f tariff making were some observations by Mr. Wilson on
the principles of tariff revision. He saw and said that a complete
return to a purely revenue tariff was not then possible even if
desirable, and that the immediate objective of tariff reform should be
the adjustment of rates so as to permit competition and thereby
necessitate efficiency of operation.

The ideas which in March, 1909, were merely the criticism of a college
professor had become in March, 1913, the program of the President of
the United States, the leader of the majority party, determined to get
his program enacted into law. Congress was convened in special session
on April 7, and the President delivered a message on the one topic of
the tariff. Going back to the precedent of Washington and Adams, broken
by Jefferson and never resumed again, he read his message in person to
the Congress as if to emphasize the intimate connection between the
Executive and legislation which was to be a feature of the new
Administration. The principle of tariff reform laid down in that bill
was a practical and not a theoretical consideration, the need of ending
an industrial situation fostered by high tariffs wherein "nothing is
obliged to stand the tests of efficiency and economy in our world of
big business, but everything thrives by concerted agreement.... The
object of the tariff duties henceforth laid must be effective
competition, the whetting of American wits by contest with the wits of
the world."

The measure which Democratic leaders had already prepared for that
purpose and which eventually became known as the Underwood-Simmons Act
was intended to accomplish its end only gradually. Notoriously
outrageous schedules of the Payne-Aldrich Act, such as that dealing
with wool, were heavily reduced, and the general purport of the bill is
perhaps expressed in the phrase of Professor Taussig, that it was "the
beginning of a policy of much moderated protection." It went through
the House without much difficulty, passing on May 8, and then it struck
the Senate committee rooms, from which no tariff bill had ever emerged
quite as innocent as it entered. The usual expeditionary forces of
lobbyists concentrated in Washington and the Senate talked it over,
while Summer came on and Washington grew hotter and hotter. In course
of time Senators began to come to the President and tell him that it
was hopeless to get the bill through at that session and that
Washington was gettin