[Volume XXVII
THE CHICAGO BANKER
14
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Editorial Comment
opportunity to become the greatest manufacturing center of the world. In last week’s issue was printed the wonderful story of irrigated lands in Colorado. It is possible that the future will see just as great development in the drained swamps of the South. Too much water is quite as bad as none at all, and there are portions of the South in which drainage may discount any results which irrigation in the West can show.
What if Taft Vetoes the Bill?
The consensus of recent opinion is that Taft will veto the tariff bill if the Aldrich-Cannon measure becomes a law. What then? We will have the old Dingley law and—some say —a democratic congress in the off-year elections. The wise ones say, especially since the president gave out the statement of his interview with a delegation of members of the house, who were protesting against raw materials, so-called, being placed on the free list, that Mr. Taft would veto the tariff bill unless it embodied his idea of downward revision, but that there is very little, if any, possibility that he will have the opportunity to exercise the veto power in this connection. The reason is that the bill in its final shape will either fulfill the republican pledge, thus enabling the president consistently to sign it, or if it does not carry out that promise it will never get through the house.
The spirit of revision is stronger and more general in the lower branch of congress than in the senate, and, while the senate went farther than the house in decreasing certain tariff rates, the house bill came nearer to conforming to the president’s idea of what the revision should be. For example, it was the house which placed iron ore, petroleum and hides on the free list, paved the way for free coal through the medium of reciprocity, and cut the duty on lumber in half, and the conferees in presenting their final report to the two houses will come nearer following that schedule of rates than the higher duties fixed by the senate.
It may be that Mr. Taft will be put to the test, and of the result there are many opinions. The stand-patters have been calling him a jelly fish but the public does not join in the opinion. In the sober mind he is more like McKinley, yet of sterner stuff. We shall see and hope that the test may come fairly upon adherence to his pledges or no, as he may decide.
V
Bank Superintendent Takes Charge
Albany, July 20.—Superintendent Williams of the state banking department announces that he has taken possession of the Nineteenth Ward Co-operative Savings and Loan Association, of New York.
Horace J. Young, of Syracuse, an examiner in the department, has been appointed special deputy superintendent as agent in liquidation.
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Southern Resources Attract Attention
Col. Robert J. Lowney, in his own state and at Seattle this year, has been singing the Song of the South. His remarks are circulating as a boom document, and now comes the able address of Grosvenor Dawe at Atlanta, before the Southern Commercial Convention. His remarks are well calculated to arouse the deepest interest in all the southern states and also to direct the attention of the whole country to the wonderful possibilities of the South. He quoted from government statistics to show that the waters of the vast Appalachian range are capable of furnishing 5,000,000 horse power, of which less than 10 per cent is now utilized, and that the fields of iron ore in the South are expected to endure 100 years after those of the Lake Superior region have been exhausted. He then says :
“Yet, with all the advantages belonging to the southern extremity of the Appalachians, advantages so great that Birmingham sets the price for pig iron, at present only about 10 per cent of the pig iron of the United States is made in the South. Then look at the size and energy of Birmingham, the Birmingham district, Chattanooga and other cities in Tennessee and in Alabama dependent upon iron ore, then realize that their marvelous growth to present dimensions has come through the creation of merely 10 per cent of the pig iron of the United States. Then let your imagination run riot and picture to yourself what will be the development of those portions of the country when, instead of 10 per cent, they are producing 90 per cent of the pig iron of the United States and largely giving that iron its final form.”
Mr. Dawe pointed out that the statistics of the government prove that the South possesses a greater length of coast line, more miles of navigable rivers, more water power, more minerals conveniently disposed, more agricultural resources, more forests, more cheap land and a greater accessibility to the ports of the world than any other section of the country.
Mr. Dawe has made a close study of the prevailing conditions of the South and of the resources waiting development, and speaks from the fullness of his knowledge. Cheap power, cheap labor, and abundance of raw material right at its hands furnish the South the
President Taft Takes Tariff Position
It is related that twenty-three members of congress called upon President Taft to get his consent to revise the tariff upward, rather than downward as agreed upon by those who framed the platform upon which he was elected. “Twenty-three for you” likely will be resurrected in our slang, for the president, in fine phrase, in high principle, and according to his platform promises, took a firm position for lower rates and, in part, for free raw materials.
The visitors had their say first. Officially it is announced that they “viewed” the question chiefly from the standpoint of the manufacturers of their own districts, or, at most, from a state-wide point of view. The president replied that he is not committed to the principle of free raw materials, but that he is committed to the principle of a downward revision of the tariff which he had promised and that he is obliged to look at the matter not from the standpoint of any particular district, but from the standpoint of the whole country and also from the standpoint of responsibility for the entire republican party. He said the question in each case is a question of fact, to be determined by evidence, as to whether the present duty is needed for protection or whether the rate is excessive, so that a downward revision, or putting the article on the free list, will not injure the industry.
He repeated the platform of the republican party and said that he had always understood that it means a downward revision in many instances, though perhaps in some few instances an increase may be needed; that he reached this construction of the platform on what he understands to be the principle of protection and its justification—namely, that after an industry is protected by a duty equal to the difference between the cost of production abroad and the cost of production in this country, including a fair profit to the manufacturer, the energy and enterprise of American business men and capitalists, the effectiveness of American labor and the ingenuity of American inventors under the impulse of competition behind the tariff wall will reduce the cost of production and that, with such reduction, the tariff rate will become unnecessarily high and ought to be reduced.
Mr. Taft said other things which completely upset the Aldrich-Cannon aplomb and the wise ones in Washington see a future for the executive which they had begun to doubt.
Everyone has been interviewed, but in Washington, opponents of the administration sing low, and their music rarely is popular. Mr. Taft is a much admired man, on both sides of the tariff disagreement, and now even Mr. La Follette has endorsed him as the real thing. A firm, wise executive with good manners, is the strongest power in the land, after public sentiment, and when they act together they become irresistible.