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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



titions. I have ray own well-grounded convic- 

 tions upon this great subject. I have given it 

 forty years of patient, careful thought, and I 

 believe I know something about it. I know 

 enough to know this, Mr. President, that I do 

 not know enough about it to undertake to make 

 a report between this and the 1st day of next 

 December, so that if that provision passes I beg 

 to be considered out of the line of promotion. 



" Again, nobody knows better than my 

 friend from South Carolina [Mr. Hampton] that 

 wherever a great manufacturing industry has 

 been built up in a State, it has brought wealth 

 to its people, whether it be in Alabama or 

 South Carolina or Georgia, not always en- 

 riching them immediately; for, take the great 

 industries of my State, and as nearly as they 

 could be classified last year, my friend and col- 

 league will join me when I say to the Senate 

 that those industries did not pay 3 per cent, last 

 year on the investment. 'Bloated corpora- 

 tions !' We have in our State some pretty large 

 'bloated corporations.' We have the cele- 

 brated establishment that Colonel Colt left, and 

 it paid 3 per cent, for the last year. We have 

 there one of the largest machine industries in 

 the country, and it has paid, because it has built 

 in the last two years more than four hundred 

 thousand dollars' worth of machinery for Eu- 

 rope, competing with Great Britain and beating 

 her on her own ground. 



" Mr. President, let us say as members of 

 this body that we desire, all of us I hope, a rev- 

 enue tariff with its protection as an incident, 

 as it must have ; it can not be any other way. 

 If it is necessary to raise 20 per cent, for rev- 

 enue, that is an incidental protection, and, in 

 that much and no further, am I in favor of a 

 protective tariff. I go no further than my friend 

 from Kentucky, not one step hardly as far. 

 Let us do what is just and right. I put this 

 question, then, to the intelligence of the Senate, 

 and I would that every Senator were here to 

 answer to his own judgment: Can you point 

 me to one single member of the Senate that can 

 give the time to report upon this great ques- 

 tion by the 1st of December? Is there one 

 man here who would dare to do it ? Sir, there 

 is a year's work here. I know whereof I speak. 

 There is a year's work before you can complete 

 it, and the amendments placed on the bill by 

 the Committee on Finance are eminently judi- 

 cious and proper in this regard, that this com- 

 mission sli all report from time to time." 



The President pro tempore: "The question 

 is on the amendment of the Senator from 

 Iowa." 



The amendment was agreed to. 



Mr. Jones, of Florida : " Let me ask the 

 Senator from Kentucky a question. Does a 

 reformation of the tariff necessarily involve a 

 question of revenue ? " 



Mr. Beck, of Kentucky : " I do not think it 

 touches it at all in any shape or form. I sup- 

 pose there is not an intelligent man in this 

 Chamber who does not know that the tariff 



taxation of this country for that is what it is 

 can be reduced one half and the revenue 

 doubled. I suppose there is no intelligent man 

 in the country who does not know that for 

 every dollar that goes into the Treasury for 

 tariff taxation to-day it costs the people of this 

 country $5. I think I can show that from the 

 statisticians of the Republican party, some of 

 them high officials of the Government. The 

 object of raising this commission is to see if that 

 condition of things can not be stopped. The 

 object of the Garland bill is to see if members 

 of the Senate and House can not, by the aid of 

 such experts as they can call in, ascertain wheth- 

 er that alleged fact is true. 



" It is proposed to empower the President 

 of the United States, the chief of the party that 

 brought about this condition of things, to select 

 a body of men to whitewash all that has been 

 done and to write out a report to make it all 

 appear good. The President knows he can have 

 anybody confirmed. He had a Postmaster- 

 General confirmed yesterday, and after that lie 

 can have anybody confirmed. He will put men 

 there who will make all appear right that has 

 been done. These men can neither be cross- 

 questioned nor examined as to any report they 

 may make, but it will be delayed until December, 

 1881. The present condition' of things will be 

 allowed to exist from now until then without 

 relief, and then written reports will be made 

 which these men can not be questioned about. 

 They are to be appointed by the President, who 

 has nothing to do with the legislation. They 

 are to be appointed without the consent of the 

 House, which has under the Constitution the 

 right and the only right to act in the first place 

 upon that information ; and if they dare to run 

 counter to the information thus furnished by 

 their enemies they will be denounced as going 

 against the best interests of the country. The 

 evidence of experts selected to furnish evidence 

 against them will have been provided in ad- 

 vance ; and, as I say, they can neither cross- 

 question nor examine them on the floor of either 

 House, or require them to give a reason for what 

 they have done. 



"The simple proposition presented by the 

 two measures is, shall the House of Represent- 

 atives be ignored and all the information they 

 have to act upon be transferred to a department 

 of this Government that has nothing to do with 

 the raising of revenue except by the interposi- 

 tion of a veto to stop anything that he may not 

 approve? This body we know will confirm 

 anybody the President sends here, and the ques- 

 tion is, shall he appoint nine men to tell us what 

 he and his men thus selected want to have 

 done selected, if you please, in the very inter- 

 est of the men who are now receiving the taxes 

 instead of the Government receiving them ? 

 The House is to be taunted and charged with 

 being against the best interests of the country 

 if it dares to do anything contrary to the report 

 that these men thus picked submit, against its 

 will and against its interests, and against the 



