Even a limited revision requires the consideration and readjustment of many items.  The exhaustive inquiries and valuable debate from men representative of all parts of the country which is needed to determine the detailed rates must necessarily be accomplished in the Congress.  However perfectly this rate structure may be framed at any given time, the shifting of economic forces which inevitably occurs will render changes in some items desirable between the necessarily long intervals of congressional revision.  Injustices are bound to develop, such as were experienced by the dairymen, the flaxseed producers, the glass industry, and others, under the 1922 rates.  For this reason, I have been most anxious that the broad principle of the flexible tariff as provided in the existing law should be preserved and its delays in action avoided by more expeditious methods of determining the costs of production at home and abroad, with executive authority to promulgate such changes upon recommendation of the Tariff Commission after exhaustive investigation.  Changes by the Congress in the isolated items such as those to which I have referred would have been most unlikely both because of the concentrations of oppositions in the country, who could see no advantage to their own industry or State, and because of the difficulty of limiting consideration by the Congress to such isolated cases.

There is no fundamental conflict between the interests of the farmer and the worker.  Lowering of the standards of living of either tends to destroy the other.  The prosperity of one rests upon the well-being of the other.  Nor is there any real conflict between the East and the West or the North and the South in the United States.  The complete interlocking of economic dependence, the common striving for social and spiritual progress, our common heritage as Americans, and the infinite web of national sentiment, have created a solidarity in a great people unparalleled in all human history.  These invisible bonds should not and can not be shattered by differences of opinion growing out of discussion of a tariff.

PUBLIC BUILDINGS

Under the provisions of various acts of Congress $300,000,000 has been authorized for public buildings and the land upon which to construct them, being $75,000,000 for the District of Columbia and $225,000,000 for the country at large.  Excluding $25,000,000 which is for the acquisition of land in the so-called “triangle” in this city, this public building legislation provides for a five-year program for the District of Columbia and between an eight and nine year program for the country at large.  Of this sum approximately $27,400,000 was expended up to June 30 last, of which $11,400,000 has been expended in the District and $16,000,000 outside.

Even this generous provision for both the District of Columbia and the country is insufficient For most pressing governmental needs.  Expensive rents and inadequate facilities are extravagance and not economy.  In the District even after the completion of these projects we shall have fully 20,000 clerks housed in rented and temporary war buildings which can last but a little longer.