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AUGUST 1G, 1912
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The Commoner.
ISSUED WEEKLY
Kntercd at the Postofllco at Lincoln, Nebraska,
as occond-claflfl matter.
WJJJ.MM J. UllYAN ClIAJlMiA W. UllYAN
ltdltornnd Proprietor Publisher
IliciMKi) L, MireALVK JTdltorlnl Hoomn nnd Duslncss
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THE COMMONER, Lincoln, Neb.
a single people, and that they have interests
which no man can privately determine with
out their knowledge and counsel. That is the
meaning of representative government itself.
Representative government is nothing more nor
less than an effort to give voice to this great
b'ody through spokesmen chosen, out of every
grade and class.
"You may think that I am wandering off into
a general disquisition, that haa little to do with
the business in hand but I am not. This is
business business of the deepest sort. It will
aolvo our difficulties if you but take it as busi
ness. TARIFF A SYSTEM OF FAVORS
"See how it makes business out of tho tariff
question. The tariff question, as dealt with in
our time at any rate, has not been business. It
has been politics. Tariff schedules have been
made up for the purpose of keeping; as large a
! number as possible of the rich and influential
manufacturers of tho country in a good humor
with the republican party, which desired their
constant financial support. The tariff has be
come a system of favors, which tho phrase
ology of tho schedule was often deliberately con
trived to conceal. It becomes a matter of busi
ness, of legitimate business, only when the
partnership and understanding it represents is
between the leaders of congrss and the whole
people of the United Utates, insteau of between
the leaders of congress and small groups of
manufacturers demanding Bpecial recognition
and consideration. That is why the general
idea of representative government becomes a
necessary part of the tariff question. Who,
when you come down to the hard facts of the
matter, have been represented in recent years
when our tariff schedules were being discussed
and determined, not on the floor of congress,
for that is not where they have been determined,
but in the committee rooms and conferences?
That is the heart of the whole affair. Will
you, can you, bring the whole people into part
nership or not? No one is discontented with
representative government; it falls under ques
tion only when It ceases to be representative.
It is at bottom a question of good faith and
morals.
FLAYS PAYNE TARIFF BILL-
"How does the present tariff loolc In the light
of it? I say nothing for the moment about the
policy of protection, conceived and carried out
as a disinterested statesman might conceive it.
Our own clear conviction as- democrats is, that
in the last analysis the only safe and legitimate
object of tariff duties, as of taxes of every other
kind, is to raise revenue for the support of the
government? but that is not my present point.
We denounce the Payne-Aldrich tariff act as the
most conspicuous examplo ever afforded the
country of the special favors and monopolistic
advantages which the leaders of the republican
party have so often shown themselves willing
to extend to those to whom they looked for
campaign contributions. Tariff duties, as they
The Commoner.
have employed them, have not been a means of
setting up an equitable system of protection.
They have been, on the contrary, a method of
fostering special privilege. They have made it
easy to establish monopoly in our domestic
markets. Trusts have owed their origin and
their secure power to them. The economic free
dom of our people, our prosperity in trade, our
untrammeled energy in manufacture depend
upon their reconsideration from top to bottom
in an entirely different spirit.
ADVOCATES PRUDENT REDUCTIONS
"We do not ignore the fact that the business
of a country like ours is exceedingly sensitive
to changes in legislation of this kind. It has
been built up, however ill-advisedly, upon tariff
schedules written in the way I have indicated,
and its foundations must not be too radically
or too suddenly disturbed. When we act we
should act with caution and prudence, like men
who know what they are about, and not like
those in love with a theory. It is obvious that
the changes we make should be made only at
such a rate and in such a way as will least inter
fere with tho normal and healthful course of
commerce and manufacture. But we shall not
on that account act with timidity, as if we did
not know our own minds, for we are certain of
our ground and of our object. There should be
an Immediate revision, and it should be down
ward, unhesitatingly and steadily downward.
"It should begin with the schedules which
have been most obviously used to kill competi
tion and to raise prices in the United States, arbi
trarily and without regard to the prices per
taining elsewhere in the markets of the world;
and it should, before it is finished or Inter
mitted, ' be extended to every item in every
schedule which affords any opportunity for mo
nopoly, for special advantage to limited groups
of beneficiaries, or for subsidized control of any
kind in the markets or the enterprises of the
country; until special favors of every sort shall
have been absolutely withdrawn and every part
of our laws of taxation shall have been trans
formed from a system of governmental patron
age into a system of just and reasonable
charges which shall fall where they will create
tho least burden. When we shall have done
that, we can fix questions of revenue and of
business adjustment in a new spirit and with
clear minds. We shall then be partners with all
the business men of the country, and a day of
freer, more stable prosperity shall have dawned.
EVIL INFLUENCE OF FAVORS
"There has been no more demoralizing in
fluence in our politics in our time than the in
fluence of tariff legislation, the influence of the
idea that the government was the grand dis
penser of favors,, the maker and unmaker of
fortunes, and of opportunities such as certain
men have sought in order to control the move
' ment of trade and industry throughout the con
tinent. It has made the government a prize to
be captured and parties, the means' of effecting
the capture. It has made the business men of
one of the most virile and enterprising nations
in the world timid, fretful, full of alarms; has
robbed them of self-confidence and manly force,
until they have cried out that they could do
nothing without the assistance of the govern
ment at Washington. It has made them feel
that their lives depended upon the ways and
means committee of the house and the finance
committee of the senate (in these later years
particularly the finance committee of the
senate.) They have Insisted very PL'xlousiy that
these committees should be made up only of
their 'friends;' until the country In its turn
grew suspicious and wondered how those com
mittees were being guided .and controlled, by
what influence and plans of personal advantage.
Government can not be wholesomely conducted
In such an atmosphere. Its very honesty is in
jeopardy. Favors are never conceived in the
general interest? they are always for the benefit
of the few, and the few who seek and obtain
them have only themselves to blame If presently
thoy soom to be condemned and distrusted.
"For what has the result been? Prosperity'
Yes, if by prosperity you mean vast wealth no
matter how distributed, or whether distributed
at all, or not; if you mean vast enterprises built
up to be presently concentrated under the con
trol of comparatively small bodies af men, who
can determine almost at pleasure whether 'there
shall be competition or not. The nation as a
nation has grown immensely rich. She Is justly
proud of her industries and of the genius o her
men of affairs; They can master anythingtfcey
set their minds to, and we have: been greatly
stimulated under their leadership and command
Their laurels are many and. very sreen. "We
must accord them the great honors that are
their due and we must preserve what they
have built up for us. But what of the other side
of the picture? It is not as easy for us to live
as it used to be. Our money will not buy as
much. High wages, even when we can get them,
yield us no great comfort. We used to be better
off with less, because a dollar could buy so
much more. The majority of us have been dis
turbed to find ourselves growing poorer, even
though our earnings were slowly increasing.
Prices climb faster than we can push our earn
ings ud.
COMPETITION THING- OF PAST
"Moreover, we begin to perceive some things
about the movement of prices that concern us
very deeply, and fix our attention upon the
tariff schedules with a more definite determina
tion than ever to get to the bottom of this mat
ter. We have been looking into it, at trials
held under the Sherman act and in investiga
tions in the committee rooms of congress, where
men who wanted to know the real facts have
been busy with inquiry; and we begin to see
very clearly what at least some of the methods
are by which prices are fixed. We know that
they are not fixed by the competitions of the
market, or by the ancient law of supply and
demand which is to be found stated in all the
primers of economics, but by private arrange
ments with regard to what the supply should be
and agreements among the producers them
selves. Those who buy are not even represented
by counsel. The high, cost of living is arranged
by private understanding.
"We naturally ask ourselves, how did these
gentlemen get control of these things? Who
handed our economic laws over to them for
legislative and contractual alteration? We have
in these disclosures still another view of the
tariff, still another proof that, not the people
of the United States but only a very small num
ber of them have been partners in that legisla
tion. Those few have learned how to control
tariff legislation, and as they have perfected
their control they have consolidated their in
terests. Men of the same interest have drawn
together, nave united their enterprises and have
formed trusts; and trusts can control prices.
Up to a certain point (and only up to a certain
point) great combinations effect great econo
mies in administration, and increase efficiency
by simplifying and perfecting organization, but
whether they effect economies or not, they can
very easily determine prices by intimate agree
ment, so soon as they come to control a suffi
cient percentage of the product in any great
line of business; and we now know that they do.
NO ONE PERSON TO BLAME
"I am not drawing up an indictment against
anybody. This is the natural history of such
tariffs as are now contrived, as it is the natural
history of all other governmental favors and
of all licenses to use the government to help
certain groups of individuals along in life. No
body in particular,, I suppose, is to blame, and
I am not interested just now in blaming any
body; I am simply trying to point out what the
situation is,, in order to- suggest what there is
for us to do, if we would serve the country as
a whole. The fact is, that the trusts have been
formed, have gained all but complete control of
the larger enterprises of the country, have fixed
prices and fixed them high so that profits might
be rolled up that were thoroughly worth while,
and that the tariff, with its artificial protections
and. stimulations, gave them the opportunity to
do these things, and has safeguarded them in
that opportunity.
"The trusts do not belong to the period of
infant industries. They are not the products
of the time, that old laborious time, when tho
great continent we live on was undeveloped,
the young nation struggling to find itself and
get upon its Jeet amidst older and more experi
enced competitors. They belong to s very re-
CS? -f?Ld very wphiBttcated S wen men knew
What they wanted and knew how to get It by the
favor of the government It is another chapter
in the natural history of power and of 'govern
ing classes The next chapter will set us free
tF'xv There wln bo no or of tragedy in it.
it wur be a chapter of readjustment, not of
pain and rough disturbance. It will witness
a turning; back from what is abnormal to what
is normal. It win see a restoration of the laws
or trade, which- are the laws- of competition and
or unhampered opportunity, under which men
2Lf,IerL 80rt r0: toe and encouraged to
enrich the nation.
Hwi?1 ot a of towwlK tbJnfc that com
??? can 5 establfeked W w against the
anst of a world-wide ecomomle tendency; neither
"vttlu