Furthermore, every expedient and device of secrecy is brought into use to keep the public unaware of the arguments of the high protectionists, and ignorant of the facts which refute them; and uninformed of the intentions of the framers of the proposed legislation.  It is notorious, even, that many members of the Finance Committee of the Senate did not know the significance of the tariff schedules which were reported in the present tariff bill to the Senate, and that members of the Senate who asked Mr. Aldrich direct questions were refused the information they sought; sometimes, I dare say, because he could not give it, and sometimes, I venture to say, because disclosure of the information would have embarrassed the passage of the measure.  There were essential papers, moreover, which could not be got at.

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Take that very interesting matter, that will-o’-the-wisp, known as “the cost of production.”  It is hard for any man who has ever studied economics at all to restrain a cynical smile when he is told that an intelligent group of his fellow-citizens are looking for “the cost of production” as a basis for tariff legislation.  It is not the same in any one factory for two years together.  It is not the same in one industry from one season to another.  It is not the same in one country at two different epochs.  It is constantly eluding your grasp.  It nowhere exists, as a scientific, demonstrable fact.  But, in order to carry out the pretences of the “protective” program, it was necessary to go through the motions of finding out what it was.  I am credibly informed that the government of the United States requested several foreign governments, among others the government of Germany, to supply it with as reliable figures as possible concerning the cost of producing certain articles corresponding with those produced in the United States.  The German government put the matter into the hands of certain of her manufacturers, who sent in just as complete answers as they could procure from their books.  The information reached our government during the course of the debate on the Payne-Aldrich Bill and was transmitted,—­for the bill by that time had reached the Senate,—­to the Finance Committee of the Senate.  But I am told,—­and I have no reason to doubt it,—­that it never came out of the pigeonholes of the committee.  I don’t know, and that committee doesn’t know, what the information it contained was.  When Mr. Aldrich was asked about it, he first said it was not an official report from the German government.  Afterward he intimated that it was an impudent attempt on the part of the German government to interfere with tariff legislation in the United States.  But he never said what the cost of production disclosed by it was.  If he had, it is more than likely that some of the schedules would have been shown to be entirely unjustifiable.