OCR Text |
Show STANDPATTERS WHO ARE UNRELIABLE. ' Reed Smoot's utterances on the tariff are tending to discredit the Utah senator as a shining liglit in politics. Commenting on Taft's veto of the wool bill, the Indianapolis Star says: "The tariff board, whose report has since been made, did not recommend any specific wool duties, but it submitted facts bearing on the woolen industries from which it appeared to a majority in the House and Senate that the La Follette schedules are high enough. Its duties are a little higher than the Democratic wool bill and a little lower than those of the Penrose bill, but the differences are not great. "Mr. Penrose, Mr. Smoot and other standpatters, it is true, say the La Follette duties are lower than the tariff report justifies,' but these same gentlemen said of the Paync-Aldnch bill that the wool duties could not be lowered without imperiling the woolen industry yet the Penrose bill of this year reduces the Payne-Aldrich wool duties in some cases 50 per cent, thus showing how unreliable the standpat gentlemen were last year and how untrustworthy they may naturally be assumed to be now. "It would be far better for Mr. Taft had he refused to listen to these reactionary advisers and accepted such revision as was possible pos-sible to obtain. But he has not learned wisdom by experience and continues to follow tho instruction of men under whose influence had already brought his administration into disrepute and his party to the verge of destruction. He hopes by his course in regard to this bill perhaps to gain the favor and support of the big interests, but it is a year in which the people arc taking matters into their own hands and his play will, it is more than likely, prove to be his final undoing." ' |