For the tariff in politics is the excuse for those sham political battles which give the spoilers their opportunity.  The tariff in politics is one of the invisible government’s methods of wringing tribute from the people.  Through the tariff in politics the beneficiaries of tariff excesses are cared for, no matter which party is “revising.”

Who has forgotten the tariff scandals that made President Cleveland denounce the Wilson-Gorman bill as “a perfidy and a dishonor?” Who ever can forget the brazen robberies forced into the Payne-Aldrich bill which Mr. Taft defended as “the best ever made?” If everyone else forgets these things the interests that profited by them never will forget them.  The bosses and lobbyists that grew rich by putting them through never will forget them.  That is why the invisible government and its agents want to keep the old method of tariff building.  For, though such tariff “revisions” may make lean years for the people, they make fat years for the powers of pillage and their agents.

So neither of the old parties can honestly carry out any tariff policies which they pledge the people to carry out.  But even if they could and even if they were sincere, the old party platforms are in error on tariff policy.  The Democratic platform declares for free trade; but free trade is wrong and ruinous.  The Republican platform permits extortion; but tariff extortion is robbery by law.  The Progressive party is for honest protection; and honest protection is right and a condition of American prosperity.

A tariff high enough to give American producers the American market when they make honest goods and sell them at honest prices but low enough that when they sell dishonest goods at dishonest prices, foreign competition can correct both evils; a tariff high enough to enable American producers to pay our workingmen American wages and so arranged that the workingmen will get such wages; a business tariff whose changes will be so made as to reassure business instead of disturbing it—­this is the tariff and the method of its making in which the Progressive party believes, for which it does battle and which it proposes to write into the laws of the land.

The Payne-Aldrich tariff law must be revised immediately in accordance to these principles.  At the same time a genuine, permanent, non-partisan tariff commission must be fixed in the law as firmly as the Interstate Commerce Commission.  Neither of the old parties can do this work.  For neither of the old parties believes in such a tariff; and, what is more serious, special privilege is too thoroughly woven into the fiber of both old parties to allow them to make such a tariff.  The Progressive party only is free from these influences.  The Progressive party only believes in the sincere enactment of a sound tariff policy.  The Progressive party only can change the tariff as it must be changed.