Tariff Controversies
statesmanlike utterance embodied and expressed the logical culmination of the principles and policies of the Republican party for the preceding forty years; and the future policy from which neither party would venture to depart. There was no further revision of the tariff until 1909, when the Payne-Aldrich bill was enacted by a Republican government; practically a mere readjustment of the Dingley law to meet changed industrial and commercial conditions.
An attempt was made in 1912 to inject the tariff controversy into politics, when the Democrats in their platform again demanded a tariff for revenue only, on the ground that a protective tariff was unconstitutional—an absurd contention, the constitutionality of a protective tariff being all but universally conceded. But when they gained control of the government in that election, and President Wilson called Congress together in special session in April, 1913 for the purpose of enacting a “revenue tariff,” the resulting measure proved to be a hybrid somewhat resembling the former Democratic tariff of 1894. It certainly was not a “revenue tariff” because it did not produce the needed revenue and it failed to tax various articles which might have yielded a large revenue; while on the other hand it retained some decidedly protective features. The average rate of duties imposed was about 28 per cent.
Finally, in their platform of 1916 the Democrats practically conceded the Republican principle by confessing that “tariff rates are necessarily subject to change to meet changing conditions in the world's production and trade.” The Republican platform of the same year once more affirmed the principle of a
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