whole divulged. The beneficiaries are then safe behind their bulwarks.

Of course, the chief triumphs of committee work, of covert phrase and
unexplained classification, are accomplished in the framing of tariffs.
Ever since the passage of the outrageous Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act our
people have been discovering the concealed meanings and purposes which lay
hidden in it. They are discovering item by item how deeply and
deliberately they were deceived and cheated. This did not happen by
accident; it came about by design, by elaborated, secret design. Questions
put upon the floor in the House and Senate were not frankly or truly
answered, and an elaborate piece of legislation was foisted on the country
which could not possibly have passed if it had been generally
comprehended.

And we know, those of us who handle the machinery of politics, that the
great difficulty in breaking up the control of the political boss is that
he is backed by the money and the influence of these very people who are
intrenched in these very schedules. The tariff could never have been built
up item by item by public discussion, and it never could have passed, if
item by item it had been explained to the people of this country. It was
built up by arrangement and by the subtle management of a political
organization represented in the Senate of the United States by the senior
Senator from Rhode Island, and in the House of Representatives by one of
the Representatives from Illinois. These gentlemen did not build that
tariff upon the evidence that was given before the Committee on Ways and
Means as to what the manufacturer and the workingmen, the consumers and
the producers, of this country want. It was not built upon what the
interests of the country called for. It was built upon understandings
arrived at outside of the rooms where testimony was given and debate was
held.