that time had reached the Senate,--to the Finance Committee of the Senate.
But I am told,--and I have no reason to doubt it,--that it never came out
of the pigeonholes of the committee. I don't know, and that committee
doesn't know, what the information it contained was. When Mr. Aldrich was
asked about it, he first said it was not an official report from the
German government. Afterward he intimated that it was an impudent attempt
on the part of the German government to interfere with tariff legislation
in the United States. But he never said what the cost of production
disclosed by it was. If he had, it is more than likely that some of the
schedules would have been shown to be entirely unjustifiable.

Such instances show you just where the centre of gravity is,--and it is a
matter of gravity indeed, for it is a very grave matter! It lay during the
last Congress in the one person who was the accomplished intermediary
between the expert lobbyists and the legislation of Congress. I am not
saying this in derogation of the character of Mr. Aldrich. It is no
concern of mine what kind of man Mr. Aldrich is; now, particularly, when
he has retired from public life, is it a matter of indifference. The point
is that he, because of his long experience, his long handling of these
delicate and private matters, was the usual and natural instrument by
which the Congress of the United States informed itself, not as to the
wishes of the people of the United States or of the rank and file of
business men of the country, but as to the needs and arguments of the
experts who came to arrange matters with the committees.

The moral of the whole matter is this: The business of the United States
is not as a whole in contact with the government of the United States. So
soon as it is, the matters which now give you, and justly give you, cause
for uneasiness will disappear. Just so soon as the business of this
country has general, free, welcome access to the councils of Congress, all
the friction between business and politics will disappear.

* * * * *

The tariff question is not the question that it was fifteen or twenty or
thirty years ago. It used to be said by the advocates of the tariff that
it made no difference even if there were a great wall separating us from
the commerce of the world, because inside the United States there was so
enormous an area of absolute free trade that competition within the
countr