Up: 3 ; Down: 4

Last week President Hoover started the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act on its second year with a cautious bit of rate-flexing. On recommendation of the Tariff Commission, he upped the duty on dried eggs (from China), hemp cordage (from Italy) and bicycle bells (from Germany). He lowered the duty on bentwood furniture (from Czechoslovakia), olive oil in pack- ages (from Italy) religious and commercial organs (from Canada). He agreed with the Commission that no flexing was needed for the rates on pig iron, cheese, hides and skins, olive oil in bulk or cast bells, chimes and carillons.

When President Hoover signed the tariff act with six gold pens, he promised to make liberal use of its flexibility provision to eliminate "inequalities and injustices." During the law's first year the Commission was asked to investigate 193 commodities with a view to rate changes.

In this period the President, on the Commission's advice, increased three duties (wire fencing, wire netting and Fourdrinier wire), reduced seven (maple sugar and syrup, straw hats, pigskin leather, edible gelatine, wood flour, wool felt hats), let stand unchanged six (ultramarine blue, wool floor coverings, pipes, pipe bowls, cigar and cigaret holders). The Commission's recommendation to cut the rates on canning tomatoes, tomato paste and cherries, sulphured or in brine, President Hoover rejected. Last week's flexing made the President's tariff score: rates cut, 11; rates upped, 6; rates unchanged, 14; total, 31. There are 3,200 articles listed in the Tariff Act.

Critics of the Republican tariff last week flaunted in the Administration's face this extravagant forecast made by Indiana's Senator James Eli Watson, Republican leader, in June 1930. "It is my prediction today, deliberately made on the floor of the Senate, that after the passage of this [Hawley-Smoot] bill . . . this nation will be on the upgrade, financially, economically and commercially within 30 days, and that within a year from this time we shall have regained the peak of prosperity we lost last October."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.