And State Papers 191 



proper aim of the party system is after all simply to 

 subserve the public good, can not but hope that 

 where such partisanship on a matter of this kind 

 conflicts with the public good it shall at least be 

 minimized. It is all right and inevitable that we 

 should divide on party lines, but woe to us if we are 

 not Americans first, and party men second. What 

 we really need in this country is to treat the tariff 

 as a business proposition from the standpoint of the 

 interests of the country as a whole, and not from the 

 standpoint of the temporary needs of any political 

 party. It surely ought not to be necessary to dwell 

 upon the extreme unwisdom, from a business stand 

 point, from the standpoint of national prosperity, 

 of violent and radical changes amounting to the 

 direct upsetting of tariff policies at intervals of 

 every few years. A nation like ours can adjust its 

 business after a fashion to any kind of tariff. But 

 neither our nation nor any other can stand the ruin 

 ous policy of readjusting its business to radical 

 changes in the tariff at short intervals. This is 

 more true now than ever it was before, for owing to 

 the immense extent and variety of our products, the 

 tariff schedules of to-day carry rates of duty on 

 more than four thousand articles. Continual sweep 

 ing changes in such a tariff, touching so intimately 

 the commercial interests of the nation which stands 

 as one of the two or three greatest in the whole 

 industrial world, can not but be disastrous. Yet 

 on the other hand where the industrial needs of the 

 nation shift as rapidly as they do with us, it is a 



