The issue is not now whether we ought originally to have begun this investigation, but it is whether, having expended a very large part of the necessary amount to do the full work, we ought to break it off for lack of a comparatively small…

The matter is therefore submitted to the Congress in accordance with the recommendation of the Acting Secretary of State, with a view to its considering whether the President shall be authorized to relinquish to Cuba all right and claim of…

I earnestly hope that Congress will take immediate action in this regard, as recommended by the Secretary of War.

I withhold my approval from this bill, therefore, for the reasons, first, because it should not be considered until the Tariff Board shall make report upon the schedules it affects; second, because the bill is so loosely drawn as to…

This would impose a heavy burden on the administrative branch of the Government, create disastrous uncertainty in commercial circles, and lead to a burdensome amount of litigation.

This imposes a penalty on the domestic labor of cutting and would transfer half the process in the industry of shoemaking and glove making to foreign countries.

Another clause that calls for comment is in the leather paragraph, which reads as follows: \Leather cut into shoe uppers or vamps or other forms suitable for conversion into manufactured articles.\

This language is so sweeping that it might be made to cover almost 150 articles used in agriculture, which would affect many sections of the present tariff, and lead to the most injurious uncertainty.

The same reasons which impelled me to decline to sign the wool bill control me in this case.

The bill is so carelessly drawn that it would inevitably lead to the greatest uncertainty as to what articles are or are not covered by its various provisions.

But there is another, and a very important, reason why the bill ought not to become a law, and that is that in many instances it adopts the principle, rarely permitted in any revenue system, on whatever theory constructed, by which the…

The danger is not so much that the class of users in whose favor the classification purports to be made will receive more benefit than the framers of the law may have intended, but it is that many who do not belong to the class intended to…

The truth is that the language of the act is so ambiguous and possibly all-embracing that it is impracticable for the Treasury Department to give an exact estimate as to the diminution in revenue which will follow its passage.

I shall not hesitate to invite the attention of Congress to this fact and to the necessity for action predicated thereon.

I have always regarded this language as fixing the proper measure of protection at the ascertained difference between the cost of production at home and that abroad.

If I fail to recommend the reduction of excessive duties to this extent, I shall fail in my duty to the consuming public.

If I fail to guard as far as I can the industries of the country to the extent of giving them the benefit of a living measure of protection, and business disaster ensues, I shall not be discharging my duty.

Certainly we should proceed prudently in dealing with them upon the basis of ascertained facts rather than hastily and without knowledge to make a reduction of the tariff to satisfy a popular desire.