onsin, fought the measure sturdily, but with little success.
"Jokers" slipped in here and there, and more than one critic has charged
that the Senate was less solicitous for the rights of the consumers than
for the rights of the "interests."

Several schedules have come in for the most severe kind of criticism. In
the cotton schedule the increased rates laid upon certain classes of
cotton goods seem to have been imposed for the benefit of New England
manufacturers. These rates affect articles used by every person in the
United States. Most of these articles are manufactured from raw material
produced in America, and the cost of manufacturing the staple articles
is but slightly higher than in any of the important competing countries.
The average rate imposed by the Dingley Tariff, according to the Bureau
of Statistics, was 38 per cent on cotton cloth and similar rates on
other cotton goods. Since 1897 the "infant industries" have grown, and
some have in recent years declared dividends of 66 per cent per annum.
The Payne-Aldrich Bill increased the average rate on cotton goods from
44.84 per cent in the Dingley Tariff to 50.62 per cent. The increases
are not so much on the high-priced goods as on the cheaper grades.

In the case of the wool schedule the object of criticism has been the
discrimination against the carded woollen industry, which produces the
poor man's cloth, in favor of the worsted industry. This is due to the
imposition of a uniform duty of eleven cents per pound on raw, unwashed
wool, by which the cheaper woollens are taxed as high as 500 per cent,
and frequently amounts to less than 25 per cent on the finer grades.
Based on this system of duties is a graded scale in which the rates rise
in an inverse ratio with the value of the goods. Some duties have been
lowered, but the change has been slight. The schedule remains nearly the
same, but the burden has been shifted.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Photograph by Clinedinst, Washington.
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich.

There are reductions--more, numerically, than increases--but the
reductions are effectively modified by shifted classifications.

One thinker of note has termed the "maximum and minimum" clause as "the
highest practical joke of the whole bill." Little has been said of this
clause except in connection with the "minimum." It must be remembered
that there is also a "maximum," and it does not augur well for the
consumer. Suppose a foreign nation d