Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/94

70 legislative measure could pass that had not the Speaker's consent, and that what he approved had an enormous advantage. This is, indeed, the Speaker wanted by those interests which demand action without debate.

Another instance of the strengthened one-man power is the so-called reciprocity clause in the tariff act. If, after January 1, 1892, any country producing sugar, molasses, hides and so on, levies duties upon agricultural and other products of ours, and the President thinks that the treatment that we there receive is “reciprocally unequal and unreasonable,” he shall have the power to proclaim the imposition of certain duties on our part upon sugar, hides etc. By the way, there is something intensely ludicrous in this sort of “reciprocity.” We admit now sugar up to a certain grade free, professedly, that our people may have cheaper sugar. We admit hides free, very sensibly, to make the manufacturing of leather, of boots and shoes and other leather articles in this country possible. And now we tell those foreign countries substantially this:

If you refuse to admit certain products of ours free, and thus make our President think that we are not fairly treated, he will have a rod in pickle for you. He will have the power, if he thinks you deserve it, to make all our people pay more for their sugar and to ruin all the shoe factories in the United States. And he will do it, too, to punish you. Now take heed!

But this matter has a more serious side. It is held by Constitutional lawyers of high standing, among them Republicans, that in this case the President is empowered to proclaim the impossibility of tariff taxes, not after the mere ascertainment of certain tangible facts, but according to the judgment he forms in his own mind as to the tendency and effect of such facts, a matter upon which there