Psst! A Secret!

What is a secret? Representative John Nance Garner, Democrat, of Texas, declared that nothing was a secret which was printed in The New York Times, the Chicago Daily Tribune and The New York Commercial. Therefore he objected that the text of Secretary Mellon's bill for tax reduction was kept "secret" by the Ways and Means Committee.

When the bill was sent to the Committee, a summary of it was given out by the Treasury Department. The text of the bill itself was kept confidential by vote of the Committee in accordance with precedent for revenue bills. Nevertheless, there were leaks. Sections of the bill began to appear verbatim in the above papers, which moved Mr. Garner to say: "I think it is an outrage. I do not hesitate to say it is indefensible when Mr. Mellon has given out the practical contents of the bill and three newspapers have published parts of it, for the committee to hold it up. It is unfair to the rest of the press and to the country.

"Think of a committee working in secret on a great tax bill, when the Secretary of the Treasury has already told practically all that is in it. Suppose somebody had got hold of this bill and tried to sell it to a private interest. A lot of money could have been made out of it.

"Now the subcommittee is going to adjourn, maybe because of the trouble I raised. It may not be so; Mr. Green says he is going to see his daughter.* But the Republicans are not doing anything, anyway. They are only stalling. They have no other object except to stall until pressure can be brought to bear against the bonus." The next day Representative Green (Republican, of Iowa), Chairman of the Committee, ordered the bill made public and it was published at large in the press of the country.

* In Morristown, N. J.