THE TARIFF: Lesson, Oaths

A U. S. president, like a schoolboy, is required to do certain tasks in a certain length of time. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act set forth that within 90 days of its passage President Hoover must appoint a new Tariff Commission of three Democrats, three Republicans (TIME, Sept. 1 et seq.). Moreover the President, bold in defense of the unpopular bill, promised 1) to appoint more expert and impartial economists than had composed the old Commission, 2) to issue educational bulletins from time to time explaining the tariff and its beneficent “flexibility.”

Last week the President’s 90 days expired. He had not got his tariff lesson very well. He had been able to find and appoint only five of his six tariff commissioners. They were: Republicans Henry Prather Fletcher (chairman), Edgar Bernard Brossard, John Lee Coulter; DemocratsThomas Walker Page and Alfred Pearce Dennis. Chairman Fletcher was a longtime diplomat with no special tariff training. Commissioner Brossard, a carry-over from the old Commission, was accused of being Senator Reed Smoot’s “beet sugar” representative in tariff matters.

Commissioner Coulter was chief economic adviser to the old Commission. Commissioners Page and Dennis had both served on earlier tariff boards. The question of why the President did not appoint bigger and better men to elevate the new Commission above the old, as he had promised, was answered by the fact that a score of distinguished economists and business experts had declined appointment for fear of personal abuse during confirmation by the Senate. Unappointed was the third Democratic commissioner. Democrats immediately charged President Hoover with “rank and inexcusable partisanship” in holding up this last appointment while a high-tariff Republican majority organized the new Commission along its own lines.

Last week the five new commissioners marched up on their courtlike bench, raised their right-hands, took the standard oath of office (“I swear to uphold the Constitution . . . etc. etc.”).

The new Commission went immediately to work on 83 tariff items which Congress had ordered it to investigate. The most sanguine commissioner said a few recommendations might be ready for Presidential consideration by the end of the year.

Up to last week the President had not yet issued any educational bulletins.