many gentlemen who have spoken in opposition to the pending bill have foreshadowed their policy. Its main feature, in fact about its only feature as regards the tariff, is the total repeal of the duty on sugar and the payment of a bounty to the producers of that article; not to the laborer who tills the soil and converts the cane juice into sugar, but to the capitalist who owns the plantation and the refinery. After all their professions of love for the laboring man, after all their arguments to show that labor receives the benefit of the tariff, after all their harrowing descriptions of the deplorable condition to which our laboring classes would be reduced if the tariff were removed, when they come to put their propositions in the form of practical legislation the mask falls off and the natural features of the system are exposed.

Here Mr. Carlisle spoke at length against the sugarbounty plan. He then discussed the effect of the present tariff upon the farmer. He said in conclusion:

In revising the tariff let us diminish the cost of production in our agricultural and manufacturing industries, not by diminishing the wages of labor, but by reducing taxation upon the necessaries of life and upon the materials which constitute the basis of our finished products, and by removing, as far as we can, the restrictions which embarrass our people in their efforts to exchange the fruits of their own toil which they do not need for the commodities of other countries which they do need. [Great applause, loud and prolonged.]

The bill was passed on July 21 by a vote of 162 to 149. The Senate, on the same day, referred the bill to the Committee on Finance, which reported a substitute measure on October 2.

REDUCTION OF THE TARIFF

SENATE, OCTOBER 3-4, 1888

On October 3 John Sherman [O.] explained the Senate bill. The House bill had, he said, been referred by the committee to a subcommittee consisting of four Republicans and three Democrats. The latter advocated the endorsement of the Mills bill, but the former pre

ferred to frame a substitute, and, being in the majority, had done so. The Republicans were William B. Allison [Ia.], Nelson W. Aldrich [R. I.], John P. Jones [Nev.], and Frank Hiscock [N. Y.].

Referring to the Mills bill Senator Sherman said:

The subcommittee quickly came to the conclusion that the bill sent by the other House was not a sufficient bill to answer the purposes demanded, that it was totally inadequate, that it was not a revision of the tariff law. It was only an amendment of the tariff law. It affected only a portion of the paragraphs or schedules of the tariff law. It did not aim to be a revision of the law nor to provide machinery to carry into execution the law, but cut here and there-I was about to say at randomat the various provisions of existing law. When it came to be examined in detail, there were many incongruities in the bill, provisions that were totally inconsistent with each other, taxes levied on raw materials at a higher rate than on the finished article, and many other incongruities and uncertainties necessarily involved in the framing of the bill owing to the manner in which it was framed, however honest may have been the intention. This bill is also marked in its discriminations. Of the duties modified in the Mills bill to the injury of American production $1,200,000,000 of the competing domestic articles. were grown in the North, and I believe it was but $60,000,000 that were grown in the South. So that the Mills bill is a wide and general discrimination, as we think, against Northern industries; while this bill avoids that and makes a fair and impartial reduction of revenues and a fair and impartial classification of the revenues.

Here Senator Sherman gave the details of the Senate bill. This bill prescribed the manner in which all internal and external taxes should be collected, and introduced safeguards against frauds and undervaluations. It provided a reduction of revenues to the extent of about $70,000,000. The duty on sugar was greatly reduced, and the taxes on manufactured tobacco and alcohol for use in the arts entirely removed. Duties on a few other articles, such as copper and nickel, were slightly reduced, and there was also a small addition to the free list. Wool, however, was subjected to a slight increase.

Senator Sherman said in conclusion:

I believe if this bill was taken up free from the party asperities, free from party feelings and prejudices that necessarily attend a presidential election, and if it could be considered on its merits with such amendments as might be proposed and debated and considered and adopted, after full investigation, it could be made the most perfect revenue measure ever placed upon the statute books of the United States.

On October 4 Nelson W. Aldrich [R. I.] presented the detailed report of the majority of the committee. It elaborated the arguments of Senator Sherman. A minority report followed, signed by Isham G. Harris [Tenn.], Zebulon B. Vance [N. C.], and Daniel W. Voorhees [Ind.]. It was concurred in, with modifications of some of the rates proposed, by John R. McPherson [N. J.].

This report said in part:

It is safe to say that all the interests benefited by a high protective tariff have been fully heard and have had much influence in shaping this substitute, while the great body of the people, the taxpayers and victims of this policy, have not appeared and have not been heard.

The essential difference between the House bill and the Senate substitute is apparent and radical at the outset in the matter of revenue. The one is framed in the interest of the public treasury; the other in the interest of private pockets. The one is framed in the interest of the whole people; the other in the interest of a few thousand manufacturers. The one is designed to reduce both government revenue and taxation, the taxation especially which bears heaviest on the necessaries of life; the other is intended to raise public revenue indeed, but to maintain private revenues by increasing and retaining taxation on all the necessaries of life.

Practically, the substitute offers to the people free whisky and free tobacco, leaving all the expensive machinery for the collection of the revenue and enforcement of the law in full force, while it increases taxation upon the actual and indispensable necessaries of life, and this, too, when there is a large surplus in the treasury, and under existing laws that surplus is being increased at the rate of over $10,000,000 per month; thus withdrawing and withholding from the channels of trade, com

merce, and business of the country money absolutely necessary to their successful operations.

James B. Beck [Ky.], of the minority of the committee, presented a separate report.

Not having seen the bill proposed by the Republican majority of the Finance Committee of the Senate until within the last few days, I can only enter my protest against the principles presented, and give in a general way the reasons I have for supporting the principles presented by the House bill. That bill is an earnest effort to reduce taxation by diminishing the cost of the raw materials used by American manufacturers, so as to enable them to compete in the markets of the world with their foreign competitors who produce similar goods. It proceeds upon the recognized fact that raw materials are not consumed in that form, but are necessary for the production of commodities to which the industry of the country may be properly applied; and it is an honest effort to reduce the cost to the American consumer of the goods which they must necessarily have, retaining, as far as possible, such taxes as are imposed upon articles which the people may use or not just as they please, and the proceeds of which taxation, less the cost of collection, reach the treasury of the United States. It seeks to promote trade with all the world, to restore and build up our lost commercial marine, and thus exchange commodities with other people upon somewhat fair and equal terms.

The Senate substitute, when carefully examined, will show that in every feature it aims to increase the cost of the goods he needs to the home consumer, and to close the markets of the world against imports and exports as well, except such as are purely agricultural and have to be sold abroad for any price they will bring in free open market with foreign competition. Under it we can have no successful commerce, no return cargoes, indeed, no ships in the foreign trade, and no sailors except such as hover around our coasts protected by the combinations and monopolies in our coastwise trade where all competition is excluded.

The pretence that the Republicans are going to aid chemists, machinists, and others by giving them free alcohol is a sudden conversion, because every report that has been made by the Treasury Department from the time of Secretary Sherman to the present shows that any effort to do that would simply be the breaking down of all barriers against fraud in the collec

tion of revenue on distilled spirits. It would, however, have the effect, which perhaps is desired by the Republican gentlemen who deny the existence of trusts, of giving the whisky trust of Peoria, Ill., the right to sell their alcohol at any price they please free from all competition at home or abroad.

Here Senator Beck presented a comparison of the principles of the Democratic and Republican parties.