National Affairs: The Battle Breaks

The Armies. Battalions of warriors streamed last week toward the tariff battle field in the U. S. Senate. Warriors bearing the scar of a hundred elections came in troops, their ammunition trains lumbered up behind them. Their lobbyist commissary workers dragged to the field the impedimenta of battle.

Upon one side Generalissimo Smoot led the myrmidons of high-tariff-for-the-manufacturer. Then came stout Republicans one and all. Lieutenant-General James Eli Watson (supposed leader of the Republican army) and Major-General David Aiken Reed of Pennsylvania, spokesman of Secretary Mellon, labored incessantly to bring their forces stout-hearted to the fray, casting side glances at stragglers (those Republicans who every now and then hinted some doubt as to the sacredness of their cause). Across the aisle, Field Marshal Furnifold McLendel Simmons of North Carolina urged on the troops of low-tariff-for-the-consumers. Behind him strode the body of the Democrats and their allies, Republican irregulars trooping after General Borah (of Idaho). This army too had its stragglers, Democrats here and there greedy for tariff spoils to enrich their home states. So all came at last to battle. Skirmish. The first clash echoed only with the rattle of small arms, yet that first skirmish was a matter of high import in the strategy, for in it Field Marshal Simmons secured a vantage point that secured his main line of communications. He proposed that either the minority or the majority of the finance committee should have authority to call upon the Treasury Department for tax reports of corporations to show how much profit they have been making under the present law. The Democrats rushed forward in a body, the Republican irregulars following on their heels. Against them only the stoutest Republicans rushed in. The consumer-tariff forces seized Tax Reports Village by 51 votes to 27. With their communication road thus opened, prompt ly the Democrats despatched 200 ammunition wagons for supplies, 200 requests for the tax reports of different corporations. Position. It remained for the leaders to choose their positions on the field. Field Marshal Simmons offered to give battle first in the administrative provisions section along the barren ground of Flexible Tariff Ridge where could be no loot to deter greedy Democrats from fighting wholeheartedly with the enemy. It was a clever opening, but Generalissimo Smoot did not hesitate to accept battle there.

Harangues. First, however, the leaders of the hosts paused to harangue their followers and enemies. Field Marshal Simmons leaped upon the breastworks and spoke first, for three hours. He charged the tariff bill with putting useless and ineffective duties on farm products many of which are not imported at all, with taxing, exorbitantly, the things the farmer buys, with taxing necessities of the public more than the luxuries of the rich, with increasing duties for industries already prosperous, with giving the President too much discretion to change tariffs under the flexible provision. Was it a farmers’ tariff, he asked, that would collect $146,000,000 duty on sugar which farmers and everyone else buys, and $103,000,000 duty on all other farm product imports? Why should the duty on reindeer meat be increased from 4¢ to 6¢ the pound when in 1928 only 3,198 lb. were imported (from Norway) and the U. S. raised 1,810,000 Ib. (in Alaska)? Why should the duty on canned peas be multiplied by five although in 1928 we imported only 3% of what we ate? Why should the duty on cotton towels be raised 5% although we import less than .125% of what we use? Etc. etc. etc.?

The shrill of his words had hardly died away when the faint voice of Generalissimo Smoot was heard. Asked he: Had not Candidate Herbert Hoover promised the American people limited tariff revision? He believed that this tariff bill was what the President had promised. The Democratic party was a low-tariff party with its past written all over the pages of tariff history. The Republican party alone ever gave the farmers any protection. No greater calamity could happen to the U. S. than to listen to the low-tariff advocates. So Generalissimo Smoot.

The harangues of the two leaders took the greater part of a whole day. The next day Field Marshal Simmons, finding that he had turned two pages of his speech together (by accident), brought out the lost page and read it to his eager followers. Then, not to omit any element of a proper epic, Chief of Staff Pat Harrison leapt upon the Democratic parapet and reviled the leaders of the enemy. Said he:

“No band of pirates ever looted a victim better than these distinguished gentlemen in the secrecy of their sub-committee chambers robbed the American people. . . .

”The Senator from Utah objects to men reaching for a cigaret instead of candy. He made a speech about it. Now he wants the tariff raised on pipes. He wants to keep us from smoking cigarets and he wants to keep us from smoking pipes. No wonder he bows his head in shame.”

Behind the Lines. Republican Major General Watson left the battle lines and, rushing to a radio microphone, broadcasted reassuringly to where the home fires were being kept burning. Excerpts from this notable oratory:

“It is perfectly safe to assume that the bill passed will very largely carry out the ideas expressed by the President and that the measure will, in practically every one of its aspects, be the best that can be enacted in the interest alike of the producer and the consumer. And with that we shall be content.”

These words had hardly rebounded from the Heaviside Layer when Jouette Shouse, Quarter-Master-General of the Democratic Army, seized the microphone and cried: “We have heard from self-appointed in-terpreters, who continue to assert that Mr. Hoover will not stand for a wholesale tariff raid. But what sort of chief executive is it who would permit his own Congress to make a larcenous hash of its whole session . . .?”