EDITED BY ALBERT SHAW. CONTENTS FOR MAY, 1909. Hon. Nelson W. Aldrich......... Frontispiece Overcoming Coal-Mine Disasters.... 567 The Progress of the World Tariff Revision Progressing.. Plain Reasons for a Tariff Commission. Coming International Expositions.. The New York Legislature.. Wheat at Famine Prices.. With map. 529 Pan-American Scientific Congress... 597 529 530 530 By L. S. Rowe. With illustrations. 531 A Year of Defeat for the Saloon...... 601 By Ferdinand Cowle Iglehart. TERMS: Issued monthly, 25 cents a number, $3.00 a year in advance in the United States, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Mexico and Philippines. Canada, $3.50 a year; other foreign countries, $4.00. Subscribers may remit to us by post-office or express money orders, or by bank checks, drafts, or registered letters. Money in letters is at sender's risk. Renew as early as possible, in order to avoid a break in the receipt of the numbers. Bookdealers, Postmasters, and Newsdealers receive subscriptions. (Subscriptions to the English REVIEW OF REVIEWS, which is edited and published by Mr. W. T. Stead in London, may be sent to this office, and orders for single copies can also be filled, at the price of $2.50 for the yearly subscription, including postage, or 25 cents for single copies.) THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO., 13 Astor Place, New York City. (Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who introduced a substitute for the Payne Tariff bill last month.) REVIEW OF REVIEWS VOL. XXXIX. NEW YORK, MAY, 1909. THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD. No. 5. ality a party question, and it is likely to be still less a matter of party politics in the years to come. General conditions of development throughout the country are fast becoming equalized. The great States of the Middle West have now vast manufacturing interests, whereas they were once chiefly agricultural. The South, with its great supplies of raw material, and its unequalled distribution of water power, is fast developing many kinds of industrial activity, besides the spinning and weaving of its own cotton. A great Democratic leader said the other day in private that Southern Democratic statesmen would cease to make free trade speeches just as soon as there was the slightest danger that the country would take them seriously! In the work of tariff revision, as with the rebuilt tariff wall as a fixed fact. Tariff Revision it has thus far progressed at Furthermore, the tariff is not this year in reProgressing. Washington, there is relatively more of human interest and less of political controversy than in any former shaping of a general tariff bill. The best-informed men at Washington were of opinion, by the middle of April, that it would be possible to secure an agreement of the two houses upon the points of difference between the Payne bill of the House of Representatives and the Aldrich bill of the Senate, in time for an adjournment by June 1. In March there were those who predicted that the colossal work of readjusting the many hundreds of duties upon different articles mentioned in the tariff schedules would hold the lawmakers at their task until August 1. But the situation cleared up rapidly when the Payne bill passed the House on April 9, and when it appeared that the Finance Committee of the Senate would be ready to report its substitute measure on April 12. The Democrats in the House, under the leadership of Mr. Champ Clark, had not seriously tried to prevent an early vote on the measure as a whole, and it seemed to be sufficiently clear that the Democrats in the Senate did not intend to take advantage of their privilege of unlimited debate to keep Congress at Washington far beyond the time fixed by the Republican leaders as a desirable date for completing the business of the extra session and adjourning for summer vacation. The South The fact is that the agricultural and industrial South is very well Tariff Bill. looked after in the tariff measure that is now approaching its final form. In compliance with party platforms and sectional and party traditions, to be sure, the Southern Democrats in Congress must seem to demand a generally lower tariff and a more rapid approximation toward the revenue principle as opposed to the protective theory. It is, nevertheless, true that these gentlemen are feeling quite complacent; and they are not going to antagonize the majority party at the present moment beyond the point required by a decent sort of consistency, and by a moderate amount of foresight as regards the Congressional elections of November, 1910. The sugar and rice of the Gulf States, as well as the oranges and lemons of Florida and the tobacco of other Southern States, are all handsomely protected in the pending measure, and so also are most of the other products, agricultural, mineral, and in Copyright, 1909, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY. Consumers versus Producers. dustrial, of all the region extending from to ship by rail and water to points further Virginia to Texas. The two important ar- North, and it also can use the coal at its doors ticles most threatened were iron ore and to enable it to build up manufactures as common lumber. The prospect seems to be against New England, where the cost of fuel that iron ore, which was made free by the is a serious handicap. A little study of the Payne bill, and which was made dutiable at situation in concrete detail will show why a few cents per ton in the Aldrich bill, will Southern statesmen who have the habit of carry a small duty in the completed measure. talking free trade in the abstract have become As for the common grades of manufactured very partial toward protection in the concrete. lumber, which the agricultural States of the Northwest desire to have placed on the free This study will also show why list, in order to have access to the Canadian there is so little partisan stram forests as against the present duty of $2 per at Washington in the making o 1000 feet, it is now probable that in the fin- the present tariff, and why, as respects conished measure there will be found a lumber troverted points, the chief issue lies between duty of not less than $1 per 1000 feet. New producers and consumers as such, or between England, which desires to obtain coal from divergent interests, as, for example, the Eastern Canada without paying duty, may American producers of articles of wearing succeed in having that article kept upon the apparel and the New York importers of comfree list, although the South would prefer, peting goods. As between such divergent for double reasons of advantage, to maintain interests, the once silent or unheard voice of the tariff upon an article which nature has so the consumer begins to make itself listened to, abundantly deposited in the lower Appala- with the probable result of compromises on chian region. The South has plenty of coal a number of interesting items, such as women's gloves, hosiery, and so on. It is the hope of Mr. Taft,-whose attitude toward both Houses of Congress has been very cour teous and highly constitutional,-that the completed bill ought to represent a decided average reduction in the rates of duty imposed upon protected articles in general. And he has naïvely remarked, apropos of certain reductions in the Payne bill and certain other reductions in the Aldrich bill, that a very good way to compromise would be to retain all the lowered rates that are to be found in both bills. THE TYPICAL SOUTHERN CONGRESSMAN WHO WANTS A "TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY!" "Special From the beginning of the session Interests at in the middle of March the hotels Washington. of Washington have been full of men representing a vast number of more or less specialized industries and interests likely to be affected in one way or another by changes in the tariff rates. Congress has done what it could within the time at its disposal to allow these gentlemen, most of whom are entirely reputable and well-meaning, and all of whom possess valuable information about one phase or another of American production or commerce, to have their facts presented and considered. But it would "I stand for a tariff for revenue only! 'Where not be fair to assert that special interests are shall we get it?' Why, raise the tariff on sugar, protect Louisiana, protect Alabama iron and steel, Virginia goobers, Kentucky tobacco, Florida pine apples, Georgia cotton, North Carolina lumber, West Virginia coa!, and Texas oil!" From the Sun (Baltimore). dictating the policy of Congress in revising the tariff, although at one point or another doubtless there are to be found particular rates and provisions that are advantageous to some monopolistic interest, without being AMERICA EXPECTS EVERY WOMAN TO DO HER DUTY-WRITE TO YOUR CONGRESSMAN, beneficial to the country's business in the Paper and Pulp as an Payne bill dutiable at $12 a ton. So wide a discrimination is not justifiable upon any fair statement of the facts. The objection to the proposed duties upon chemically prepared pulp and super-calendared paper, lies not so much in the duties themselves as in the probability that a virtual monopoly (as respects the fixing of prices to consumers) will almost inevitably result. The white paper might fairly enough be taxed at a duty of $4 or even $6 a ton; but all wood pulp for making paper, whether mechanical or chemical Thus one of the chief reasons for in the process of preparation, ought to be on the effective demand on the part the free list. Many of the paper-makers do of American newspapers for free not control their own supply of pulp, and wood pulp and a greatly reduced tariff on the proposed tariff will put them at the white paper, lay in the clear demonstration mercy of interests which will compel them in to Congress and the country that the manu- the future, as in the recent past, to sell paper facture of pulp and print paper has become at a dictated price. We mention this situaso concentrated that, with the aid of the tariff, a virtual nonopoly was in the making. Now it so happens that the pulp used in making the paper upon which daily and weekly news journals are printed is prepared by processes chiefly mechanical; while the more carefully prepared pulp, which is the material from which the paper of magazines and books is made, is subjected to certain chemical processes. Thus it has been possible in the pulp, and hides. Mr. Aldrich explained in Payne bill to make one kind of pulp free of his speech expounding the principles of the duty and to keep the other kind dutiable at bill as a whole that the committee was not about $5 a ton. In like manner the finished evading its duty as respects these commodiwhite paper upon which newspapers are printed, which is now dutiable at $6 a ton under the Dingley act, is reduced in the Payne bill to $2 a ton, while the kind of paper used in this magazine remains in the tion as illustrating a number of others that have arisen in the making of this tariff, as well as in the making of the Dingley bill, the Wilson bill, the McKinley bill, and all other preceding tariff measures. Some Open The Senate bill, as reported on April 12, did not contain the schedules on coal, paper, wood ties, but was waiting for further data. New England, for obvious reasons, wishes free hides for its great shoe and leather manufactures. The cattle interests of the West wish as large control as possible of the American |