THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1910. TARIFF REVOLT IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10062, 7 June 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 1910. TARIFF REVOLT IN AMERICA.

The attack reported as having been m?.de ori'the Payne tariff in the American House of Representatives foreshadows the line of argument to be used by Republican "insurgents" as well as the regular Democratic Opposition in the Congressional elections j six months hence. "A transparent j humbujr," one Congressman called J the Tariff, and with good reason the J j description might be fitted to many a tariff, the majority of the whole tribe being devices to secure benefits to a clasS'Under pretences of ensuring them to the community. The Payne tariff, however, is exasperating as well as transparent humbug.

The Republican promise was. to effect "downward revision," but instead the party leaders forced through a schedule of rates so ingeniously and plausibly complicated that where they seemed to reduce the duty they actually raised it. The thing was so palpable, its' effect'' so oppressive, that some members of'the party turned "insurgent,"'' bitterly attacked the tariff and its makers, and will evidently be found, fighting foe real

reduction of duties in the coming campaign. Already the pressure is being felt, for Senator Aldrich, who led the high-tariffists to victory, is announced to retire from the place of Republican "boss" in the Senate which he has held so long, and Mr Aldridge, "boss" of a Congressional district, who contested its representation in the House a few weeks ago, was badly beaten for a seat where Republicanism thought itself safe. Certainly there was a question of £2OO havng been paid over to him • to bring about the defeat of a Bill I inimical to insurance interests, which Mi Aldridge declared he took for the party fund, not for himself; but no doubt the tariff msue was a bad osie'for him, as it threatens to be for his party at the elections. The growth of high tariffism in the United States is a warning to every other country, as is being bitterly evidenced by the terribly high cost of living the American people suffer under —of which one very active cause is undoubtedly the tariff Restivenefs under" this oppression is de veloping into revolt, which promises to express itself pretty forcibly at the polls. Nor would such an expression be unprecedented, even if it meant Hepubhcan defeat, for a month after the McKinley tariff, the first of the modern high-duty measures in America, came into force, the Bemocrats sweepingly beat the Republicans in the Congressional elections, ancl by the time Mr Cleveland was chosen President in November, 1892, there were Democratic majorities in both Houses. And then tariff revision downward was effected, the same as is threatened now.