A Democratic Congress, by act of June 13 1888 (25 Stat. L., 182), directed the newly created Department of Labor "to ascertain, at as early a date as possible, and whenever industrial changes shall make it essential, the cost of producing articles at the time dutiable in the United States, in leading countries where such articles are produced, by fully-specified units of production, and under a classification showing the different elements of cost, or approximate cost, of such articles of production, including the wages paid in such industries per day, week, month, or year, or by the piece; and hours employed per day; and the profits of the manufacturers and producers of such articles; and the comparative cost of living, and the kind of living." The Commissioner of Labor was directed also by this act "to ascertain and report as to the effect of the customs laws."

Pursuant to the provisions of this act the Department of Labor (now the Bureau of Labor Statistics) began investigations into costs of production of iron, steel, glass, textiles, coal, and coke in the United States and in the principal European countries. The work was completed in 1891 and the results were published as the sixth and seventh annual reports of the Commissioner of Labor. Practically nothing further was done 16 until the work was transferred to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in 1912. The explanation of this long period of quiescence is to be found in large measure in the change of administration which followed the enactment of the law of 1888. The Republican party advanced as its supreme issue in the 1888 campaign the uncompromising support of a protective tariff policy. As a consequence of its victory in that campaign, the McKinley tariff was enacted in 1890, and the protection policy was thereby fully recognized and accepted. It was inevitable that continuance of investigations of comparative international production costs, which

16 In 1897 a report was issued on white pine lumber in the United States and Canada and in 1898 a report on the total cost and labor cost in the production of certain articles in the United States.

might be utilized by the opposition party to demonstrate fallacies in the accepted policy, would be discouraged by administrations definitely committed to that theory and that appropriations for such a purpose would not be forthcoming.17 The Tariff Board 1909-1912. With the policy of protection thus dominant, there was apparently no need for the creation of a commission or bureau to study the questions relating to the tariff. But with the continued growth of monopoly, alleged to be fostered by high tariff rates, the gradually rising price level, and the distress which came in the wake of the panic of 1907, general dissatisfaction with the old methods of tariff legislation developed. In 1907, the Merchants' Association of New York adopted a resolution favoring the creation of a tariff commission "which shall take the tariff out of politics and politics out of the tariff.” 18 A similar resolution was adopted by the National Association of Manufacturers in 1908. In 1909, a National Tariff Commission convention was held at Indianapolis and a permanent organization was effected to conduct the campaign in behalf of a tariff commission.

It was not, however, this agitation in the business world or the rapidly increasing perplexities attending tariff legislation which brought about the creation of such a body. Again it was the pressure of a special situation. The Payne-Aldrich tariff law, enacted in 1909, contained a so-called maximum and minimum clause, which imposed upon the President the duty of ascertaining whether foreign nations were discriminating against the United States in their tariff laws, and authorized him to issue proclamations fixing the tariff of the United States accordingly. In order that the President might have expert assistance in executing this purpose of the law, Article 718, Section 2, provided that

To secure information to assist the President in the dis17 Congressional Record, May 9, 1912, Vol. 283, p. 6181. 18 Willis, Scientific Tariff Making, p. 17.

charge of the duties imposed upon him by this section, and the officers of the Government in the administration of the customs laws, the President is hereby authorized to employ such persons as may be required.

Utilizing this minor clause of the law as authorization, President Taft appointed a Tariff Board in September 1909, composed of three Republican members. On March 4, 1911, he added two other members, both Democrats, to the board. 19 From September 1909 to April 1910 the board coöperated with the State Department in the study of discrimination against the United States by foreign countries in their tariff laws. Thereafter investigations were made of the industrial effects of the tariff laws of this country. After conducting investigations and hearings, reports were issued on cotton and woolen textiles; chemicals, oils and paints; pulp and news print papers; and reciprocity with Canada. Much information which was not yet in form for publication when the Tariff Board was put out of existence in 1912, had been assembled on the manufacture of iron, steel, lead, zinc, silk, flax, hemp, jute, hides, leather, leather goods, and sugar; the production of corn and wheat; and the fruit and nut industries.

The work of the board has been described by one of its members as a "mere prologue without a play" since its labors were not reflected in legislation. Shortly after it began its work, the Administration lost its majority representation in the House of Representatives, and was compelled to meet the opposition of leaders who were opposed to a continuance of any protective tariff and saw no utility in a Tariff Board, the existence of which seemed to them predicated on the continuance of such a tariff. President Taft, who was an ardent advocate of a permanent board or commission, endeavored to

19 This was done in order to carry out the intent of bills passed in both Houses of Congress but not enacted in the last session of the 61st Congress providing for the creation of a permanent tariff board of five members,

effect coöperation between the board and the majority party in the House. At one time he invited the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and the members of the Tariff Board to a conference and formally tendered the services of the board to the chairman. No coöperation followed, but instead the "two bodies revolved in different orbits." 20 There developed also much popular impatience with the board's work because it refused to frame recommendations for tariff legislation but instead insisted upon careful investigation which required considerable time. Since President Taft was unwilling to sign tariff measures until the reports of the board were available as a basis for judgment, there was considerable pressure upon the board to justify its existence, and there were evidences that reports were submitted before they had been entirely completed. The fact that various bills could be introduced for a tariff on wool by the Democrats, Progressives, and Republicans, all of them based on the findings of the board, was a shock to many who had hoped that a tariff board would take politics out of the tariff.

As a consequence of the dissatisfaction with its effect upon legislation the Democratic Congress 21 refused an appropriation for the board for the fiscal year 1912-13, thus automatically terminating its existence on June 30, 1912,22 in spite of considerable agitation for the establishment of a permanent non-partisan body of this sort.

Although the Tariff Board experiment had thus turned out an apparent failure, much had really been achieved in furtherance of the idea of a permanent body to aid Congress in tariff legislation.

The experiences of the board were not without value both in the drafting of the law creating the present commission and in providing a basis for its organization and policies.

20 Reynolds in North American Review, June, 1916, p. 852. 21 See Congressional Record, May 9, 1912, Vol. 283, p. 6181 where the board is referred to as a "body of clerks of the President."

22 Appropriations to this date for the board had been $564,220.85.

Perhaps its most important contributions in view of its bipartisan character, was the demonstration of two important facts: first, that while non-partisanship is impossible on so politically important a matter as the tariff, unanimity is possible on findings of facts; second, that while absolutely accurate ascertainment of comparative international costs was not practicable, it was possible "in cases of most staple articles of manufacture to determine the ratio of costs between two different countries.23

Utilization of Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce for Tariff Study. Although the Democratic Congress refused to provide funds for the Tariff Board, the demand was so insistent from influential quarters in all parts of the country for a permanent non-partisan body to study the facts underlying tariff questions that the party leaders felt it politically wise to take some action in this direction. Accordingly the House Ways and Means Committee in May, 1912, reported a bill which included a provision revivifying the long dormant provisions of the act of 1882, which had directed the Department of Labor to make cost of production investigations, by transferring this duty to the proposed Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.

There was much opposition to this proposal on the part of many Representatives who detected in it an attempt to create a new tariff board.24 The bill was passed finally, after it had been made clear that the function of this bureau would only be to ascertain facts in response to the requests made by the President, Congress, and its committees, and that it would not attempt to derive conclusions from the facts. Furthermore, it was stressed that since the bureau was created by Congress it would be under the control of the House of Representatives where tariff legislation originated and not as

23 Emery as above p. 19 et seq.

24 Congressional Record, May 9, 1912, Vol. 283, p. 6179 et seq.