Continued from page 9.) majority of the Supreme Court, when the Income Tax cases were decided...
...La Follette Proposes to Relieve Consumers BUT SENATOR LAFOLLETTE, a member of this committee, in a statement of his views submitted to the Senate, promised that he would offer amendments to the reciprocity pact providing for a complete revision of the manufactured wool and cotton schedules of the Payne-Aldrich tariff law, revision of the rates on structural iron and steel, and certain other paragraphs of that schedule, also amendments revising the infamous sugar schedule...
...Threats from Penrose, that a flood of discussion would be opened "calculated to keep us here until the snow appears on the ground...
...More threats and angry protests from the Standpatters...
...The Hon...
...They have never swerved one hair's breath, Mr...
...Then ensued a colloquy regarding the possibility of the President vetoing the bill if it were Amended...
...We will take care of our record, if you will take care of yours...
...How shall we answer to the public if we then fail of tariff reduction altogether...
...I denned my views regarding Schedule K two years ago when the tariff bill was pending before this body...
...A Chance for Revision "MR...
...The results of that struggle indicate that the Ultimate Consumer— that "myth" of Senator Lodge— is at last to have his inning in "the greatest deliberative body on earth...
...Old Guard Completely Routed THE VOTE was taken...
...President," continued Senator La Follette, "it is equally true then without doubt that an independent reduction of the duties in Schedule K would have no chance to become a law...
...Unless the vote is against this motion, the people may have been mistaken...
...If the committee on Finance were to examine witnesses for months and print volumes of testimony it would not change the opinion of a member of the Finance Committee, or a Senator upon this floor...
...Crane Cullom Dillingham du Pont Gamble Heyburn Lippitt Lodge Lorimer Myers Penrose Perkins Smoot Warren Wetmore Among the Senators paired or absent, and therefore not voting, the following were announced as in faver of the motion: Bacon, Paynter, Owen...
...PRESIDENT, if the Democrats on this floor will stand for amending the reciprocity bill by reducing these duties which cannot be justified on woolen goods, making a saving of $100,000,000 to the people who must buy clothing, by reducing the duties on cotton goods, making a saving of fifty or more millions annually to the people who must buy cotton clothing and by further reducing duties upon certain items in other schedules, I have no doubt * * * we will be able to send to the President a reciprocity bill amended by tariff provisions that, on the whole, will be beneficial to the entire country...
...Since the members of the Supreme Court have declared that not only the income tax law, but the other great statutes considered above were held invalid, not because they were plainly in conflict with the Constitution, but because they embody economic theories to which a majority of the court were opposed, we may fairly accept as settled the proposition that the Courts do invalidate statutes merely because they disapprove them...
...Senatorial courtesy" invoked...
...For my own part upon this motion, Mr...
...Such revision," he said, "While reducing our Government revenues less than $10,000,-000 annually, will effect a reduction in the cost of living by lowering prices to the consuming public aggregating more than $200,000,000 a year...
...25) Address before Law Department of University of Pennsylvania in 1906, printed in pamphlet form...
...No chance to be left in a pigeon-hole...
...New blood is coming into the Senate...
...President, to pass upon exactly that question, and it will not be necessary for any Senator upon the Democratic side or any Senator upon the Republican side to set the progressives in this body up as targets for their jibes and sneers...
...There are a few members of this body who are Progressive Republicans...
...He was silent under the disclosures made by other Progressive Republicans showing up the infamous jugglery and deceit of his "revision...
...Yet he fled from the floor when the matchless Dolliver exposed the iniquities of these duties...
...Hundreds and hundreds of pages of printed testimony were taken, showing the protest of the farmers and others against this unreciprocal measure...
...It means, too, that if the Democrats and the Progressive Republicans continue to stand together against the Old Guard this trade agreement of the President's may be made to serve as a peg upon which to hang a revision of the Tariff that will afford actual, substantial, unmistakable relief to the people from the high cost of living...
...If we honestly desire to relieve the people of some of the excessive burdens of taxation by reducing tariff duties, the amendment of this Canadian tariff bill offers us the opportunity, and the only opportunity which may come to us during the life of the present administration...
...Following are the Senators who voted in favor of opening the door to a consideration of "reciprocity" and revision of trust duties together: YEAS—39 Bailey Borah Bourne Bristow Brown Bryan Chamberlain Clapp Crawford Culberson Cummins Dixon Fletcher Foster Gore Gronna Hitchcock Johnston, Ala, Jones Kenyon Kern La Follette Martin, Va...
...Ultimate Consumer Gets His Inning PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICANS won a signal victory...
...The Caucus, not the People, is master...
...Mr...
...The fact I do not agree with some Republican members of the Senate who are opposed to any changes in the duties in Schedule K warrants no challenge of my good faith in any respect, and I resent it here and now...
...Walter Clark, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, discussing this decision in 1906 said: (25) "One man nullified the action of Congress and the President and seventy-five millions of living people and in thirteen years since has taxed the property and labor of the country by his sole vote, one billion, three million dollars, which Congress in compliance with the public will, and relying upon previous decisions of the Court, had decreed should be paid out of the excessive incomes of the rich...
...In advocating reductions I am unwilling, with my view of tariff revision, to go further than the present information will justify...
...But Sir, basing my judgment upon the record which they have made upon tariff legislation I believe I have fairly stated their position...
...President, shall we incur the risks of letting this chance of at least a partial tariff revision go by...
...and they do not need to be catechised by anybody...
...If the administration bill can be so amended as to compensate the farmers for the loss of their markets by reducing tariff duties and hence reducing excessive prices for commodities and supplies which they and all people must buy from our protected manufacturers, trusts and combinations, then Sir, I would vote for the bill so amended...
...not the Voter, in the secrecy of the polling booth...
...He said: "Mr...
...Further, he made a campaign and was elected upon a declaration that the revision of the tariff should be downward and not upward...
...It is becoming quite the fashion recently, first upon the Democratic and then upon the Republican side of the Senate, to arraign and assail the Progressive Republicans...
...It has had enough of hearings...
...The country wants legislation upon this subject...
...Sir, The President has declared Schedule K an "indefensible outrage...
...We need waste no further time with hearings...
...Democratic floor leader Martin took the floor in support of the Gore motion...
...who later, facing an outraged public, admitted that the wool schedule was "indefensible...
...I have had no authority conferred upon me to speak for the Progressive Republicans in this matter...
...but assurance that the Senate would have the opportunity to discuss it fully and freely, and finally to vote upon it...
...Every Senator here knows full well that nothing has transpired which would lead any Senator to a change of attitude regarding the tariff on wool and woolens within the last two years...
...Do not worry about that...
...shouted Penrose...
...The little band that has stood so steadfastly for the public interest, against the tariff, railroad and public domain infamies of the past two years, have again shown their unwavering adherence to principle...
...It wants action...
...He is asking the Senate to ratify this pact—a deal made by the Administration without the semblance of a hearing—and to do it, too, without the crossing of a "i" or the dotting of an "i...
...The Standpatters were fighting to prevent any consideration of the manufactured wool and cotton schedules, the sugar, steel, and iron schedules...
...FOR THE 90,000,000 CONSUMERS WHEN THE ALDRICH TARIFF bill was before the Senate in the last Congress, the Progressive Republicans made an attack upon the wool schedules that resounded all over the country...
...That testimony is accessible to every Senator...
...If the "reciprocity" measure, amended in the manner proposed by the Progressive Republicans, receives similar support on the final vote, it will be up to President Taft to take his stand for or against lowering the duties on trust-made goods as well as on farm products...
...This will be especially true when our amendments actually reduce taxation upon the people of this country by revising downward that same Schedule K, and some others nearly if not quite so intolerable...
...The Congress that framed the Payne-Aldrich law took the testimony of some two hundred and fifty witnesses on wool and woolens as affected by Schedule K of the Tariff law, and printed the evidence in a volume of nearly eight hundred pages...
...THE OLD GUARD was routed...
...The free list bill followed...
...A Significant and Memorable Contest WHEREUPON ensued a contest that is fraught with the greatest significance to the people of this country...
...President, from the course which they have marked out for themselves, nor will they...
...Sooner or later in the consideration of this Canadian pact, the Senate will come, Mr...
...But despite this, the bill, with its outrageous wool schedule, was machinated through the Senate by Aldrich and his faithful henchmen...
...price for trade concessions to a few great favored trusts—railroads, packers, millers—without a shadow of reciprocal benefits either to the farmers or to the consumers of this country...
...And this act of the Senate marks one fact of transcendent importance to the American people—the end of committee control of important legislation...
...President, which would lead me to a different conclusion upon that schedule...
...The Progressives were fighting for a revision that will really take part of the heavy load from the backs of the people, and were insisting that such revision be made a part of the President's revision measure if it were to pass...
...It has been asserted in the course of the debate upon this resolution that the vote will determine whether there is a Republican majority in the Senate...
...He dared not accept the challenge of La Follette to take up, item by item, the provisions of his bill and face the proof that the rates were raised instead of lowered...
...Smith, S. C. Swanson Townsend Watson Williams Works Following are the Senators who stood fast to the Standpat colors, the Old Guardsters who refused to recognize the Ultimate Consumer in the Chamber, who stood by the "citadel of protection" even when defeat was inevitable: NAYS—18 Burnham Burton Clark, Wyo...
...Upon the vote on this question rested the decision of the Senate whether downward revision of the trusts' duties was to go hand in hand with President Taft's downward revision of the farmers' duties...
...Who in this Chamber," demanded Cummins, "is the censor of Republican morals or Republican policies...
...Mr...
...All the pressure of Admin istrative influence is being brought to bear to secure the enactment of legislation that will make the farmers pay the...
...Heyburn took to himself the futile performance of reading the Progressive Republicans out of the party...
...The Progressive Republicans held the balance of power...
...The Boss, in the secrecy of the caucus room, determines Republicanism...
...Replied Heyburn, the Organization Senator, the Machine Republican, the Caucus Worshipper: "The Republican majority, acting through its organized caucus, is the master of Republicans, and the man who does not recognize it is not a Republican...
...Virtually the change of the vote of one man, as we have seen, changed the result...
...There are no changed conditions, Mr...
...Bankhead and Brandegee, Clarke and Stephenson, Paynter and Guggenheim, Bradley and Taylor...
...On June 21st, the House bill reducing the dutires on wool and the manufactures of wool came to the Senate...
...At no time under the old order in the Senate could such a result have been possible...
...In the House of Representatives this pact was ratified...
...Consistent and unfaltering loyalty to the people—to the great consuming public to whom the high cost of living and trust extortion are vital, pressing realities—is winning its way to the control of legislation...
...Talk about sensational proceedings," cried Heyburn, "this motion is as sensational as you might expect to hear in a socialist convention...
...Rank absurdity and shallow demagogism...
...Martine, N. J. Nelson O'Gorman Overman Poindexter Pomerene Reed Shively Simmons Smith, Md...
...Mr...
...Chamber by, the Democrats that some real downward revision would be accomplished this session, if the Progressive Republicans held to their declared principles of tariff revision...
...I believe the agricultural interests of this country will take the reductions that will come to them from the reciprocity pact, if at the same time they can have just, reasonable and proper offsets and compensation in reduction of the excessive duties on the things they have to buy...
...They have certain convictions, and they will support and defend their convictions regardless of the taunts and innuendoes and baitings from either side of this chamber...
...If this pact is to be enacted into law, it should not, contended Senator La Follette, pass without amendments in the interest of the great body of consumers, including the farmers, who are compelled to carry all the burden of the President's lop-sided pact...
Vol. 3 • July 1911 • No. 26
