Political Quotes

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 be favored will import articles suitable for the prescribed use under the general terms of the statute, but will use them for other and general purposes.

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.

Pledged to support a policy of moderate protection, I can not approve a measure which violates its principle.

I concur fully in the conclusions which the Secretary of War has reached and in the recommendations which he makes.