Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

obedience to the subpoena of the commission; but no natural person shall be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or forfeiture for or on account of any transaction, matter, or thing as to which, in obedience to a subpoena and under oath, he may so testify or produce evidence, except that no person shall be exempt from prosecution and punishment for perjury committed in so testifying.

SEC. 707. That the said commission shall in appropriate matters act in conjunction and coöperation with the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission, or any other departments, or independent establishments of the Government, and such departments and independent establishments of the Government shall cooperate fully with the commission for the purposes of aiding and assisting in its work, and, when directed by the President, shall furnish to the commission, on its request, all records, papers, and information in their possession relating to any of the subjects of investigation by said commission and shall detail, from time to time, such officials and employees to said commission as he may direct.

SEC. 708. It shall be unlawful for any member of the United States Tariff Commission, or for any employee, agent, or clerk of said commission, or any other officer or employee of the United States, to divulge, or to make known in any manner whatever not provided for by law, to any person, the trade secrets or processes of any person, firm, copartnership, corporation, or association embraced in any examination or investigation conducted by said commission, or by order of said commission, or by order of any member thereof. Any offense against the provisions of this section shall be a misdemeanor and be punished by a fine not exceeding $1,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court, and such offender shall also be dismissed from office or discharged from employment. The commission shall have power to investigate the Paris Economy Pact and similar organizations and arrangements in Europe.

SEC. 709. That there is hereby appropriated, for the purpose of defraying the expense of the establishment and maintenance of the commission, including the payment of salaries herein authorized, out of any money in the Treasury of the United

States not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $300,000 for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and seventeen, and for each fiscal year thereafter a like sum is authorized to be appropriated.

APPENDIX V

THE TARIFF BOARD AND WOOL LEGISLATION1

WILLIAM SMITH CULBERTSON

During the second session of the Sixty-second Congress no less than six different bills were offered in the Senate and House as revisions of the tariff schedule levying duties on wool and manufactures of wool. All of these bills, although differing widely from each other, were claimed by their framers to be based upon, or at least not at variance with, the findings of the Tariff Board2 in its report on Schedule K. Even the Democrats in their long attack on this report said in conclusion:

So far as conclusions can be drawn from the board's report, it furnishes nothing to justify any change in the rates proposed in H. R. 11019.3

1 An article written by the author of this book in 1913, first published in the American Economic Review for March, 1913, and subsequently republished as House of Representatives Document No. 50, 63d Congress, 1st Session. In the sixth edition of his Tariff History of the United States, Dr. Frank W. Taussig, in discussing the tariff act of 1913, refers to this article and says (p. 431): "It would seem that (in the case of domestic woolens) the Democrats strove to apply the competitive principle. The inquiries of the defunct Tariff Board, and some further calculations based upon them, indicated that a duty of 35 per cent would correspond roughly to the difference in expenses of production between American and foreign manufacturers. "" The Tariff Board referred to is not the present Tariff Commission but the Board established by President Taft under the Tariff Act of 1909 and discontinued by failure of appropriation in 1912.

2 Neither the Tariff Board nor any member of it assumes any responsibility for the use made of the board's statistics in this article or for any observations made about them. I take full and complete responsibility for the construction of the tables and for all the statements made and opinions expressed. (W. S. C.)

3 (H. Rept. 455, 62d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 66.) H. R. 11019 is the bill passed by the Democrats of the House during the first session of the Sixty-second Congress which was prior to the publication of the Tariff Board's report. H. R. 22195 was identically the

Democrats, Progressives, and Republicans alike justified the rates in their respective bills by the facts and figures of the Tariff Board's report. Naturally, all this was quite confusing to the average citizen, and he asked repeatedly: Why did not the Tariff Board recommend rates to Congress? And if it had undertaken this task, what rates would it have recommended?

In answer to these questions, in the first place, it should be said that the Tariff Board was never intended to be a ratemaking body. Its friends aspired to make it a substitute, not for Congress in its legislative capacity, but for the Ways and Means Committee and the Finance Committee in their capacity of collectors of tariff information. Under the Federal Constitution it is practically certain that Congress could not delegate legislative power to a board, but it can give power to investigate and report findings of fact. In the second place these questions suggest a belief, common enough in these days, that there are certain rates which once suggested would be accepted by all as obviously correct. To state this proposition is to answer it, for it must be clear to anyone acquainted with American tariff controversies that the abuse hurled at the Tariff Board last winter would be as nothing compared with the abuse such action would arouse. The fact of the matter is the Tariff Board never intended to go beyond reporting facts and it persistently refused, under urgent political demands, to give even an opinion of what rates it considered equitable and just. No one realized the difficulties of the problem as well as the members of the board themselves and they declined to allow the zeal of those who saw the limitations of a tariff board less clearly than they, to defeat its real usefulness. Tariff making is fundamentally a question of theory rather than a question of statistics. There is no set of rates which are obviously and absolutely equitable and just, for the question which must always be answered first is: "Equitable and just on what political and economic theory?” Rates equitable and just from the standpoint of revenue might be very inequitable and unjust from the standpoint of protection. same bill, introduced after the Tariff Board's report was published. Both of these bills, after being modified in conference with the Senate Progressives, were passed by both branches of Congress and vetoed by the President.

In like manner, rates equitable and just from the point of view of national exclusiveness might be very inequitable and unjust from the point of view of active foreign competition. It will be profitable to examine further the political and economic difficulties in the way of delegating the power of making or recommending rates to a tariff board or commission.

No board could suggest rates until it assumed the tariff policy of some political party to be desirable. Obviously it is not within the province of pure reason to decide which is preferable-a tariff for revenue only or a protective tariff. Complete statistics and facts might be gathered on all schedules of the tariff act and still this question would be no nearer solution. Its answer is found in the political sentiments of the electorate and as long as the voters are the ultimate source of power in the United States the answer must come from them. If the voters through their Representatives in Congress were unanimously in favor of a given tariff policy this obstacle to delegating ratemaking power to a board would be removed for the time being; but it often happens, as it did in the Sixty-second Congress, that different tariff theories prevail in the majorities of the two branches of Congress. In such a case no board could remain nonpartisan that did not attempt to recommend rates based on both tariff theories. It is not likely that the two or three great political parties will very soon agree upon a common tariff program, and, until they do, no commission can take the tariff out of politics. In the past, the political premises on which Congress has prepared tariff acts have been determined at the polls and it seems hardly probable that the people will ever relinquish this right. The Tariff Board as it was constituted of course had no power even to recommend rates, but this discussion should make it clear that if it had undertaken this task it would have been forced to premise its conclusions with some political theory of tariff making.

The political difficulty which stood in the way of the Tariff Board's recommending rates having been outlined, there is the economic difficulty to be noticed. If the board had assumed for the purpose of making a set of rates that a given political tariff theory were desirable, it would have been face to face with the question of efficiency. In the Tariff Board's report on Schedule K there is a vast amount of information relating

« AnteriorContinuar »