Here Mr. Breckinridge spoke upon the committee's views in regard to the question of repealing the internal tax on alcohol for use in the arts. He said they had concluded that no provision could be framed that would effectually accomplish this and be at the same time just to those who paid taxes on other spirits. After discussing the relation of the tariff to the "trust" question, he said in conclusion:

The boast has been made on this floor that the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses-that gallant and pure gentleman, brave of heart, clean of life, loyal to friend, frank to foe, with a conscience void of offence and a love for truth that nothing could daunt [William R. Morrison]-has been stricken down because he opposed these "trusts." Greatly as I deplore his defeat and much as I miss his presence, it may be that his defeat, compassed as it was, will be of greater benefit than his presence. His very absence arrests the attention of the Republic, and all the people ask, "Are such elections necessary to the maintenance of this system?" Gentlemen protectionists, I warn you that the vacant seat of Morrison cries louder than the virtues of Duncan "against the deep damnation of his taking off." [Great applause on the Democratic side.]

Mr. Chairman, if one standing here in this hall to-day, and looking into the future, could be able to see what the years. would bring us under a system where the untrammeled activities of a free Christian people find fruition, under a climate so salubrious and with a soil so fertile, all burdens to progress thrown aside, all the passions of the past removed, and everyone engaged in a generous and unselfish rivalry to make for and out of the opportunities to which he is called all that is possible, no hand could paint and no orator picture what would be the result.

Slowly will this future come. We have had our backs to it; to-day let us turn our faces to its rising sun. If we can do no more, we can lift our eyes toward this east of new hopes and resolve that from this hour our steps shall be in that direction. [Loud and long-continued applause.]

Thomas B. Reed [Me.], of the minority of the committee, spoke on May 19. He addressed his remarks particularly to Mr. Mills' speech.

People say that these tariff discussions are dull and tiresome, but there are always delightful things in them. I don't know when I have bathed my weary soul in such a reverie of bliss as I did while the Chairman, by the aid of Edward Atkinson, and the great doctrine of labor cost, was explaining that the high wages of our work people were not an obstacle, but the very reason itself why the whole circumambient atmosphere should be flooded with the pauper sunshine of Europe. [Laughter.]

The more you pay the workman the less the "labor cost." The more you give your shoemaker the less the shoes cost. The former, he explained, is the cause of the latter. Less "labor cost" is produced by higher wages. The higher the wages the lower the labor cost. No limitation, of course, was set to so divine a principle. The only limit to lowness of "labor cost" is our generosity to the laboring man. Give infinite dollars to the laboring man and things will cost nothing. [Laughter.] Surely no frantic orator on Labor Day, the session before election, ever offered to the horny-handed sons of toil such a sweet boon as the great doctrine of "labor cost."

But the pleasure given by the great doctrine of "labor cost" is soon lost in the admiration at the cool courage of what follows. Stimulated by the theory of "labor cost," the chairman ordered an investigation into the oldest manufactories in New England. What was the result? Why, constantly increasing wages and constantly decreasing cost; the two very things his side has sneered at since tariff debates were invented, higher wages for the worker and lower prices for the consumer.

What industries did he select? Cotton sheetings and cotton prints; cotton goods, the very articles, and perhaps the only articles, which have had continuous, unbroken, effective protection since 1824. He selects industries which, under all tariffs, have had sixty-four years of solid protection, shows by them higher wages for labor and lower prices for consumers, then boldly wraps the flag of labor cost about him and proclaims to a wondering world that tariff has nothing to do with wages. I wonder what Edward Atkinson thought of his new disciple at that moment.

Oh, no; tariffs have nothing to do with wages. It is coal and steam and machinery. But what set up the machinery? What caused the cotton factory to be built? Why, the tariff. So, then, the tariff built the mill, set up the machinery, the machinery increased the wages, but the tariff did not. Is not that very much like saying your father was your progenitor, but your grandfather wasn't? [Laughter.] How could you

improve machinery you didn't have? How couid you increase the efficiency of machinery that didn't exist?

Mr. Chairman, we have now spent twenty days on the discussion of the Mills bill. Have you noticed what has been the most utterly insignificant thing in the discussion? The most utterly insignificant thing in the discussion has been the Mills bill. How do you account for it? I will tell you. If the principles you have enunciated are true, it is an unworthy compromise with Satan. If the principles we have stated are true, it is an unworthy ambuscade, and you know it. You mean this merely for one step. You mean to cut deeper next time. You mean the destruction of the system which now exists. That is your aim and purpose.

John G. Carlisle [Ky.] followed Mr. Reed.

Although the question now presented is purely a practical one, it necessarily involves, to some extent, a discussion of the conflicting theories of taxation which have divided the people of this country ever since the organization of the Government. There is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference of opinion between those who believe that the power of taxation should be used for public purposes only, and that the burdens of taxation should be equally distributed among all the people accordning to their ability to bear them, and those who believe that it is the right and duty of the Government to promote certain private enterprises and increase the profits of those engaged in them by the imposition of higher rates than are necessary to raise revenue for the proper administration of public affairs; and so long as this difference exists, or at least so long as the policy of the Government is not permanently settled and acquiesced in, these conflicting opinions will continue to embarrass the representatives of the people in their efforts either to increase or reduce taxation.

The opposition to the bill has been directed mainly against that part of it which proposes to repeal or reduce the tax upon certain classes of imported goods; and gentlemen, speaking for the interests which have long ago been relieved of all the burdens imposed upon their industries, earnestly protest that the consumers of their products shall have no relief, or at least that they shall not have the full measure of relief contemplated by this bill.

It seems that our friends on the other side have at last concluded that there ought to be a reduction of the revenue, and

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.