EDITORIALS
Whose Victory? PRESIDENT TAFT'S Canadian tariff bill passed the Senate, as the White House press bureau some weeks ago had predicted, without the crossing of a "t" or the dotting of an "i." This...
...This piece of revenue legislation, drafted in secret by the Administration, is enacted into law by the Congress of the United States in supine obedience to presidential mandate...
...Are you going to leave that fire behind you...
...How many are there in the woods this very moment who are quite as thoughtless as this Chicago business man...
...Wherein, then, lies the victory...
...he asked...
...President Taft, mainly because of the assistance given him by the great combination of newspaper interests, has succeeded in making of Congress a rubber stamp with which to place the O. K. of our government upon his deal with the Canadian ministers...
...He is the chief trouble-maker for the dishonest food manufacturers...
...I'll never leave another fire burning in the woods...
...The campaign is now on...
...The wool trust—with its infamous Schedule K; the sugar trust—with its dishonest "Dutch Standard...
...A Little Lesson in Conservation ARANGER on the Wisconsin forest reserve recently came upon a fishing party about to abandon a temporary camp in the woods...
...the cotton trust...
...It was in fact a most healthy fire, one that paid tribute to the wood-craft of the campers...
...I would have him arrested as a lunatic or an incendiary," replied the businessman, emphatically...
...the steel trust...
...The woolen and cotton trusts will dictate as usual the price we must pay for the clothes we wear...
...The beef trust will keep right on charging its own price for the meat we eat...
...The government mill grinds rapidly its grist of violations of the pure food laws...
...Yes, but not so high that they did not see clearly the need of supplementing the President's bill with legislation that would stand the test of political honesty and public welfare...
...The trust control of prices...
...How many of the forest fires we read about in the papers from day to day are due to abandoned camp fires...
...No industrial combination, unless perhaps it be the paper makers' trust, will find its control over prices shaken...
...This pact of the President's was not intended to loosen the hold of the trusts upon our pocketbooks...
...But not one spokesman for this bill, either in the Administration or in Congress, has ventured to suggest that its passage would dispel the spectre of high prices...
...We mention these two batches of "notices" because they came in one day's mail, and are right at hand...
...What headway is being made against this great menace to the public health is due almost entirely to the vigilance and aggressiveness of Dr...
...Wiley...
...Ultimate Consumer, a victory for YOU...
...The high cost of living...
...Not a single one of them is touched...
...This list includes headache tablets, catsup, blackberry cordial, maple syrup, soothing drops, vanilla flavor, flour, and dried fruits...
...They may have the increased traffic as Canadian wheat flows to our mills, and as agricultural implements, motors, and other manufactures go from our factories to the farms and homes of Canada...
...Do you remember how they hastened to pass the "farmers' free list bill" and other bills in their effort to offset the injustice of the President's bill...
...I am head of a big store in Chicago...
...The campers saw it...
...And do you see that great forest stretching back for miles and miles, dry as tinder from the long spell of hot weather...
...But still it does not work fast enough to dispose of all the business brought to it by the cheaters and deceivers and poisoners...
...It is a victory for the packers...
...It is not, Mr...
...Do you realize what a loss there would be if that timber were to burn not to mention the danger to human lives...
...Does not that of itself bear eloquent witness to the fact that the Democrats looked upon the so-called reciprocity bill as a fraud upon the American consumer...
...They have opened the way, as they believe, to get the spruce wood and print paper of Canada to help relieve themselves from the oppression of the paper makers' combination...
...There is not even a pretense that the Canadian agreement will accomplish what the Sherman anti-trust law, even without the "rule of reason," has failed to do...
...His newspaper allies—who will, according to their own statement, save several million dollars a year if they get free print paper— have sought by indirection to convey the impression to the reading public that this arrangement will reduce the cost of their foodstuffs...
...But they are making of their organization more than a piece of political machinery...
...In this list were cough medicines, frozen eggs, confectioners' brown glaze, lemon extract, vinegar, olives, tomato catsup, shelled peanuts, coffee, ice cream cones, preserves, and salad oil...
...It is a victory for big industrial and transportation interests...
...Victory over what...
...An Appeal to Intelligence ON OCTOBER 10 the voters of California will accept or reject the proposed amendment to the constitution giving women the right to vote...
...It is a victory for the railroads...
...Yet the millers are amply protected from the foreign flour manufacturer...
...The outrages of the Payne-Aldrich tariff law...
...And the party carried water from the lake until not a coal remained...
...It is a victory for the millers...
...Do you see these tall pines all around you...
...asked the ranger, by way of reply...
...No, indeed...
...The Democrats rose above politics," declares the grateful President...
...Come, boys, let's put it out...
...Well, what would you say if someone were to come into your store and build a blazing fire on the basement floor and then go away and leave it...
...Merely in the achievement of forcing Congress to put upon the statute books a tariff bill written by Secretary Knox and Charles M. Pepper, head of the "dollar diplomacy" Bureau of Trade Relations...
...Certainly not...
...Their campaign is primarily an appeal to intelligence...
...The millers, even with the Canadian wheat supply opened freely to them, will still determine what we must pay for a sack of flour...
...The fire over which they had broiled their fish, he noticed, was still burning...
...They are given free access to the great wheat fields of the Canadian Northwest...
...Two days before that there were issued thirty-two notices of similar judgments...
...It is heralded far and wide, by the newspapers that made it possible, as a "great victory...
...But," protested one of the fishermen, "that fire will soon go out of itself...
...Even the President has not had the hardihood to hold that out to the American people...
...Every day these women are demonstrating anew their fitness for effective political action...
...The steel trust will fix the price of our iron and machinery...
...Recognizing, as men do, that in union there is strength, the women have organized...
...I hadn't thought of it in that light," said the camper, contritely...
...Let me ask you," said the ranger, "what is your business...
...It is a victory for the newspaper publishers...
...What the Democrats Saw PRESIDENT TAFT gives the credit to the Democrats for the ratification of his tariff bargain with Canada...
...The campers nodded...
...and Mrs...
...But do you remember with what haste the Democratic House of Representatives set about to accomplish some genuine revision of the tariff downward...
...Wiley's Grist ON JULY 15 the Department of Agriculture issued twenty-five notices of judgments rendered against food and drug manufacturers...
...Why, yes," answered the men in duck suits, "and what of it...
...They have turned it into an extension school of suffrage education...
...Do you wonder that they should be using all the power at their command to pry him out of the service of the country...
...If those worthy citizens who are indisposed to give women the ballot will but watch the work of women in the present contest, they may find their opposition badly shaken...
...They are handed a club with which to beat down the prices received by the American farmer for his grain...
...For misbranding or adulterating these articles of food, the usual legal punishment was inflicted by the government...
...The lumber trust will continue to fix the prices we must pay for the lumber that goes into our barns and homes...
...the rubber trust;—go down the list of these gigantic monopolies that fatten upon the Ultimate Consumer through their high-tariff graft and you find them undisturbed by this Canadian pact...
...They may bring in free the meat animals of Canada, to compete with our sheep and cattle, yet they continue to receive protection against foreign packers...
...Rightly so...
...It deserves to win...
...Well, then, what do you think of a man who comes into the woods here, this great storehouse of natural wealth, and leaves behind him a glowing bed of coals for the first breeze to scatter among those giant pines...
Vol. 3 • July 1911 • No. 30
