THE TARIFF

Oil & Sugar

Oil and sugar make a bad tariff brew. Oil men discovered that fact for themselves last week when their efforts to trade sugar votes for oil votes foundered disastrously on the Senate floor.

Behind the drive for a tariff of $1 per bbl. on crude oil were these economic facts: last year the U. S. produced about a billion barrels of oil. Its net imports, free-listed, were about 53,000,000 bbl. Largest importers are Standard of New Jersey, Standard of New York, Gulf, Royal Dutch Shell. When, as a conservation measure, President Hoover tried to induce U. S. oil producers to limit their output, the American Independent Petroleum Association balked. These independent producers argued that it would be futile to limit U. S. oil output so long as the four big importing companies could freely bring in oil. Decreased production, they claimed, would lead only to increased importations. Their proposed remedy was a stiff duty on crude oil to cut imports and make domestic conservation possible. The big oil companies fought any such customs restriction.

Six weeks ago only three Senate votes were mustered for a duty on oil. Into Washington then marched a vigorous oil lobby. Last week 27 senators voted for an oil tariff. It was not enough. The proposal was beaten by 39 Senate votes.

The oil lobby's very zeal defeated its purpose. Not twelve hours before the Senate voted on the oil amendment to the tariff bill, the Senate Lobby Committee had uncorked a gusher of damning evidence which fairly swamped the oil lobby's chances of success.

The head of the oil lobby was Wirt Franklin, able Oklahoma oil producer, President of the A. I. P. A. Heeled with a $50,000 fund, he began to operate in Washington a month ago. Through Secretary of War Hurley he secured an invitation to lunch with President Hoover.

The Franklin lobby method was to trade Senate votes. He would promise a Senator interested in an increased sugar duty a vote for sugar in return for his vote for an oil duty. Thus he lined up the Colorado and Louisiana "sugar" Senators for an oil duty on the promise that Oklahoma's "oil" Senators would later vote for sugar.

At the Senate's night session at which the oil duty proposed by Oklahoma's Senator Pine came up Wisconsin's Senator Blaine effectively excoriated the oil lobby's activities. Excerpts:

"This lobby organization would trade Senators, would trade the President, would trade anybody to win. . . . This new commercialism, not by the use of greenbacks but by the exchange of commodities--oil for sugar, sugar for oil! Shame should bring to these men's countenances the realization that they do not hold in their pockets the votes of the Senate."

The Blaine blast drove Mr. Franklin from the Senate gallery where he was watching the climax of his endeavors. He returned in time, however, to break a Senate rule by scoring the roll call which totaled his defeat.

Broad were the smirks when "oil" senators feebly defended this proposed duty as a form of Farm Relief.

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