Borah Bloc

With Congress away, the Senate Committee on Finance last week settled down broodingly upon the Tariff Bill whence, some six weeks hence, will be hatched out a major legislative controversy for Senate consumption.

The whole solemn rigmarole of tariff-making was started over again, as if action by the House had never been taken. Witnesses began marching forward to repeat to the Senators the identical arguments for special favors they had made last winter before the House Ways & Means Com- mittee. The same disputed items--cattle, meat, hides, flaxseed, fresh vegetables, dairy products, sugar, shoes, cement, shingles--were the items for discussion.

But a new situation confronted the Republican committee members who, general revisionists all, were spoiling to get their hands on the bill, to tear apart the House's handiwork, to frame a measure all their own. Farm-state Senators, Republicans and Democrats, had formed a Borah Bloc on the tariff, were definitely on the offensive and plotting trouble.

The husbandman's complaint, expressed through his representatives to the Senate committee, was specific: By raising tariff rates on manufacturers and raw materials as well as on agricultural products, the House bill had failed to diminish the gap of economic inequality between Industry and Husbandry. Louis John Taber, Master of the National Grange, stated it thus: Industry enjoys a 40% tariff protection; the House bill raised Husbandry's protection to 31%, another 9% must be forthcoming from the Senate.

To achieve that 9% farm protection by increasing farm rates, reducing industrial rates, equalizing protection in the manner promised by President Hoover, was the purpose of the Borah Bloc. With characteristic caution Senator Borah himself kept out of the Progressive-Democratic coalition, which he had inspired, though he gave it his benediction, promised future assistance.

Led by Nebraska's Senator Norris and Democratic-Leader Robinson the bloc constituted a powerful combination of votes virtually the same as had for so long tormented President Hoover with the Export Debenture Plan in the Farm Bill. It took its name from the support it gave last week to a Borah resolution to instruct the Finance Committee to confine tariff revision to the farm schedule. Last week it held informal meetings, laid plans, apportioned among its membership the special study of different schedules for technical contests on the Senate bloc, prepared to scatter through the land to stump against the general revisionists of the Finance Committee.

In its first test of strength--the vote on the Borah resolution--the coalition was beaten, 39 to 38. But 38 represented the virtual rock bottom of the coalition's strength which could be augmented by minor compromises, when the item-by-item voting comes. Senator Borah, in a thunderous speech, predicted the cement duty would add null to the cost of road building, denounced the glass schedules from "eyes to mirrors," vowed he would rather see no bill passed than that produced by the House.

The limited tariff coalition might well have had the support of President Hoover were it not for two miscellaneous items added to their tariff baggage. One was the Debenture Plan which, forced out of the Farm Bill, Senator Norris and his followers were now determined to tack on the Tariff Bill. The other was the proposal of Virginia's Senator Glass to impose a $5 tax on every $100 share of stock purchased for speculation. The test for "speculation" was to be whether the stock was held for less than two months.