Tariff Bill Before The House

Af ter four days on which roll calis and obstructive tactics vvere the i order, a democratie quorum put in an appearance last Monday and the Wilson tariff bill was brought before the House. When'the report, fixing the date for voting on the measure, had been adopted, the author of the bill, Chairman Wm. L. Wilson, of the ways and means committee, took the floor and began the delivering of a masterly speech in support of the measure. The effort was in every way worthy of the subject and the occasion, and it should be read by every American citizen. Mr. Wilson made no defense of the bill, believing it needed none, but he stated in a straightforward way the causes which led to its preparation and the reasons why it should become a law. He alluded to difficulties experienced in its preparation, and the compromises necessary in a measure covering so wide a field and touching such a diversity of conflicting interests. While the bill was not all that tariff reformers desired, it was a considerable step in the right direction and all that could probably be secured. He then launched forth upon a scathing review of the policy which had led to the depletion of the treasury under the HarrisonReid rule. ít was that policy, he said which had caused the industrial depression which republicans charged to the fear of tariff revisión, and on which they based most of their arguments against the bill before the House. He related the rapid cline of the treasury during the four years of republican administration as it passed from an overflowing condition to actual bankruptcy without lessening the burdens of taxation on the people, and described the schemes l)y which the surplus was dissipated. The surplus, he said, was dealt with after the traditional methods of protection, which was to aboiish those taxes which pass undiminished from the pockets of the taxpayers to the public treasury, and to increase those which were interrupted in their passage from the pockets of the tax-payers to public treasury by the private toll gatherer. He denounced the McKinley bill which the people never asked for, and said he desired the fight to go on until the time shail come when no tax-payers will pay a single dollar that does not ga straight and undiminished into the public treasury. His speech was in every way an able and brilliant presentation of the tariff reform side of the issue, and if in the speeches to follow, the democratie argument is kept up to the high key struck by Mr. Wilson, the subj-ect will be invested with new interest.