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CHAPTER XX.

EXEMPTION AND POLITICAL PLATFORMS.

Since toll exemption had its origin in the intense feeling against railroads, and in the desire to aid shipping and the ship building industry, it became a most fertile field for political crops.

The bill was approved August 24, 1912, which was before the Presidential election of that year, held in November; but the three nominating conventions were held, one in June, one in July, and one in August. What would a National Convention be without its long drawn out jumble of words and phrases called "the platform?"

The first to be held was the Republican Convention, which was convened the latter part of June, but it, for some inscrutable reason, escaped the catastrophe by making no declaration about toll exemption. By referring back it is found that Senator Root was chairman and his wisdom may have directed the course, or it might be that this issue had not then been created. The invention belonged to the Baltimore Convention, and it was entitled to the patent, which fate compelled its votaries in Congress in 1914, to utterly break up and destroy. The party thereby received their reward for thrusting an extraneous plank into the platform.

The Baltimore platform was adopted July 2, 1912, and the exemption plank read as follows:

"We favor the exemption from tolls of American ships engaged in coastwise trade passing through the Panama Canal. We also favor legislation forbidding the use of the Panama Canal by ships owned or con

trolled by railroad carriers engaged in transportation competitive with the canal."

The Progressive party at Chicago as late as August 7, 1914, also fell into the exemption maelstrom and adopted the following plank:

"The Panama Canal built and paid for by the American people, must be used primarily for their benefit. We demand that the canal shall be so operated as to break transportation monopoly now held and misused by the transcontinental railroads, by maintaining sea competition with them; that ships directly or indirectly owned or controlled by American railroad corporations shall not be permitted to use the canal, and that American ships engaged in coastwise trade shall pay no tolls."

This plank was adopted in August and was intended to affect the national officials to be elected in November, and to be installed in office still later. By August 7, the exemption act was almost through Congress with little active opposition, and became a law a few days later, on August the twenty-fourth. It was not an issue before the country at the election of 1912. Thus how utterly frivolous to bring such a matter into the platforms of that year.

Under the canal treaties this was a non-partisan and in some respects an international question, and not a matter for political exploitation. In America, through custom and practice, almost everything is appropriate to a national platform, such as planks in favor of labor, against trusts and the railroads. So it was thought in 1912, that a platform would be weak and defective, indeed, without a plank declaring for toll exemption, although it must have been evident that the law was then virtually through Congress.

As no political party could expect to carry forward

an important national election without more than a score of issues, what difference did it make in 1912, so that there were an abundance of issues, whether they were live or extinct issues? It did make a difference in 1914, to the party who invented the toll plank in 1912, for many in Congress voted to sustain the platform pledge, while many others cast the platform to the winds, and voted to repeal the exemption law which an impolitic platform had supported.

The mystery is, how any could be held by the binding pledge of the platform, when it was throughout the country declared, that a treaty would be revoked and held of no force, through "a change of circumstances" after the signing thereof. Why did not our Congressmen apply the treaty doctrine to the platform, and at once free themselves from the entanglements, by claiming that they were absolved through the "change of circumstances" since the national conventions? But some will loyally follow a platform because of a supposed pledge.

A political platform is neither "law nor gospel, far from it; it is made for the occasion and might be out of date the day after it was declared. Suppose a platform declared for peace with any named nation, and we were attacked immediately, by this same nation; of what binding force, this platform, in such an emergency? Suppose a platform declared for free trade and before the sitting of Congress, universal bankruptcy should fall upon the country and a tariff law would be the only salvation; should we adhere to the platform or disregard it to save the country?

This question must always be met and solved: When should a party platform be thrown aside and when observed? Political expediency makes the platform, but circumstances must absolutely determine

when it may be cast aside as unbinding and impracticable. While honor requires the observance of preelection pledges, still what shall be done when these conflict with the obligations of office?

To avoid the dilemma, platform pledges should be few and far between. Which should prevail, duty to a faction, or duty to the state?

CHAPTER XXI.

A BRITISH STATEMENT.

In a former chapter we stated that it was impossible to think that any citizen had taken a course in the repeal of toll exemption in favor of England in preference to his own country.

On June 29, 1914, a statement was made by Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons which has an important bearing on this subject. It was but justice to Americans that the statement was made and given such world-wide publicity. We print the following from the news columns of the Philadelphia Public Ledger of June 30, 1914, by express permission:

London, June 29.-The repeal of the act exempting coastwise shipping from payment of tolls for passage through the Panama Canal was the subject of a portion of a speech by Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons today. Sir Edward was replying after a general debate on the appropriations for the Foreign Office, and he paid high compliments to President Wilson and the motives underlying his action.

The Foreign Secretary remarked that while a settlement had been reached it had not been entirely free from misrepresentation which might have in it the seed of future mischief. He added:

"It is due to the President of the United States and to ourselves that I should, so far as possible, clear away that misrepresentation. It was stated in some quarters that the settlement was the result of bargaining or diplomatic pressure. Since President Wilson came into office no correspondence has passed, and it ought to be realized in the United States that any line President Wilson has taken was not because it was our line, but his own.

"President Wilson's attitude was not the result of any diplo matic communication since he has come into power, and it must have been the result of papers already published to all the world.

"It has not been done to please us or in the interests of good relations, but I believe from a much greater motive-the feeling that a Government which is to use its influence among the nations to make relations better must never when the occasion arises flinch or quail from interpreting treaty rights in a strictly fair spirit."

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