THE ROLL CALL

...About two years ago our System-dominated Congress passed and our willing President approved a tariff revision made in the interest of Privilege and Big Business, a tariff revision, which, by common consent, was an outrage upon the rights of American consumers...

...On the other hand, tariff protection to the American farmer to the extent of his higher cost of production over that of his foreign competitor, a cost made higher by reason of the American standard of living and of wages and of the higher prices which the American farmer must pay for the manufactures of tariff-protected monopolies, is essential to his welfare...

...The full responsibility for the defeat of all amendments offered in the public interest was placed upon the Chief Executive and apparently willingly accepted by him...

...All Amendments Voted Down WHEN the measure was taken up for passage Senator McCumber, of North Dakota, offered an amendment reducing duties on a number of manufactured articles of general use...

...Senator La Follette's amendment to the cotton schedule was defeated by a vote of 15 to 63...

...The Farmer Deceived and Spurned THE farmers of the country have supported protection and the party of protection, because they too were protected, because, while protection meant that they must buy in a protective market, it assured, also, that they might sell in a protected market...

...The people understood that these Special Interests had been permitted, against the public interest and against the common good, to control the making of the tariff schedules that were to stand between them and a competitive market for the people...

...The people from end to end of the country regarded it as a great public wrong...

...In the House the bill passed almost without consideration...

...The second, free farm products, was important to powerful business interests...

...The President's pact, to subserve the political exigencies of the day, breaks to the American farmer the pledge of the Republican party—the pledge of the greatest and most fundamental economic principle for which that party has stood for a half-century...

...It is even-handed justice, to which he is entitled...

...It was not designed to...

...On the Cummins amendment, the Yeas were 17 and the Nays were 64...

...No duty on any trust-controlled product of general consumption was affected or proposed to be affected by it...

...More than this the American farmer can not obtain, no matter how high the tariff on agricultural products...

...Again Mr...

...monopolies in rubber, in glass, in paper and other things, which, because of their monopoly of the American market, were enabled to add to the prices to be paid by the American consumer all or a substantial proportion of the extravagant tariff duties provided in the new law...

...The most important provisions of this agreement provided for the admission free into the United States of Canadian print paper and Canadian farm products...

...Senator Bristow proposed an amendment to reduce the duties of the sugar schedule and to eliminate therefrom the Sugar Trust's iniquitous "Duth Standard" joker...

...The Denial of a System Government IMPORTANT for its wrongs of commission, the President's reciprocity measure is of greater moment still because of its wrongs of omission, because it is a misdirection in behalf of Special Interests of time and effort and public money, otherwise demanded to be employed for the common good...

...This committee, after an exhaustive investigation, published a voluminous report and filed its recommendations...

...Repeatedly, the White House threat of executive disapproval of the measure, if it carried any revision of tariff duties, was voiced by distinguished Senators from their places on the floor of the Senate...

...In fact the reported proceedings of the Senate make a record that is replete with evidence, cumulative evidence in no less than fourteen successive Yea and Nay votes...

...Bradley Gamble Nixon Smith, S. C. Brandegee Gore O'Gorman Smoot Briggs Guggenheim Oliver Stephenson Bryan Heyburn Overman Stone Burnham Hitchcock Owen Taylor Burton Johnson, Me...

...But the President would not have the bill amended, so McCumber's amendment was voted down, 16 Yeas to 64 Nays...

...The argument for it was always one and the same—White House pressure...

...The people understood that the Payne-Aldrich-Cannon-Taft tariff granted and preserved inordinate and excessive proctective duties to monopolized manufactures...

...It was as though terms and conditions had been made, as though it had been agreed that no monopolized manufacture of general use should be deprived of one penny of its inordinate tariff protection...

...It was as though it had been agreed that the President, by permitting the announcement to be made and to go unchallenged that, if the bill were amended in any respect, looking to a reduction or tariff duties, it would meet with executive veto, had agreed to assume responsibility for the entire arrangement...

...How much that protection may have been worth to them on the prices of what they had sell, whether much or little, and whether it might be worth more in the future than in the past, are questions with which we are not here concerned and upon which we have no right to speculate...

...Knowing and understanding these things, the indignant public almost in one voice cried, "Outrage...

...The President, except for conceding that a single schedule, the woolen schedule, was "indefensible," attempted in his public addresses to defend this law as the best tariff ever enacted by the American Congress...

...The roll call on that amendment follows: YEAS—16 Bailey Brown Cummins La Follette Borah Clapp Dixon McCumber Bourne Clarke, Ark...

...Root Dillingham Martinp...

...It embodies no important benefit to the general public...

...But the President would have it his way and the milling combine's way and no other way, and on the second simmons amendment the Yeas were 17 and the Nays were 63, and the amendment was lost...

...By Executive Ukase THOSE who announced themselves as in favor of it offered neither facts nor arguments in support of their position, but contented themselves with allowing its opponents to debate it unanswered and, much of the time, in their absence from the Senate chamber...

...Again the executive ukase was invoked and obedient System Republicans, in union with the Democrats, rallied to the President's standard, defeating this amendment by 16 to 61...

...The newspaper publishers, striving to free themselves from oppression at the hands of a greedy monopoly in print paper, had come early with their complaints and petitions to the doors of Congress...

...It is certainly not important for any good it will do, except probably to a few Special Interests, aleady rich, to which it opens new fields of profit...

...Page Townsend Chamberlain Johnston Ala Paynter Warren Chilton Jones Penrose Watson Clark, Wyo...

...With the public it made common cause in denouncing the tariff...

...For these reasons, the tariff duties on his products, so far as they may exceed the difference between his cost of production and that of his foreign competitor, neither benefit him nor harm any American citizen...

...Again the threat of executive veto, if the bill were amended, overruled the welfare of the American people...

...N. J Shively NOT VOTING—10 du Pont Lea Sutherland Tillman I rye Percy Swanson Gallinger Rayner Thornton...

...The same Senator offered another amendment reducing tariff duties on flour and manufactured bread stuffs...

...They understood that Congress in making this tariff and the President in approving it had served not them, but the Sugar Trust, the Steel Trust, the Woolen Trust, the Cotton Goods Trust and the thousand and one lesser monopolies...

...The question here is one of principle, one of good faith...

...It was expected to gain and has gained, for the time being, for the Administration responsible for it the political approval and support of the press of the country...

...In the tariff revision that followed, the duty on print paper was fixed at a rate nearly twice as high as that recommended by this committee...

...The final passage of the reciprocity bill in the Senate was accomplished, as in the House, by a majority of votes of opponents of the protective principle, because it was in their belief an opportunity to bring further discredit upon protection and the party of protection...

...Those whose burdens the President, two years ago, assumed in approving and indorsing the tariff law turned about and helped him put through the so-called "Reciprocity" bill...

...But with the people, the President's "best ever" defense would not go down, and they answered the President and the System-serving Republican political machine by returning at the next election a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives...

...As a corrective of the wrongs and iniquities of the President's "best ever" tariff, it was but a sham and a disappointment...

...In the Senate it was reported from the Finance Committee without recommendation and its proponents and supporters pressed it for passage midst a conspiracy of silence...

...Meanwhile, the press has persistently and conspicuously in its daily issues called loudly for the President's "reciprocity,"— for the "reciprocity" that meant free Canadian print paper...

...The Press Appeased THIS pact the President asked Congress in the last session to enact as a legislative proposal to the Canadian government,—which Congress then refused to do...

...The arrangement shows no evidence of any consideration for the American farmer, either as a producer or a consumer, no evidence of any consideration for the American consumer in general...

...It will not reduce the cost of living in the United States...

...This fair price no honest adherent of the protective principle will deny to the American farmer...

...Senator Cummins offered an amendment, reducing the tariff on iron and steel articles...

...for the Presi-dent's Canadian pact, you know, while making farmers' wheat free, actually increases the tariff protection of the milling combine...

...The People Understood THE complaints of the people were based upon knowledge and understanding...

...Bankhead Foster Newlands Smith, Mich...

...This record on "reciprocity" is a record of reciproeity,—of reciprocal alliance, offensive and defensive, between the champions of Privilege and the votaries of partisan politics...

...The free and open competition of 6,000,000 American farms puts it beyond the power of any tariff law to enhance the farm price of raw agricultural products above the fair requirements of the American standard of living and wages and factors entering into the American farmers' cost of production, important among which are the prices the farmer must pay for the things which he must buy in the American market-places...

...He enjoys no element of monopoly...

...The vote on Senator La Follette's amendment to the woolen schedule is perhaps as representative as any...

...A Pact for Politics IN THE present year of Grace, there was negotiated between representatives of the Dominion of Canada and the representatives of the Taft Administration at Washington an alleged reciprocal agreement, whereby certain products of either country should be admitted into the other, either free or at reduced rates of duty...

...Gronna Nelson Bristow Crawford Kenyon Simmons NAYS—64 Bacon Fletcher Meyers Smith, Md...

...To the public demand for honest tariff revision, it is the coarse, unfeeling denial of a System controlled government...

...It would enable the milling combine, the meat packers, the railroads to exploit the vast agricultural areas of our northern neighbor...

...Whereupon, the President proclaimed that an "extraordinary occasion" required Congress to convene in special session...

...If it has ever been contended by respectable authority that the protective duties of the tariff law on the rem products of the soil were added to the costs of the American consumer, we have not heard of it...

...Senator Simmons, of North Carolina, offered an amendment providing for reductions in duties on packing-house products— the products of the beef trust—but the President would veto the bill if amended, and on Senator Simmons' amendment the Yeas were 16 and the Nays were 64, and the amendment was lost...

...The first, free print paper, was important politically...

...Even its proponents concede this...

...Taft's mandate that the hill pass unamended governed and cut off all consideration of the public welfare...

...If this feature of the tariff was ever the subject of public complaint, we have not heard of it...

...The roll calls on these various amendments were all nearly the same...

...combination in restraint of trade is not attainable to him...

...By way, as many of them said at the time, of denying them the prompt relief to which they were entitled, a special investigating committee was appointed and to it was committed the task of investigating and ascertaining what, in fairness to the publishers, on the one hand, and the manufacturers of print paper and the labor employed in that industry, on the other hand, were proper rates of duty to be imposed on print paper and wood pulp...

...On that day the Senate passed the Administration's so-called "Canadian Reciprocity Bill" without amendment—but not without a record...

...It is important because it spurns and sets at naught the loyalty of the farmers of this country to the protective tariff principle, which, before its perversion in the interests of greedy monopoly, was the bulwark of our national prosperity...

...The Farmer and the Tariff THE TARIFF of 1909 continued for the most part the duties of its predecessor on agricultural products...

...From the White House came no denial of this threat of executive usurpation...

...The President's pact is chiefly important for the wrongs of it, for its injustice to the farmers of this country and for its effect in destroying among our great agricultural population their confidence in the integrity of the government...

...Against these amendments, the argument again was always one and the same—the President would veto the bill if so amended...

...Senator La Follette offered an amendment to reduce the duties of the cotton schedule, which, though not so conceded by the President, are equally as "indefensible" as those of the woolen schedule...

...Its praises of the President's pact have been loud and generous, but its selfish interests have been rarely disclosed...

...To a public crying out against the wrongs of excessive tariff schedules, it offers and attempts to offer no relief...

...It is important to the newspaper publishers of the country in that it is a revision of the tariff on print paper as affects importation from the principal foreign country which might compete in our market...

...The wail of the newspapers did not abate...

...Senator La Follette offered an amendment reducing the tariff duties of the "indefensible" wool schedule and putting them on an honest and scientific ad valorem basis, but on this amendment, as on the others, the veto threat of the White House protected the Woolen Trust against the demand of the people for honest clothing at honest prices...

...The measure received in the Senate, as in the House, the votes of those members who were chiefly instrumental in controlling and enacting in the last Congress a tariff for Special Interests...

...It shows only a most jealous regard for the tariff privileges of monopolized American manufactures...

...Kern Perkins Wetmore Crane Lippitt Poindexter Williams Culberson Lodge Pomerene Works cullom lorimer reed Curtis McLean Richardson Davis Martin, Va...

...How the Bill was Passed IT was as though a bargain had been made and hands had been struck across the table...

...The Plaint of the Press NOT the least conspicuous among those who joined in the public protest was the newspaper press of the country...

...It became known early that amendments would be offered in the public interest, amendments reducing the tariff on monopolized manufactures—on woolen goods, on cotton goods, on iron and steel and other articles of general consumption...

...Important Only in its Wrongs THE passage or defeat of the so-called Canadian Reciprocity measure is not of importance to rank it with our leading public questions...

...And so the score of amendments offered by Senators on the floor, embodying important tariff reduction in the public interest, went down before the insistent mandate of the President and the threat of executive veto...

...The press, in common with the public, was wronged by the tariff...