SIDELIGHTS ON THE "LITTLE BROTHER TO THE PAYNE-ALDRICH TARIFF LAW"
SIDE LIGHTS on "The Little Brother to the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Law" SENATOR LA FOLLETTE SAYS THE PEOPLE ARE JOBBED AGAIN WHATEVER FAVOR this Canadian agreement has found with the public rests...
...The results of the wrong visited upon the American people by the tariff revision of 1909 are just what progressive Senators at that time predicted they would be...
...That was the Republican position on the tariff in 1908...
...NO ONE WHO COMMENDED THE...
...SIDE LIGHTS on "The Little Brother to the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Law" SENATOR LA FOLLETTE SAYS THE PEOPLE ARE JOBBED AGAIN WHATEVER FAVOR this Canadian agreement has found with the public rests upon the mistaken belief that it is the beginning of lower tariffs...
...and that, Mr...
...It places upon the free list the products of the farm, regardless of the cost of producing those products...
...I say to you that in the tariff session of 1909 the progressive Republicans stood squarely for the kind of tariff revision which the Republican platform and the Republican candidate for President had promised...
...Considered as a tariff bill, it violates every principle of every Republican platform ever written...
...It admits raw materials free which they can manufacture and sell to American consumers at trust prices...
...The important judgment which will be pronounced on this measure is the final judgment attested by experience...
...It buys these concessions from Canada by giving her free admission to the American market for farm produce at the expense of the American farmer...
...The people feel that they have been baffled in all efforts to get decent and reasonable taritt reductions...
...The public does not at present stop to inquire whether this bill is just and equitable...
...We said then that you could not settle the tariff question by any such measure as the Payne-Aldrich bill...
...In their resentment and disappointment, resulting from the extra tariff session, many people approve the first measure that has even an appearance of tariff reduction...
...That is what President Taft's brand of reciprocity does...
...It operates to INCREASE the high protective duties of the Payne-Aldrich tariff for the benefit of the millers, the brewers, the packers, and Standard Oil, from 27 per cent...
...But, sir, he is indeed blind who does not see that the people of this country are impatient for tariff reductions...
...that was where the progressive Republicans stood in 1909...
...PRESIDENT, the progressives have been criticized at this session because they do not support reciprocity...
...President, is where they stand to-day...
...It does more than that...
...to 322 per cent., as I shall demonstrate later...
...But in the end the public always holds its representatives responsible for the ultimate effect of legislation...
...It secures some reductions in Canadian duties, which will enable our highly protected manufacturers to find a market for some of their surplus in Canada...
...It deprives the American farmer of the small benefit he derives directly from a protective in order to secure for the over-protected manufacturer a reduction of Canadian duties upon the surplus manufactured products which he desires to sell in Canada...
...nor can you...
...You can not do a wrong and put it to sleep...
...Every argument they advanced, every vote cast, was for a tariff that would measure the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad...
...The people of this country well understood that they were jobbed in the extra tariff session of 1909...
...REPUBLICAN PROGRESSIVES FOR THE FIGHT THEY MADE ON THE PAYNE-ALDRICH BILL TWO YEARS AGO HAS ANY RIGHT TO CRITICIZE THEM NOW FOR THEIR POSITION ON THE TARIFF BILL BASED ON THE CANADIAN PACT...
...It denies the American consumer any benefits from the free agricultural products admitted to the American market by limiting the important products of the free list to the raw materials, such as wheat, oats, barley, flaxseed, cattle, sheep, and hogs, all of which must first pass into the hands of the miller, the brewer, Standard Oil, and the packers, combinations which absolutely control the prices of the finished products, before they can ever reach the consumer...
...Progressives are Consistent MR...
...Of course the manufacturers are for this bill...
Vol. 3 • August 1911 • No. 32
