A Commissioner's Defense

The Boards and Bureaus and Commissions of the Government have in recent weeks met with so much criticism that they are in a fair way to becoming more unpopular than Congress. The Tariff Commission has borne a very substantial share of the faultfinding.

Under the flexible provision of the last tariff law (1921), the Commission is ordered to investigate cases where complaints are made, determine for specific articles the costs of production in the U. S. and in the chief competing producing country, then to recommend increases or decreases of the tariff not to exceed 50% of the present law-- which changes the President then may put into effect by proclamation. So far, few recommendations have been made, and practically all of them called for increases of the tariff. This situation, of course, has provoked criticism from low-tariff advocates. Recently The Sun (Baltimore) suggested editorially that the Commission be abolished. This proposal provoked a letter from one of the Commissioners, Alfred P. Dennis, telling the Commission's side of the story:

I should not be inconsolable if Congress should decree euthanasia for the commission. The writer's demonstrated earning power is in excess of his present official salary. It has come about that the flexible tariff, like one's elbow, appears to flex but one way and that way is upward. Consequently, the flexible tariff is a subject that provokes the flexible laughter of its critics. Why this lopsided situation? . . . The Tariff Commission is like a dentist's office, to which people rush only when they have a pain or an ache. . . .

In the straw-hat case recently investigated by the Commission, the interest of the consumer in getting a lower tariff on hats is limited to the problematic saving of, say, 50-c- per year, whereas the Baltimore manufacturer with an output of, say, 100,000 straw hats annually is acutely interested in that most vital of human problems--the problem of making a living. . . .

Another count against the Commission lies in its inability to reach unanimity of decision. On paper the duties of the Commission are simple enough. The matter is essentially mathematical, and mathematics is an exact science. Production costs at home and abroad having been ascertained by the Commission's experts; comparability becomes a matter of cold statistics, leaving small room for soap-box oratory or division of opinion. Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple. The factors in the equation are undetermined variables rather than constants. . . . Every case bristles with controversial points. It so happens that the more conscience and intelligence a man puts into an examination of these questions, the less likely is he to "go along" with his colleagues. A report with split conclusions recently went to the President because the production costs in the chief competing foreign country were limited to the single factory that would permit inspection of its cost sheets. . . .

Ten years might possibly elapse between a general revision of our tariff schedules. There should be some way of correcting specific inequalities during such intervals. If there is any merit in the idea of a flexible tariff, it is too much to hope that an experimental measure devised in a time of abnormal flux and instability in international trade conditions may be rewritten to meet obvious difficulties in practical administration? . . .