The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

“I hope you will not consider it intrusive if I say something in relation to another subject which can hardly fail to be troublesome to the conference. I refer to the adjustment of tariff taxation on sugar. Under our party platform and in accordance with our declared party purposes, sugar is a legitimate and logical article of revenue taxation. Unfortunately, however, incidents have accompanied certain stages of the legislation which will be submitted to the conference, that have aroused in connection with this subject a national Democratic animosity to the methods and manipulations of trusts and combinations.

“I confess to sharing in this feeling, and yet it seems to me we ought, if possible, to sufficiently free ourselves from prejudice to enable us coolly to weigh the considerations which in formulating tariff legislation ought to guide our treatment of sugar as a taxable article. While no tenderness should be entertained for trusts, and while I am decidedly opposed to granting them, under the guise of tariff taxation, any opportunity to further their peculiar methods, I suggest that we ought not to be driven away from the Democratic principle and policy which lead to the taxation of sugar by the fear, quite likely exaggerated, that in carrying out this principle and policy, we may indirectly and inordinately encourage a combination of sugar refining interests. I know that in present conditions this is a delicate subject, and I appreciate the depth and strength of the feeling which its treatment has aroused.

“I do not believe that we should do evil that good may come, but it seems to me that we should not forget that our aim is the completion of a tariff bill, and that in taxing sugar for proper purposes and within reasonable bounds, whatever else may be said of our action, we are in no danger of running counter to Democratic principle. With all there is at stake, there must be in the treatment of this article some ground upon which we are all willing to stand, where toleration and conciliation may be allowed to solve the problem without demanding the entire surrender of fixed and conscientious convictions.”

It was on July 19th that Mr. Wilson read this letter to the House. Following it a bitter attack was made upon Mr. Cleveland by Mr. Gorman and others in the Senate. They declared they had kept the President fully informed of the changes which were being made in the bill; that they had told him that it would be impossible to pass a bill which did not embody them. Mr. Cleveland had insisted that a bill must be passed, and he had urged them to go ahead and do the best they could. This is no doubt true. But no one who knew Grover Cleveland can accept their contention that he had practically assured them that he would accept any bill that they could pass. It was not like him to make such a promise, nor was he a man to mislead. Moreover, Mr. Cleveland would have been false to his own great sense of responsibility if, for the sake of party, he had let the repudiation of principle, and the juggling and trading the bill represented, go without public reproof. There was a chance, too, that his remonstrance might force from the Senate certain concessions, such as the free iron-ore and coal which he so much wanted. Mr. Cleveland took the chance. His letter failed to do what its author sought. Indeed, it made the dominant faction in the Senate so angry that it flatly refused to recede from any of the amendments to which the House had declined to assent. The upshot of the matter was that on August 13th the House gave in. Mr. Wilson’s brief closing remarks show his disappointment. Until the last he had hoped and believed, he said, that some form of honorable compromise would be achieved. “But,” said he, “we have simply realized in this great fight the fact so well stated by the great leader of the tariff reform fight in Great Britain—that when the people have gained a victory at the polls they must have a further stand-up and knock-down fight with their own representatives. And we have realized if nothing else the warning lesson of the intrenchment of the protective tariff in this country under thirty years of class legislation until the mere matter of tariff schedules is a matter of insignificance and the great question presents itself,—is this to be a government by a self-taxing people or a Government of taxation by trust and monopolies? The question is now, whether this is a government by the American people for the American people, or a government of the sugar trust for the benefit of the sugar trust.”

But he advised voting for the bill. It was with most of its rates as it was with the sugar duty.

“Vicious as it may be, burdensome to the people as it may be, favorable to the trust as it may be, it is less vicious, less favorable to the trust, less burdensome to the people than is the McKinley law, under which this trust (sugar) has grown so great as to overshadow with its power the American people.”

Never had an opposition a more substantial reason for taunting a majority than had the Republicans when it was finally seen that the Senate had won. Mr. Reed had been spokesman for the Republicans throughout the making of the bill and he had used his power in as sheerly and consistently brutal a fashion as is to be found in the records of Congress. But what he now said had a ring of honest indignation and it was entirely justified by the facts.

“The adoption of the Senate bill,” said Mr. Reed, “is a complete abandonment of the fundamental principles of tariff reform. The Senate bill has been constructed upon entirely different lines. It was framed upon the broad bedrock foundation of the necessity of securing 43 votes, and all minor considerations had to give way to this great underlying principle.

“Coal is taxed in order to secure the necessary votes of the selfstyled ambassador from the sovereign state of Maryland; protection is accorded to the industries of the state of Maryland as the price of her votes; seventy-five millions of people are to be burdened with a tax on sugar in order to hold the votes of the sugar-producing state of Louisiana, and the sugar trust had to have its demands satisfied in order to insure liberal contributions to the Democratic campaign fund; while Republican Senators had but to threaten interminable debate to secure full protection to the industries of their state.

“In this way the Gorman Bill was constructed and passed, and it is this measure, so framed, you now propose without amendment or debate to indorse and approve. How you are able to do this with any sense of self-respect, it is difficult to understand. You voted for the Wilson Bill under protest, declaring you did so because, it was a movement in the right direction, a step towards free trade; and now you accept the Gorman Bill without regard to the principles upon which it was constructed and without knowing whether it leads towards protection or free trade in the face of an acknowledged abandonment of all principle. Such unexampled party stultification cannot be too severely condemned.