The witness was duly sworn by the chairman.

Mr. BROWN. I wish to represent here the Marathon Paper Mills of Wausau, Wis., and the Wausau Sulphate Fiber Co. of Wausau, and the Watab Pulp and Paper Co., of Sartell, Minn., although what I have to say will cover and relate to the entire paper industry. But I am interested in those three companies as stockholder, and I thought I had better speak for them and nothing else.

I want to present to you some reasons why the present status of tariff and tariff regulations affecting the paper industry should be altered.

The situation under these tariffs is grotesque and unusual in the extreme. This industry is now subjected practically to free trade with Canada and is threatened with free trade with European countries under the most-favored-nation clause of existing treaties. Nor has the industry been accorded any corresponding advantage, either by way of reciprocal freedom of trade or in reduced duties on raw materials used in the construction and equipment of mills. This industry has been banished and set apart from all other indutries, without justice and without regard to either the so-called principle of protection or the principle of free trade or the principle of tariff for revenue only. Consequently, the free trader, the protectionist, and the advocate of tariffs for revenue only may logically unite in denouncing the outlawry that has been pronounced against the paper industry.

As I take it, a proper and just application of the principle of free trade to an industry requires the removal of all duties which might affect the industry, whether such duties be imposed upon the finished product or upon the raw materials used in the manufacture or the materials used in the construction and equipment. For brevity, I will hereafter refer to all these classes of materials as raw materials.

A proper and just application of the principle of tariff for revenue only requires a revenue tariff at both ends of the mill. A proper and just protective tariff requires some assumed logical basis, as the difference in the cost of production between our industries and foreign competitive industries.

It can not be denied that a free list secured by the usual logrolling devices of tariff making can be as much an instrument of oppression, of discrimination, and of special privilege as tariff duties, however excessive these may be.

I note that some of the gentlemen of the committee asked as to the politics of one of the gentlemen who have appeared here this morning, and I have been trying carefully to disguise my politics in what I say here.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brown, the committee, of course the majority end of the committee is committed to these schedules; on the politics of its party, it has to write a revenue tariff.

Mr. BROWN. Yes; I know.

The CHAIRMAN. But outside of that we do not care to indulge in any political discussion.

Mr. BROWN. No; I was not proceeding along any political line

whatever.

We have just emerged from the contest over Canadian reciprocity. It is enough in this presentation to say that the paper industry came out of the conflict suffering under extreme and undeserved penalty. This great industry was thrown to the wolves of free trade, the wolves in this case (not using too violent a metaphor) being newspapers that have maintained that all our industries (except paper) were infants, needing protection; that the tariff was not a tax (except as to paper); that any way the foreigner paid it (except as to paper); that free trade in any industry (except the paper industry) meant closed mills and idle labor; that while a cheap coat meant a cheap man, cheap print paper did not mean a cheap newspaper.

You all have fresh remembrance of this gamut of hypocrisy, and you all have your own belief as to when these advocates of both free trade and protection were telling the truth.

The paper industry was never more than a moderate beneficiary of our protective system. In fact, the duties on most of the products of this industry have always been kept at a revenue basis. A revenue basis, at least, as compared with many schedules of our tariff laws, wherein can be found duties ranging as high as 200 per cent duties so prohibitory in many instances as that no importations could follow and no revenue be afforded. The paper industry seems never to have had the avid appetite for governmental tariff privilege possessed by many tariff favorites. Or, if it has had the appetite, it never has been able to secure adequate means of satisfying this appetite.

Full liberty of metaphor warrants the statement that the paper industry is the poor relation at the tariff table, its place being very far below the salt, doomed to gnaw the barren bone of fake Canadian reciprocity.

Without making careful examination of schedules, I believe I am justified in saying that duties on paper products have ranged no higher than 35 per cent, and that many of these duties have been

much less than this.

The zeal of the American publishers for cheaper print paper outran their zeal for Canadian reciprocity, and the zeal of Congress followed closely after, and, in fact, caught up with and passed these publishers in the race for free-trade innovations. The wrapping-paper branch of the paper industry, through what seemed a mysterious legerdemain, came under the ban with print paper. Congress cut the entire paper

industry loose from most of the entanglements of reciprocity, and placed all papers of less than 4 cents value per pound on the free list. Nor was any equivalent advantage or privilege demanded or obtained from Canada. The publishers asked much-Congress gave them

more.

For once the brotherhood of protection did not stand together. The revenue basis of existing duties on paper did not save the industry from the final stroke. Whatever advantages might follow from this proceeding were conferred, not only on the publishers, but also on other industries whose tariff schedules remained practically undisturbed. This was according to what has been written:

For whomsoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away, even that he hath.

If we had only been in Schedule K, I suppose the paper industry might have fared better.

Mr. PAYNE. How is that?

Mr. BROWN. If we had only been in Schedule K we might have fared better.

If I were able-and my political beliefs justified it-I would like to imagine the feelings of a beneficiary of Schedule K, for example, enjoying some of the 100 per cent duties that I understand can be found in this schedule, in his felicitations over the fact that he not only has the favor of such tariff duties, but can also wrap his fabrics in paper purchased in a free trade market.

I am not making opportunity to attack Schedule K. This duty has already been attended to by higher authority. I am only using it for illustrative purposes. Its critics filed their caveat too late, and it still stands with unabated vigor, while the paper industry labors under practical free trade with Canada.

As public opinion, which usually means the toils of an efficient press bureau, will often make an idol of some wholly unworthy spirit, or will pillory undeservedly some citizen who has failed to cultivate popular favor, so the paper industry, through similar curious perversion of popular sentiment, has been undeservedly outlawed and pilloried.

In the nature of things the industry could not have a press bureau to present its claims to the public.

Practically the entire press of the country, including the magazines, yellow and otherwise, constituted itself a gigantic press bureau for the undoing of the paper industry.

The political faith of some of these publications might, without stultification, warrant this attitude on their part; the political faith of many others involved much stultification.

Without reference to prior preachment, these easily became free traders as to paper, letting consistency go hang.

They were troubled not at all by the higher rates of other schedules, but the revenue rates of the paper schedule gave them vast indignation. But they accomplished the purpose of their propaganda.

There be some standard bearers of their political faith who must have this sorrowful thought, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless" newspaper.

Certain of these party organs have given illustrations of the fable of the "Frozen Snake."