ANOTHER ROUT OF THE OLD GUARD
Another Rout of the Old Guard JUST ONE YEAR AGO, under the leadership of progressive Republican Senators, a hill was passed by Congress revising downward, along the lines of the Republican party...
...He said: "These great industries are over-protected...
...Let the Congress of the United States pass this important measure before adjournment and it will close another session with at least one piece of genuine tariff revision in accordance with public demand to its credit...
...Indeed there is not the slightest change in the situation that would warrant the conferees of either house in receding from the position taken last year...
...and defeat at this time, whether it be here or whether it be imposed by executive veto, as threatened, will not long delay the lifting of these great burdens from the backs of the American people...
...The Old Guard, of which Penrose is the accredited leader, is confronted with a presidential campaign...
...Senator Cummins introduced, as a substitute, a bill containing rates slightly above those of the Democratic bill...
...Frustrated by Taft THUS it was that President Taft with his veto power interposed the one obstacle that stood between the ninety million consumers of this country and genuine relief from the excessive burdens imposed upon them by the excessive and dishonest duties of Schedule K—that schedule which Aldrich once referred to as "the very citadel of protection" and which President Taft himself once admitted to be "indefensible...
...Of course there was an understanding with the Democratic "reserves"—the same Democratic Senators who connived with Penrose last summer to aid the System by having "regulars leave the chamber on the cotton bill and thus prevent the passage of any more measures like the La Follette wool bill...
...It was the product of Lippitt of Rhode Island...
...It was rejected...
...Thus the same situation resulted as that which brought about an agreement between the House conferees and the Senate conferees and culminated in the passage of the Underwood-La Follette bill of 1911...
...x AST YEAR the public was foiled by President Taft...
...But Penrose thought it wasn't necessary to bring these "reserves" into the open this time...
...It was the Penrose measure, therefore, that then passed over to the Senate proper...
...One of the heavy political mill stones hanging upon the neck of the President is his veto of the Underwood-La Follette wool revision bill last summer...
...And in exactly the same way that his bill was passed a year ago—by the combined votes of the progressive Republicans and the Democrats—this measure was substituted for the Penrose compromise...
...Summing up the changes proposed in his amendment to Schedule K, Senator La Follette said: "The ad valorem rates proposed will simplify the schedule in point of phraseology, will automatically do away with whatever fraud there is in the so-called compensatory duty, will abolish the discrimination against the poor man's cloth in favor of that of the rich man, will remove the discrimination against the carded-wool manufacturer in favor of the worsted-goods manufacturer, and, without attempting to draw the line between the compensatory and the protective duty, will automatically provide for both, leaving ample protection for the wool-grower and the manufacturer, without leaving the consumer completely at the mercy of the latter...
...They were responsible for the re-nomination of President Taft...
...This was made possible because, as Senator La Follette explained, the rates in his original bill were fixed high enough so as to permit still further reductions without crossing the line that measures the difference in the cost of production here and abroad...
...The rates proposed by Penrose were considerably higher than those in the Democratic bill, but it was believed that regular and progressive Republicans could agree upon them...
...A New Opportunity NOW, one year later, and as another session of Congress is dragging along to adjournment, another opportunity similar to that of 1911 comes to Congress and to the President to give to the long-suffering American public a real measure of relief, already too long delayed, from the extortions of the Payne-Aldrich tariff law...
...Last week, on July 25, the Senate found itself confronted with the duty of acting upon the wool bill that had been passed in the House...
...Clark McLean Smoot du Pont Massey Stephenson Fall Nelson Sutherland Gallinger Oliver Townsend Guggenheim Page PAIRED ON LA FOLLETTE BILL For Dixon Davis Chilton Rayner Tillman Percy Owen Foster Kern Clark Lea Smith Gore Gardner Against Bailey Curtis Jones Bradley Dillingham Sanders Brown Warren Burnham Wetmore Gamble Cullom Crane Richardson Will History Repeat Itself...
...Bryan Newlands Smith, S. C. Chamberlain O'Gorman Stone Culberson Overman Swanson Fletcher Paynter Thornton Hitchcock Pomerene Watson Johnson Reed Williams Johnston Shively AGAINST LA FOLLETTE BILL Republicans Brandegee Heyburn Penrose Briggs Lippitt Perkins Burton Lodge Root Catron McCumber Smith, Mich...
...So the Old Guard, imitating the tactics used by Aldrich when he was at the helm, sprung a wool bill on the Senate with the wires all laid to jam it through as "a Republican measure...
...President, if not at this session of the Congress, then in the very near future...
...These were Clapp, Kenyon and La Follette...
...They are confronted with the burdensome necessity of paving his way to election...
...All of the "progressive group" voted for the Cummins bill,—Borah, Bourne, Bristow, Clapp, Crawford, Cummins, Gronna, Kenyon, La Follette, Poin-Dexter and Works, and in addition three regulars, Jones, Nelson and Townsend...
...His bill was defeated, 57 to 14...
...Failure to give the consumer relief from the extortions of the tariff-pampered woolen trust will be charged heavily against the party of which the President calls himself "the titular head...
...Bankhead Martine Smith, Ga...
...President Taft angrily vetoed it...
...Another Rout of the Old Guard JUST ONE YEAR AGO, under the leadership of progressive Republican Senators, a hill was passed by Congress revising downward, along the lines of the Republican party promises, the burdensome woolen schedule...
...It was a measure in entire accord with the pledges of the Republican platform of 1908...
...The Underwood bill that passed the Democratic House was rejected by the Republican Senate...
...Whatever fate such a bill may meet at the hands of President Taft, Congress at least will have performed its bounden duty to the public...
...It passed...
...This proved to be the case...
...Now that report is in...
...And as such it will go to conference...
...This action was taken with the Senate sitting as the Committee of the Whole...
...It was adopted, therefore, by the narrow margin of 34 to 32...
...It also was rejected...
...This bill was not a Democratic measure...
...Old Guard Taken By Surprise BUT, as in 1911, a surprise was sprung upon the Old Guard...
...Whereupon he again offered the amendment to Schedule K, this time changed slightly so as to provide for a lower scale of duties...
...How Did Your Senator Vote...
...That excuse is no longer tenable...
...Relief For The Consumer DISCUSSING this measure, Senator La Follette said: "It is my judgment that there are no more iniquitous, no more indefensible, no more harmful provisions in all the tariff law than those contained in Schedule K." The reductions proposed in the La Follette bill would, if enacted into law, relieve in some measure all of the people of the United States who have been made to pay tribute to the Woolen Trust, long the pampered favorite of the tariff law...
...Revision of the "indefensible" woolen schedule was inevitable anyway and, politically speaking, it was imperative at this time...
...Will L AST YEAR it be the same this year...
...Whereupon Senator La Follette, with the aid of progressive Republican and Democratic votes, forced the passage of his bill which aimed at the very heart of the iniquitous Schedule K. This is what happened: When on July 27, 1911, the House woolen bill came before the Senate, Senator La Follette offered an amendment reducing the duties...
...And the fact that his bill passed as per program proved that his wires had been carefully laid...
...The motion was carried...
...The Democratic House refused to accept the La Follette amendment that passed the Senate, so a conference committee was appointed: Underwood, Randall, Harrison, Payne and Dalzell on the part of the House, and Penrose, Cullom, La Follette, Bailey and Simmons on the part of the Senate...
...An agreement was reached whereby the rates contained in the La Follette bill, as it passed the Senate, were slightly lowered...
...It was the same amendment he had previously offered to President Taft's false-pretense "reciprocity" bill...
...Their duties could be reduced in most cases much below the point fixed in this conference report and not disturb in the slightest degree a single industry in the country...
...But later an attempt to pass the same measure over President Taft's veto met with failure...
...The reason he gave for vetoing that measure was that his Tariff Board, which was then investigating the woolen schedule, had not yet made its report to him...
...And what better man to perform the task of writing a woolen bill that would meet with the approval of the regulars and of President Taft than Lippitt of Rhode Island—Lippitt who succeeded to Aldrich's seat, Lippitt who is by, of and for the cotton trust...
...The success of the conference between the two houses on the wool bill last year points the way to an agreement this time...
...Then Senator La Follette moved to reconsider the vote by which the bill failed to pass...
...At once the House bill came to a vote...
...Senator La Follette introduced as a substitute for the Penrose measure the same bill that he succeeded in having passed by the Senate in 1911...
...Senator Cummins said he would accept the Penrose bill as "a step in the right direction" and all but three of the progressive group joined with the regulars in voting for the Penrose bill...
...here is the detailed vote on the La Follette bill: FOR THE LA FOLLETTE BILL republicans Borah Crawford La Follette Bourne Cummins Poindexter Bristow Gronna Works Clapp Kenyon Democrats Ashurst Martin Simmons Bacon Myers Smith, Ariz...
...The conference report, or what then became known as the Underwood-La Follette bill, was passed in both the Senate and the House...
...Senator Penrose then came forward with a compromise measure...
...In this form it met with the approval of the Democrats as well as of the progressive Republicans...
...In closing the debate on this bill a year ago, Senator La Follette remarked: "These duties will be reduced, Mr...
Vol. 4 • August 1912 • No. 31
