the tramping starving millions back from enforced idleness to profitable employment and the American Republic would leap with a bound to its accustomed place in the van of industrial nations. [Prolonged applause on the floor in the galleries.]

On January 10 Tom L. Johnson [O.] criticized the course of his party on the tariff as timorous.

Mr. Chairman, I am like the man who could eat crow. I will vote for this bill if I can get nothing better. But I do not like it. That it does contain some good points is true. The McKinley bill contained some good points; it put raw sugar and some other things on the free list. This bill goes further, and puts wool, coal, iron ore, and undressed lumber on the free list, and in so far makes some show of redeeming our pledge to abolish protection. This is its little sprinkle of saving salt, which commends it to me. Even if it were a proposition to reënact the McKinley bill, with the single exception of free wool, I would still vote for it if I could do no better, for every addition to the free list is a step toward free trade; every break in the link of protected interests lessens the power of the league of plunder to further squeeze the people.

But, though I might vote for this bill with pleasure if it came from a Ways and Means Committee representing a Republican House, I am disgusted and dismayed that it is presented by a Democratic committee to a Democratic House, as representing their idea of what the Democratic party, with all branches of the Government in its hands, proposes to do for a suffering people.

Perhaps it may satisfy what are called tariff reformers, but if this is a tariff reform bill I am all the more rejoiced that I am not now and never have been a tariff reformer. I am only a plain free trader. [Laughter.]

A fear of irritating the trusts seems to run through the bill. I can see no trust that it has struck at, or at all injured, except this sugar trust. The nominal reductions made on many articles still leave so high a duty as to close our market to foreign importations and secure to combinations of American. manufacturers as full power to squeeze the American consumer as they have under the present tariff.

Take steel rails, of which I happen to know something, as I am a manufacturer of steel rails. I appeal to the Democrats of the House to join me in putting steel rails on the free list. The present duty on steel rails is estimated to be equivalent to

50.44 per cent. ad valorem. The committee have reduced this to 25 per cent. This seems like a great reduction. But it is only nominal, for 25 per cent. is all the steel rail trust want. It is as good to them as 1,000 per cent., for it is practically a prohibitory duty.

JOHN DALZELL [Pa.].-Does the gentleman speak now from the attitude of a steel rail manufacturer?

MR. JOHNSON.-I do. Our mill makes about one-thirtieth of all that are produced in the United States.

MR. DALZELL.-Is the gentleman a party to the steel rail trust?

MR. JOHNSON.-I am not; but whether I am or not would make no difference. Outside of this hall, as a steel manufacturer, I might be perfectly willing to enter a trust, but I will not defend trusts here. [Applause.]

Here Mr. Johnson opposed the continuance of the McKinley tax on imported books. He then dwelt on the need of immediate revision of our tariff system.

That you can injure industry and hurt labor by abolishing tariff taxes too quickly and too completely I deny. You will injure monopoly and hurt trusts; but you will stimulate industry and give labor relief. Take the business in which I am interested. If you put steel rails on the free list, as I intend to move, you will not shut up mills; on the contrary, you will open them, for the steel-rail pool can then no longer, out of the extra profits the tariff gives it, afford to pay for keeping mills idle. There will be greater activity and a greater demand for labor in the making of rails. And so with structural steel. But the benefit will not end there. The men engaged in making steel rails and structural steel are but a handful compared with those engaged in laying rails and erecting buildings and bridges, and even they are few compared with the men such erections set at work. You will lessen the profits of some of us steel manufacturers, but you will stimulate industry, give idle labor a chance for employment, and so tend to raise wages.

I am far from asserting that the bottom cause of the present distress is the tariff. It is something greater than that it is the monopolization of land, the natural opportunity of all employment, the natural prerequisite of all wealth, and such distress must recur again until we come to the only true mode of raising revenue, the only full free trade-the single tax. But a quick and sharp reduction of taxation and breaking down of

the trusts and monopolies that have grown up from the Republican tariff will give large present relief and start again the wheels of industry.

It is bad politics to ignore the friends who voted for you in order to please enemies who opposed you. That is what the majority of the committee have done in reporting such a protectionist bill. What have they gained by their "moderation"? Simply the sneers of the minority. Every Republican member will oppose their bill; every Republican paper will denounce it; every ring and trust will fight it just as strongly, just as bitterly, just as persistently as they would oppose the bill that I would like to introduce. That bill would be short and simple. It would read:

SEC. 1. All import duties and corresponding internal-revenue duties are hereby abolished, and all officials engaged in collecting such duties are hereby discharged.

SEC. 2. The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby directed to sell all custom houses and revenue cutters, and pay the proceeds into the treasury.

SEC. 3. This act shall take effect immediately.

Such a bill would excite no more protectionist opposition than this poor, timid, little Wilson bill will. But it would not be sneered at, and it would arouse a mighty support, that this bill cannot get.

Such a bill as that I do not hope for now, but if we want to see another Democratic victory let us stand up to the platform of our party, and, retaining what free list the committee have proposed, add to it such things as steel rails and bicycles, and strike out all the protection they have filled into the bill.

JOSEPH G. CANNON [Ill.].-The gentleman has given us the bill that he would like to enact, repealing all the present revenue laws; will he be kind enough now to give us also the brief bill he would put in their place?

MR. JOHNSON.-I would put the tax upon the monopolization of natural opportunities; upon land values irrespective of improvement-the values which are created by the community and which the community has the first right to. [Applause.]

Now, Mr. Chairman, I know it is a long way from a protective tariff to the single tax, but I want to make the start. Of all the known methods of raising revenue the worst is a tariff, and of all tariffs the worst is a protective tariff.

The best of all taxes is the one I have indicated-the single tax. I will vote with you, gentlemen, on every step between the worst and the best. If, on the way, you want an income tax,

I will vote for it, though I do not like income taxes. But any tax on what men have is better than a tax on what men need. [Applause.] Any tax on wealth in any form is better than a tax on consumption in any form. I am far from charging that our present difficulties-this great depression through which we are passing-is due to the acts of either political party. I do not believe that the tariff cuts anything like the figure in this distress that people generally give it credit for.

We have to look further than that to find the cause, for there is no civilized country on the globe, except perhaps New Zealand, where the single tax has been begun, that is not suffering at this time from depression. We must look further than tariffs. But the measure I would propose in answer to the gentleman from Illinois would go to the heart of this worldwide question, would solve the labor problem-it is the single tax. [Prolonged applause on the Democratic side.]

Thaddeus M. Mahon [Pa.] opposed the bill. He particularly denounced the omission of the reciprocity clause which was in the McKinley bill.

One of the greatest achievements of the Republican party was accomplished during the closing days of the Fifty-first Congress, by the adoption of section 3 of the McKinley tariff law. I refer to the reciprocity clause. The measure now under consideration will repeal the same, and with its repeal all of the advantages secured in the trade markets of the countries we have made treaties with will be destroyed.

On January 11 William C. P. Breckinridge [Ky.] supported the bill. He said that it was a decided step in advance of the Mills bill, although it did not go so far as he would have gone, "for, until yesterday, I considered myself the most ultra free trader in this House." [Laughter.]

My friend and kinsman, Mr. Johnson, of Ohio, who was born in my district, and is worthy of his parentage, goes one step farther than I would go, but that may be because the conservative influence of twenty years has not had its effect upon him. [Laughter.] Until yesterday I considered myself on the outpost of the free-trade Democracy, and therefore I can afford to say that I am not satisfied with the Wilson bill. There are things in it that I would have been glad had been omitted.

There are omissions from it that I am sorry were not supplied. I would like to have seen the bounty on sugar repealed. I would have given almost anything to have seen tinplate put upon the free list. I would have been glad to have seen no duty in the bill higher than 30 per cent. But, take it all in all, it is a step in the progressive advance by which such reformation has to be made. It is not for the advance guard-not even for the great body of the army-that we are to frame our legislation. The timid, the halting, the doubtful, the uncertain, are our brethren. The conservative is our colleague; those who feel a divided duty deserve our consideration. They represent constituencies. We depend upon voting. We cannot reverse the decisions of thirty-five years immediately.

For myself I am willing to keep, as I have kept in every speech that I have made upon this floor, my own personal record clear. I am for ultimate free trade. I am for the possession of the oceans by free ships, freed from all the navigation laws which now hamper and embarrass us.

I am for taking possession of the great, long sea coast and making it fruitful by annexing thereto the billows which unite and do not divide us from other countries. There is no extent to which men can go to which I am not willing to go with them. But, on the other hand, I am willing to lag side by side with my brethren who agree with me on general principles. We are a country of sections, and I am willing to let Louisiana, with her sugar cane, and the Northwest, with her attempt at sorghum and beet sugar, come and be heard, and to be tender with them, so that they may not feel that we have slaughtered them.

And when I look at what we have done in eight yearswhen I see a Democratic Senate at the other end of the Capitol, a Democratic House here, a Democratic President in the White House when I stand on the very eve of the day when the election laws are to be wiped from our statute books-when I see sectional animosities obliterated and the lines which divided us wiped out-I am willing to be more conservative than I otherwise might be, as I recall that it is for one country composed of diverse sections that a national party, compact and consolidated, is to govern in the coming years. [Applause on the Democratic side.] And, therefore, I say to those Democratic friends of mine who do not agree with all the provisions of this bill, we can either heartily and cordially sustain it or frankly point out our objections, and thus by mutual concession and patriotism reach an agreement. For myself, it would