The fact is that this great politico-industrial alliance of cotton and worsted has been the backbone of protection. Not of protection as the country understood it, but of protection as Mr. Aldrich understood it. To Mr. Aldrich protection never has been a set of principles to be applied with care and candor. It has always been a trading system. I think it is entirely fair to Mr. Aldrich to say that from his first connection with Congress he saw that the tariff, properly worked, was the surest road to power and to wealth that this country offered to a politician. He saw the trading possibilities in it, and he intelligently and persistently gave his great ability to developing them. The backbone of the system he worked out was this alliance between cotton and worsted. In that alliance he had a dependable block of votes with which he could carry to success almost any duty which would strengthen the party, oblige a friend, or help his own pocket. This block of votes was behind practically every increase, and manipulation in the bill of 1909. To Mr. Aldrich’s credit let it be said that he has made as little pretence that he was not carrying on a traffic in duties as any man in the business. On the whole, he may be said to have been frank about it, especially in private.
The tariff bill of which these schedules were the backbone became a law on August 5, 1909. There was something distinctly tragic in the reception the country gave the new law. Depressed, cynical, sneering comments were heard on all sides. Congress went home anything but proud of itself. Here was a piece of legislation which had cost the entire time of a large body of legislators for more than a year, to which an extra five months’ session of Congress had been given, and from it nobody carried away enthusiasm, pride, a sense of triumph,—nothing but a disagreeable coppery taste of barter and jugglery, the depressing feeling that he who has gets, as a rule, in the Congress of the United States. The only satisfaction was the negative one that at least it was over.
The pity of it was that they had had so fine a chance to do a real thing. It was a task for statesmen. The nature of it was clear enough. Nobody was for upsetting a reasonable protection. But practically everybody but the beneficiaries were for cleaning up the tariff. The evils inherent in it—and nobody of intelligence ever denied that they were many—were big, easily seen:
Enormous profits to the few; steadily increasing prices to the many; one-sided development of the country; factories growing like gourds and no ships of our own to carry the goods in; the country sacrificed to the city, the peace of God to the blare and the roar of the steel furnace. These ungrateful children of protection had grown until they threatened to crush us. And then the political enormity—the support given to a great number of over-high duties in order to secure in return the campaign funds and local influence of those who profited. These things stared us in the face on every side, and had become hateful to the people. It looked, in fact, as if they were coming to be about all there was of the protective system. There could be, and there was, no quarrel among honest men about the necessity of doing a fair housecleaning job.
The method seemed as clear as the task. The definition of protection accepted by the majority in this country was a reasonable one. There is scarcely a doubt that every intelligent voter knew about what it was—that it included tariff for revenue and tariff for moderate protection, until such time as an essential industry was on its feet. Now the application of such a definition ought not to be—and would not be—puzzling, if it had not become tangled with the proposition of tariff for politics only. It requires, to be sure, a large amount of exact information, but such information is obtainable through experts. It requires, too, firm and consistent rating through all the schedules. The work obviously demands to be done by disinterested persons, those who have no object except to do an honest task. That this was the only way to get a satisfactory revision everybody knew. And in the face of this perfectly clear proposition, we got a bill perpetuating all of the old abuses and made in the same old way.
This is not saying that there was not some very good tinkering in the bill of 1909. It should not be forgotten that hides and petroleum were made free, that the duties were lowered on rough lumber and print paper, and on coal and iron ore, that a temporary tariff commission was secured; but at no point did Congress or the President show a real understanding of the human cry that was at the heart of the movement which had driven them to undertake the revision.
There was a great human cause—easing the burden of our vast laboring class—knocking at the door of Congress, and it was not heeded—if, indeed, it was heard. True, there was talk of an “ultimate consumer”—a kind of economic manikin introduced for convenience in demonstration. But that this ultimate consumer was a flesh and blood person there was no recognition.
Mr. Taft seems no more to have understood his great chance than did Congress. The only case in which he used his executive power to force Congress to correct a duty which was obviously an abuse was hides. Mr. Taft withstood a fierce attack for this duty from the forces to which he yielded in the far more important matter of wool and cotton. But it was not high-class bargaining, in which, by virtue of his office and his power of veto, he was able to wrest a few concessions, that the country had a right to ask from Mr. Taft. Leadership was his business. It was for him to make clear the great need, to inspire the great action, to create the atmosphere for high endeavor. One big ringing appeal from Mr. Taft, showing that he felt for the masses of this country and meant, if possible, that there should be a fairer division of burdens, that he saw the shame of bartering legislation for political support and meant to break the practice if he could, would have been worth many times the concessions obtained. It was the spirit of tariff reform, the zeal for honest schedules, the determination that discriminations should be done away with, indignation at the wretched and shameless alliances back of the bills, that it was for Mr. Taft to feel and to foster. But it is evident that he did not feel these things, and so could not foster them. He had an opportunity to lead in a great moral awakening on the most serious matter since the days of slavery. He did not understand the issue. He saw merely the chance of doing some tinkering, which he did manfully and effectively.
Tariff reform calls for more than lowering a duty here and there, more than appointing a Tariff Board, more than negotiating a Reciprocity Treaty, good as all these may be. It calls for an intellectual and moral revolt against the entire system of protection as we know it. No leader can accomplish the work needed who does not go to the fight hot with indignation at the intellectual jugglery which has swamped the protective principle and weakened the country’s capacity for sound political thinking and its keenness for distinguishing moral values. Never until such a revolt comes will the clutch of the greedy beneficiaries of the system be wrenched loose. The wrong done to mind and morals is a far more serious matter than any damming up of trade the policy produces. That at most can endure but a few generations. The laws of trade are too powerful to be long interrupted by unnatural barriers like prohibitive tariffs. They finally flow over them as a river over a dam, and eventually toss them aside like the drift they are. That is, all tampering with liberty and truth comes sooner or later to naught. True, in the meantime the people bear the burden. True, the end of all industrial progress, that is, the fair distribution of a production sufficient to keep in health and happiness the people of all the earth, is put off; but that is less serious than the deterioration of intellectual and moral integrity which it has required to build up our dishonest and inhuman tariff laws.