concerned, and under section 5 so far as the President is concerned? Is it not mandatory?

Mr. GOOD. Well, I think perhaps it is broad enough to include any information that either the President or Congress might desire with regard to this question.

I intended to take up the bill and go through the different sections, but I believe that by a casual examination of the bill you will see the plan on which it is drawn. The president of the National Tariff Commission Association is here for the purpose of being heard. I know your time is limited, and I will therefore not take any more of it. Mr. BOUTELL. I would like to ask you one more question before you leave that matter, and to make one suggestion along the line of Mr. Underwood's question, which I think goes right to the root of one branch of this matter as to whether the House of Representatives (which under the Constitution, of course, is made responsible for originating revenue leigslation), is going to have control of the tariff board as you have it in mind under this bill, so as to be able to call upon them directly instead of doing it through the Executive. Let me give you a concrete illustration. Suppose you were sitting on the Ways and Means Committee and were interested in a certain schedule of a new tariff-we will say a duty on what are called St. Gall laces and all those who appeared before the committee opposed, ostensibly as importers, the duty on St. Gall laces. Suppose you were quite reliably informed, though not by what would be in the line of proof, that all those importers were, as a matter of fact, foreign manufacturers and exporters-in other words, in exactly the reverse position to that in which they ostensibly appeared before the committee. I give that as a concrete illustration. Does your bill provide for a tariff board upon which the Ways and Means Committee could call for that information?

Mr. BOUTELL. Or would the Ways and Means Committee have to make a request of the executive department and be turned down by the executive department if the executive department did not want to have that information furnished?

Mr. GOOD. I think the bill is broad enough to cover just such contingencies as that-and have the commission furnish that very information that the Congress would want from time to time in order to write a tariff bill free from bias and prejudice and garbled statements, such as Mr. Root mentioned in his speech.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Good, you have provided that members of this board should be selected from certain persons, in certain occupations. I got a letter yesterday from a farmer who said that he believed that one of these commissioners should be a farmer, and while he did not suggest it, we all know that the farmers' interest is one of the greatest-the greatest-interests in this country. Ought there to be such a restriction as to what class they should be selected from? Ought not the farmers' class to be considered?

Mr. GOOD. If the number of the board is made large enough, I would say there is no objection to that; but the number being limited to five, the chairman can well see that every particular industry could not be represented on the board.

The CHAIRMAN. No; but I was asking whether you did not consider it of importance that a farmer should be on it? That is one of the most important classes that you have intended to represent in your bill.

Mr. GOOD. I had felt, Mr. Chairman, that while that is a large industry, yet by training and experience the men with the qualifications such as I have mentioned in the bill would be better qualified to deal fairly with every industry than to take a person, for instance, who had given his whole life and study to a single employment or industry.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not expect that we shall ever be able to get any tariff board the members of which are either disinterested or nonpartisan. I do not take any stock in the idea of taking the tariff out of politics. I think it will be in politics as long as I live, and a good deal longer. We can not get any nonpartisan member of a board whose opinion is of any value; and that being the case, and as you designate certain classes, my inquiry is whether you might not also include in that class, perhaps in preference to any that you have designated, the farming class of the community.

Mr. GOOD. For the reasons I have stated, Mr. Chairman, I think I would not insert that class in the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to make one further suggestion in connection with your remarks. It is a popular fallacy that the producing classes only are heard in the formation of a tariff bill, and that the consumer does not appear and is not represented. There is no greater fallacy in this country than that. The consumer is always represented. He is represented by the importer whose interest is with the consumer in so far as the importation of articles is concerned. The cheaper he can get the articles in, the lower the cost, the lower the tariff, the better of course it is for his business; and he is informed as no other class in this country is informed. He is always on hand, he always appears, he always makes his statement, and it receives the same consideration as the statement of the producer. So that the committees of Congress can not hide behind any excuse that only one class appeared before them, and that the consumer does not appear and is not represented.

Of course, the Tariff Board will run up against this propositionthat the parties who do appear are interested on one side or on the other. There is no man who has ever had any large practice as a lawyer who does not know that his witnesses are generally partisan. Their word can not be taken without a full grain of allowance. He must always look into their motives, always cross-examine and endeavor to get at the truth. Take this recent investigation of this tariff. I think no fair-minded, intelligent man will say, who has read through the 10,000 pages of evidence that was produced before this committee, that each man who appeared was not subjected to a fair and thorough cross-examination in order to get at the truth. I have had several men, editors, who had written a great deal of stuff before they attained the knowledge, who said they were surprised when they came to study those pages the thoroughness with which those witnesses were cross-examined.

If there is any way in which a tariff board would fairly go into this matter and bring out the truth, I want the light turned on this tariff question, in every possible direction, to bring out the truth. I

would not like to see the investigation that is already provided for by law turned aside unless it is provided for in some other way. For instance, one of the most valuable pieces of information before this committee last year was the report made by the Bureau of Manufactures in the Department of Commerce and Labor, where the steel manufacturers of the country, making some 93 to 95 per cent of all of the manufactures of iron and steel, had reported for a number of years and had thrown open their books to the examination of this bureau. The bureau had made its report, which was not made public until these hearings began; and I think my associates will agree with me that the facts that were obtained by the Bureau of Corporations in the Department of Commerce and Labor on the question of the subject of steel threw a great deal of light upon the subject, and enabled the committee, when the witnesses appeared before them, to get at facts that they would not have gotten if it had not been for this report. I would like to see, in the same way, that investigation go on all the time in reference to these industries. It would help any future Committee on Ways and Means that might be framing a tariff bill to get at these facts. The Constitution committed to the House of Representatives the origination of tariff legislation, of all revenue legislation, and conferred upon the Senate only the question of amendment. I have always thought that by "amendment "the framers of the Constitution intended only the amendment which was germane to the bill actually presented to the Senate, and not an amendment to a bill providing only for revenue upon one item, which amendment should cover the whole range of revenue legislation. I believe that that was the intention of the framers of the Constitution, that "amendment" there meant what we term now a germane amendment by way of distinguishing it, and that if that policy had been pursued in all our revenue legislation the object of the framers of the Constitution would have been attained by revenue bills originating among the Representatives elected every two years by the people of the United States.

I only throw that in by way of comment on what you have said. Mr. GOOD. I agree with the premises laid down by the chairman. I can only add in conclusion that it is not the purpose of the bill to take the question of the tariff out of politics, nor do I believe it will weaken the policy of protection. I only claim for it that it will give this committee and Congress power to act upon information that is obtained by an impartial tribunal, and then they can act upon those facts. One of the things, I believe, that has hampered this committee, and has hampered Congress, is the lack of adequate and reliable information. I do not say that in disparagement of the great work of this committee. I believe no committee in Congress has worked more diligently or has put in as many hours at hard work as has this committee, for by the very nature of the things it was incumbent upon it to investigate a great many subjects it did not have the time nor the machinery to better investigate.

The CHAIRMAN. I see that your bill does not suggest a report by this commission as to rates. I think that is a matter peculiarly to be fixed by Congress.

Mr. GOOD. It does not.

The CHAIRMAN. And it can not be delegated and should not be delegated in any way to any tariff board.

Mr. GOOD. No.

The CHAIRMAN. And I think further than that that whatever tariff board is appointed, and however thorough their report, that no committee of Congress having this matter in charge will ever blindly accept their findings. In other words, they will examine into it; and the report must be made good before the committee having this matter in charge. They want to investigate originally before they are prepared to act on the subject.

Mr. GOOD. I thank the committee.

Mr. CLARK. Let me ask you a question. You provide for a nonpartisan board, do you not?

Mr. GOOD. I provide for a board the members of which shall be selected without regard to their political affiliations.

Mr. CLARK. Do you think there is anybody in the United States that is fit to investigate the tariff question that has not already some theory about the tariff?

Mr. GOOD. Well, I assume that a man who has strength of character enough and intellect enough to sit on a board or a commission of this kind would have some views on such questions.

Mr. CLARK. How are you going to get a nonpartisan board, then? Mr. GOOD. I did not say that this bill provided for a nonpartisan board.

Mr. CLARK. What kind of a board is it that you provide for?

Mr. GOOD. A board to be selected by the President without regard to their political affiliations; and I would not object to a provision in the bill providing that not more than a certain given number should be members of any political party.

Mr. CLARK. Why not appoint a board of one man, then? If you leave a majority of one on your board you have as much a partisan board as if the board was made up of one man.

Mr. GOOD. I would not appoint a board of one man, because one man could not do the work any more than this committee is able to do the work.

Mr. CLARK. When you come down to specify who would be on the board, you say: "Two members having special knowledge of the producing interests of the United States.' What do you understand by "producing interests?"

Mr. GOOD. That they should have special knowledge with regard to the various producing interests, such as manufactures. Referring to the idea that your chairman has suggested-that of agricultureif it was thought wise to put a representative of that interest on the commission, that might be done. I mean by "producing interests any of the interests that are producing, that are generally known as producers.

Mr. CLARK. But that is exactly what I am trying to get at. You are the daddy of this bill. What do you mean by "producing interests?"

Mr. GOOD. Persons having general knowledge with regard to production by manufacture, agriculture, or by any other method.

Mr. CLARK. You hear in later years a kind of jargon that has grown up that the industrial States or producing States are simply the manufacturing States. Has not "producing," in the lingo of the tariff talkers, come to mean practically the same as "manufacturing?"

Mr. GOOD. I think that is possibly true.

Mr. CLARK. Do you not think that if you are going to rig up this scheme here at all you had better put it in in so many words that one of them ought to be a farmer? That is the greatest producing interest in the United States.

Mr. GOOD. I do not care so much with regard to the details of this bill. This is a very small detail, as to who shall be members of the commission.

Mr. CLARK. No; that is the very essence of it.

Mr. GOOD. I think the essence of the bill is to have a commission that is permanent, with power to act; and I am perfectly willing to leave to the President the power to appoint high-minded men to be members of the commission.

Mr. CLARK. Now, I can pick out three men that I know, and maybe more if I were to hunt around, highly respectable men in the United States, of fine mental endowments, that believe that this tariff ought to be raised all along the line; and then I can pick out some other men, just as good as they are intellectually, and as patriotic and all that, that believe that it ought to be cut strictly to a revenue basis. Between those two extremes there is every kind of tariff view that mortal man can have. Would not the complexion of the board at last depend on the state of mind the President was in on the tariff question himself?

Mr. GOOD. Possibly, if the law provided that the commission should have power to recommend measures and rates.

Mr. CLARK. What are they up to, if they do not recommend?

Mr. GOOD. They are simply to ascertain the fact. It seems to me if a man is an honest man and will perform his duty it makes little difference, when it comes to investigating a fact and reporting on the cost of producing a given article, whether he is a Republican or a Democrat.

Mr. CLARK. But would not every fellow start out with a preconceived theory and endeavor to bolster it up, just like a fellow goes into the Bible to extract quotations from it to bolster up his theory of infant baptism, immersion, or anything of that sort?

Mr. GOOD. If infant baptism or immersion were a fact instead of a theory, that might be true, but the commission, as the bill has been drawn, will only report facts and not theories, and in the reporting of those facts it seems to me that no man is big enough to sit on that commission who will not report the fact, even though that fact does not fit into his political theory.

Mr. CLARK. Did you ever read an editorial published here last summer in the American Economist and other papers somewhat widely circulated, translated from a paper that was published at Chemnitz, Germany, in which they jumped on the United States Government in general and its tariff board in particular, and one Mr. Reynolds with especial force, and said that the whole thing was impertinent and an insult to all the nations of the earth, and that they came over there browsing around and trying to induce manufacturers to give up their trade secrets and all that kind of stuff, and intimated that the whole tribe ought to be drummed out of the country?

Mr. GOOD. I do not believe I saw it.

Mr. CLARK. You read the American Economist, do you not?
Mr. GOOD. Yes, sir.