There is a hearing in the probate court. Witnesses are sworn, affidavits are filed, inventories of the estate are filed, valuations of the estate are made. Everything is done in readiness for the collection of this tax, and there is no question of perjury and fraud to be raised. In that case and for that reason it is infinitely to be preferred to an income tax.

The objection is made that most of the States already have an inheritance tax, and that is true. I think 33 out of the 45 States are collecting such a tax. In some States the tax is almost as great as that imposed in this bill, and in some fully as great, and in some greater.

We have provided in this bill 1 per cent. from $10,000 up to $100,000, 2 per cent. from $100,000 to $500,000, and after that 3 per cent. That is, where it is a direct descent, but in case of collaterals in this bill we provide a tax of 5 per cent. on all legacies and inheritances exceeding $500.

I think that if these people have to pay both the State and the national tax they are not overburdened with taxation if this bill should become a law. What easier tax to pay than this? A man gets a legacy, a stranger perhaps to the testator, a clear gain to him; why should not he pay a part of that to the support of the Government?

It is a fair tax; it is a tax easily collected; and it is a tax that this class of people ought not to hesitate to contribute for the support of the Government and the protection of the law.

Gentlemen say that it interferes with the State. Well, the States have a wider range of taxation than the Federal Government; they can tax all property in the State.

MR. CLARK.-Let me ask the gentleman this: Suppose there are no minor heirs to an estate and the estate is settled out of court, does not come into the probate court at all, is there not just as much premium upon perjury in that case in this inheritance tax matter as there would be in the case of an income tax?

MR. PAYNE.-Well, not quite, because the estate is more visible than the income is, but there would be a chance for perjury and fraud in that case. But I want to call the attention of the gentleman to the fact that a very small percentage of estates are settled in that way, at least that is so in my own locality.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I am anxious to get at the consideration of this bill and pass it through the House. The country is waiting for the action of Congress. Trade is waiting. The wheels of industry are silent until our action upon this bill.

I believe it will open the ports of other countries. I believe

it will give better trade relations the world over. I believe it will not stop the labor of a single hand. I believe it will start up industries throughout the United States. I believe that labor will be fully employed. I believe that good and blessing to the people of the United States will come from the passing of this bill, and my ambition and hope is that at the earliest possible moment the bill will go through the House and to the Senate, on its way to become a law. [Loud and long-continued applause on the Republican side.]

On March 24 Mr. Clark opposed the bill.

I desire to congratulate the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee [Mr. Payne]. He has now become a great historical personage. The history of the United States cannot be written now and leave out the name of Sereno E. Payne, of New York. [Applause.] He takes his place in the company of Henry Clay, Robert J. Walker, Justin S. Morrill, William McKinley, William L. Wilson, and Nelson Dingley, as father of a great tariff bill, which must be referred to as long as men discuss the tariff in the United States, which, judging the future by the past, will be until Gabriel blows his trumpet. [Laughter and applause.]

There is another thing on which I congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, that, by his nine and one-half hours' speech, he has knocked higher than a kite the idiotic theory of Doctor Osler.1 [Laughter.]

It was a superb vindication of his physical and mental strength, and under the character of the speech he was making, explanatory and defensive, answering a good many questions from this side, and carrying on an extended debate with his political confrères on that side, I do not see how it could have been shorter; and, what is more, I am not dead sure but that it was the wisest thing he could have done from a political standpoint, because a good many Republican gentlemen, having fired their shots, will not want to make speeches on the bill.

For the benefit of all concerned, as this debate in all human probability will run in one shape and another for a good while, and as you all ought to be posted on both sides, I will give you my opinion about certain documents. There are four great documents on the subject of the tariff which are invaluable, and you can get them all now, as Professor Taussig has re

1

1 William Osler, M.D., a physician of international repute, was reported as declaring that a man was unfit for doing his best work after the age of forty.

printed them in a book, which is easy of access and which does not cost much.

The title of that book is "State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff." The four documents are Alexander Hamilton's great report on manufactures in 1790; Robert J. Walker's great tariff report on his bill in 1845; John Quincy Adams's great report in 1831; and Albert Gallatin's great free-trade memorial in 1832. Those are the documents that are invaluable. In addition there are four books which are almost invaluable-Professor Taussig's "History of the Tariff in the United States"; Professor Taussig's book, "State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff"; Franklin Pierce, on "The Tariff and the Trusts", and a book printed by Cicero W. Harris, with the strange title, "The Sectional Struggle." In addition to that I recommend to every man in this House to immediately lay hold of this book I have in my hands, "Imports and Duties," prepared by William W. Evans.

This is no time for an academic discussion of the tariff. Every tariff theory ever hatched in the brain of man has been discussed repeatedly in this country with thoroughness and splendid ability. Since John G. Carlisle made his first masterful tariff speech in the House, some thirty years ago, it is not much exaggeration to say that we have had a continuous tariff debate in this country.

There is no Democrat I know of who wants to consume one hour unnecessarily in the discussion of this bill-not one. [Applause.]

While the minority members of the committee have no desire whatever to waste one moment, we do desire a thorough consideration of the bill and a chance to amend it wherever we think it would be improved by amendment, and my judgment is that it could be greatly improved by amendment in many respects.

The tariff is a tax paid by the consumer. Nobody with any reputation for veracity or intelligence to lose will deny either of these two propositions. If he does deny them, he will be confounded by the evidence of high-protective advocates contained in the hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means, which hearings are made up almost exclusively of the evidence of such advocates. Most of the witnesses wanted an increase of the Dingley rates or wanted those held in statu quo. It seems from an examination of the hearings on the tariff bills of the past that the witnesses were usually the beneficiaries

of the tariff, struggling to keep what they had and to secure any increase they could.

Most of the cross firing among witnesses was where one set of protected manufacturers fell afoul of another, growing out of two facts: (1) That the tariff pie was not evenly distributed and each one wanted the biggest piece. Not more than half a dozen of them suggested that things be evened up by reducing their own tariff, but almost everyone that saw anybody else more highly protected than himself wanted the leveling process to consist of raising his tariff to the maximum; (2) that what is one man's finished product is another man's raw material, which produced clashes among some of the protected classes. For instance, neither Richard Cobden, Sir Robert Peel, John Bright, Henry George, nor Tom Johnson could yell more lustily for free trade on raw materials than the New England Republican tariff reformers, while, on the other hand, neither Benjamin Disraeli, Horace Greeley, Henry C. Carey, "Pig Iron" Kelley, Joseph Chamberlain, nor the gentleman from Michigan [Joseph W. Fordney] could yell louder for a prohibitive tariff on their manufactured products.

The situation in which the Ways and Means Committee found itself was unprecedented. Both parties claimed in platforms, in the public press, and on the stump during the late canvass to be in favor of reducing the tariff rates of the Dingley bill. Of course the Republican platform was equivocal and might be construed to mean either revision up or revision down. Judge Taft in his speeches construed it to mean revision down; but nevertheless many benighted Republicans did not believe he was candid, for they boldly came before the committee after the election asserting that the platform declared in favor of raising the tariff rates, and that they were here to demand their pound of flesh.

Of course I am not the official adviser of the Republican party. It may be very unfortunate that I am not, but I am not. [Laughter.] I believe that the Republicans made two tactical mistakes about the tariff very lately.

Here are the Republican tactical mistakes. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee let us scare him last year into making on the floor of this House in the last Congress the declaration that he did make that he violated no confidence in saying that they were going to revise the tariff and that he was in favor of a maximum and a minimum.

The second mistake, tactically, that the Republicans made was putting those two propositions into their platform. They