614 Presidential Addresses 



It is exceedingly undesirable that this system should 

 be destroyed or that there should be violent and radi- 

 cal changes therein. Our past experience shows 

 that great prosperity in this country has always 

 come under a protective tariff and that the country 

 can not prosper under fitful tariff changes at short 

 intervals. Moreover, if the tariff laws as a whole 

 work well, and if business has prospered under them 

 and is prospering, it is better to endure for a time 

 slight inconveniences and inequalities in some sched- 

 ules than to upset business by too quick and too radi- 

 cal changes. It is most earnestly to be wished that 

 we could treat the tariff from the standpoint solely 

 of our business needs. It is, perhaps, too much to 

 hope that partisanship may be entirely excluded from 

 consideration of the subject, but at least it can be 

 made secondary to the business interests of the 

 country that is, to the interests of our people as a 

 whole. Unquestionably these business interests will 

 best be served if together with fixity of principle as 

 regards the tariff we combine a system which will 

 permit us from time to time to make the necessary 

 reapplication of the principle to the shifting national 

 needs. We must take scrupulous care that the re- 

 application shall be made in such a way that it will 

 not amount to a dislocation of our system, the 

 mere threat of which (not to speak of the perform- 

 ance) would produce paralysis in the business ener- 

 gies of the community. The first consideration in 

 making these changes would, of course, be to pre- 

 serve the principle which underlies our whole tariff 



