Political Quotes

Nothing, however, halts business and interferes with the course of prosperity so much as the threatened revision of the tariff.

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 involve the Government in endless litigation and to leave the commercial community in disastrous doubt; third, because it places the finished product on the free list, but retains on the dutiable list the raw material and the machinery with which such finished product is made, and thus puts at a needless disadvantage our American manufacturers; and fourth, that while purporting, by putting agricultural implements, meat, and flour on the free list, to reduce their price to the consumers, it does not do so, but only gives to Canada valuable concessions which might be used by the Executive to expand reciprocity with that country in accordance with the direction of Congress.

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 finished product is made free from duty, and the raw material and the machinery necessary for its production are kept on the dutiable list.

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.