Sweet Leak

Congressman John Nance Garner, new minority leader of the House, last week discovered a leak, let out a warning shout. His face red with apprehension, he pointed an accusing finger at the locked double doors of the House Ways & Means Committee behind which Republican committee members were secretly writing a new tariff bill. Mr. Garner charged that through the doors had seeped many a fact by which shrewd men in trade could profit. Such leaks, he cried, were "unfair . . . unjust . . . not right . . . wrong . . . indefensible!" Republicans calmly retorted that, if leaks there had been about the new tariff bill, they were "unintentional." Certain tariff facts loomed large in ad vance of the bill's presentation: Sugar. The prospect of a higher sugar duty brought to Washington agitated representatives of the Cuban producers. The proposal to limit the free entry of Philippine sugar to 500,000 tons per year accounted for the presence in Washington of Speaker Manuel Roxas of the Philippine House, President Pro Tempore Sergio Os-mena of the Philippine Senate, and Philippine Secretary of Agriculture Rafael Alunan. They had traveled 11,000 miles to enlist Secretary of State Stimson in a protest. The beet-sugar industry (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah) complains that it cannot meet competition from Cuba and the Philippines. To protect its market, it would raise the world sugar duty from $2.20 to $3 per 100 Ib. Cuba, enjoying a 20% differential, would pay $2.40 per 100 Ib. instead of the present rate of $1.76. Such an increase would add $90,000,000 to the annual U. S. sugar bill. Even with this protection, free sugar from the Philippines landed in New York at $3.55 per 100 Ib., would still menace the beet-sugar industry, claimed its leaders. Hence the house committee considered putting a limit of 500,000 tons on the amount of Philippine sugar admitted duty free and imposing a special duty (amount unsettled) on Island imports above that limit.

The Messrs. Roxas, Osmena and Alunan went into conference with Secretary Stimson in his role as onetime Governor-General of the Philippines. Mr. Alunan had once been president of the Philippine Sugar Association and, in his official capacity as Secretary of Agriculture, he foresees only ruin for the Island's industry if the U. S. taxes their chief product. Secretary Stimson was sympathetic. He went before the Republican members of the Ways & Means Committee last week as an evangel for free Philippine sugar.

To tax this Island commodity, he said, would be a "betrayal of trust by the U. S. toward a dependent people." He argued that Philippine sugar, less than one-fifth of U. S. consumption, does not affect the domestic market, that the attempt to limit Philippine sugar came not from the U. S. beet-sugar industry but "directly from those interests which have invested in Cuban sugar." He denied that domestic sugar interests could increase their production if importation from the Philippines were restricted.

What Secretary Stimson left to Philippine officials to say was that such a sugar duty would inflame the Islands to fresh demands for independence.

Flexibility. In the 1922 tariff act the experiment of flexibility was first tried. The President can raise or lower duties 50%. The House Republicans had before them last week a recommendation from the Tariff Commission to remove the 50% limit and allow the President unlimited authority to alter tariff rates.

Even good Republican protectionists were startled and shocked by this proposal. If enacted, it would end the necessity for all tariff legislation for generations. As in recent legislation for waterway development, public buildings, flood control; as in the prospective laws on reapportionment and farm relief, a legislative function would be transferred to the Executive branch of the government, from the Capitol to the White House, giving the President absolute power to operate the country's most controversial economic machinery.