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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.