Volume 18 , Issue 27

1912, Democratic Purpose Is For Tariff Reform

Back in the 1912 Presidential election, this is what the Salina, Kansas newspaper, The Saline Daily Union, dated 21 September 1912, Saturday, page 1: "Democratic Purpose Is For Tariff Reform."

Found on Newspapers.com

The Democratic party had a consistent record against high taxation of property. They believed that government should not levy taxes against one citizen for the benefit of another under pretense of protecting industry.

Why should farmers pay taxes to help harvester Trust? The Great majority of American citizens were engaged in work of such a nature that protective duties must always be a tax,never a benefit. Wilson had pledged to lower cost of living.

New York, Sept. 21 -- Tariff reform was the one great issue of this campaign. The following remarkable article on the tariff was by Savoyard who had been a leading democratic writer on this subject for many years:

Governor Marshall, the democratic candidate for vice president, is convince that it is bad husbandry and perhaps bad morals, for the government to engage in the favoritism of equalizing the cost of production at home and abroad for the manufacturers before it equalizes the difference in the purchase prices to the consumer at home and abroad. That was antiquated doctrine, preached by Thomas Jefferson,a nd practiced by Andrew Jackson, that William h. Taft repudiates and Theodore Roosevelt rejects. It meant that the government should not lay taxes on one citizen. It meant that if one individual was entitled to protection, all individuals had equal rights to enjoy it.

But Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt both held that it was sound economy to tax the consumers of the United States in order that certain interests would engage in enterprises that would be unprofitable if the government did not enforce the common people to protect them. There was the real paramount issue of this campaign - should Peter, a hardworking farmer, pay higher prices for what e was bound to have in order to enrich Paul, a manufacturer who made clothing and other fabrics of wool and cotton, and all farm machinery, such as is turned out by the Harvester trust, - reapers, mowers, threshers, plows, rakes hoes and what not? It is the simplest proposition in the world - should taxation be for public purpose or for private gain?

Millions of fellow citizens were engaged in walks that deprived them of any benefit arising from a protective tariff. It was impossible to protect him in a tariff law. He was the victim of that policy; he paid the protection in the higher cost of living. That was the main cause of clashes between employer and employee, of strikes and violence such as were seen at Lawrence, Mass., some time ago. Wages were high, but the advantage of them was swallowed up in the higher cost of living.

The question back then was, do the people wish to continue that sort of thing. Both Taft and Roosevelt said we must have a protective tariff though they were reasonable enough to admit that there is too much protection in the present tariff. Who was to judge just how much protection a tariff should have" Taft and Roosevelt said a commission must be appointed to that labor. WE have had on commission of that order, appointed the first year of Raft's administration. At a cost of thousands of dollars it gathered data, pretended to digest them, made report, and the ablest men in both houses of congress declared that after careful study they did not know what the report means. And where men do pretend to understand it, they were not at all agreed on what it imports.

The question for the country back in 1912 was, "How can the country hope for a tariff reform from either Taft or Roosevelt? It will take years for the commission to report and both Taft and Roosevelt said that there can be no satisfactory reform of the tariff without such a report. Both refused to surrender the dogma of protection and as long as we had a protective tariff the manufacturers would find a way to dictate it. They would have their agents in both houses of congress, the smartest fellows there - such men as Aldrich. They would attend to the job in the future as they had in the past if the tariff is to continue protective.

Roosevelt, was president from September 1901, till March 1909. He solemnly promised to carry out the McKinley policies. McKinley's last public utterance was a plea for tariff revision downward. For seven and one-half years Roosevelt let the tariff severely alone. Is he the man to set to the revising of the tariff?

Taft would not allow the Sixty-second congress to reform the tariff. He ws the first president to veto a tariff measure and his excuse was that the bills of the democrats and the insurgent republicans took to much of the protection off the Payne Aldrich law.

Back in 1912, if the country wanted tariff reform, it must seek it at the hands of Woodrow Wilson and a congress democratic in both houses.
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