eady come into the United States free, as
they are not competing with our products. Between eighty and ninety per
cent of all our imports from South America are now admitted to the
United States free of duty. The great country of Brazil--over ninety per
cent of all our imports from there come in free of duty. So that the
field to be covered by reciprocity treaties with those countries is
comparatively narrow, and that question is not a question of first
importance in regard to our relations with them. There are, however,
some countries in regard to whose products I should like very much to
see an opportunity to make reciprocity treaties.

But this opens up a broader subject. I do not think that the subject of
reciprocity can now be adequately considered or discussed without going
into that broader subject, and that is the whole form of our tariff
laws.

In my judgment the United States must come to a maximum and minimum
tariff.

A single straight-out tariff was all very well in the world of single
straight-out tariffs; but we have passed on, during the course of years,
into a world for the most part of maximum and minimum tariffs, and with
our single-rate tariff we are left with very little opportunity to
reciprocate good treatment from other countries in their tariffs and
very little opportunity to defend ourselves against bad treatment. Of
course this is the side that I look at; this is my point of view. I may
be wrong, but this is the way it looks to me--that any country in the
world can put up its tariff against our products as compared with
similar products from another country without suffering for it so far as
our present laws are concerned. We go on taking that country's products
at just the same rates as we did before. Any country in the world knows
that if it puts down our products in its tariff it will get no benefit
from it because we will have to charge it the same rates that we charge
the country that treats us the worst. The maximum and minimum tariff
would be free from one serious difficulty that arises in the negotiation
of reciprocity treaties. That difficulty is this: When you make a
reciprocity treaty with Country A, agreeing to receive certain products
from that country at less than our tariff schedules, you are immediately
confronted by Country B, which is equally friendly with us, treats us as
well or perhaps better, and to which we cannot with good grace refuse
the same. Then comes Country C w