466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



mittee as attorneys representing private interests and asking for duties 

 on various articles. If a judge should descend from the bench and 

 address the court of vs^hich he is a member, or a coordinate court, in 

 the interest of private suitors, we should at once cry out against the 

 system which made such an act possible. But in congress, representa- 

 tives, whose votes will be needed when the bill reaches the house, appear 

 before the committee in behalf of private parties ; and senators, who will 

 vote on the bill when it reaches that body, appear and ask for favors to 

 certain private industries. At the recent hearings Senator Hale, of 

 Maine, a member of the finance committee, to which the tariff bill will 

 be referred and one of the most influential men in the senate, appeared 

 in behalf of a duty on starch. 



When the judges who are commissioned to sit at "Washington and 

 deal impartially between tariff-burdened consumers and tariff-protected 

 producers, not only represent selfish interests, but are themselves pecuni- 

 arily interested in their own decision, what wonder is it that the con- 

 sumer's interests are ignored. So far as moral quality is concerned, 

 Senator Burton's act in representing private interests before one of 

 the government departments, for which he was sent to prison, was mild 

 and harmless, as compared with the acts which are openly committed 

 by members of congress in tariff legislation. The one has been made 

 criminal by statute; the others have not. 



I have dwelt at some length upon the methods and means by which 

 tariff revision will have to be obtained under present conditions. The 

 situation indicates that unless the law-making body is constrained by 

 an insistent and powerful public opinion, consumers are not likely to 

 get any fair measure of relief. With reference to the specific relief 

 that ought to be granted, something may now be said. 



It is generally admitted that many existing duties are much 

 higher than the difference in the cost of producing goods here and 

 abroad. This difference in cost, considering reasonable profit as one 

 of the elements of cost, is a test which the people are entitled to insist 

 upon at this time. If it could be fairly applied, consumers would 

 escape the payment of tribute to monopoly, although they might be 

 injured by the protection given to certain industries that are not 

 well suited to this country. Among the schedules that should be 

 entirely removed, according to this standard, may be noted iron and 

 steel, lumber, coal, lead, salt, petroleum and hides. Among those 

 which will stand marked reductions, on the basis of relative costs, are 

 sugar, many chemicals, woolen, cotton and silk goods, glass and 

 earthenware, machinery and implements generally. We have, in the 

 wool-raising industry, one that should be removed from the protected 

 list on the ground that the duty is a burdensome tax on the people, 

 without any prospect of developing a supply at all adequate for the 

 needs of the country. 



