Mr. DENNIS. Give me a moment to think about that. I believe I did; yes. Senator LA FOLLETTE. In what connection?

66

I

Mr. DENNIS. In the connection that Mr. Brossard had been publicly represented as a protégé of Senator Smoot's. As I recall it, the President's reply was, So much the better; I have no objection to him on that account." did not feel that a man should go on the commission as a representative of any particular interest. I do not believe Mr. Brossard is a representative of any particular interest. I acquit him entirely of having any interest, financial, political, or otherwise, in the beet-sugar industry of this country. And so forth. When you gave out the statement to the Baltimore Sun, did it cause some expressions of opposition upon the part of some of the employees in the department up there?

Mr. DENNIS. Oh, yes-yes, indeed. It created quite a little furor. As a result of it, one thing leading to another, charges and countercharges, things became so warm that I went to Senator Robinson about it. Mr. Glassie, one of our colleagues, wrote a letter to the Baltimore Sun, and he made a statement about me which I could not swallow. I took it to Senator Robinson, and he said, "Well, we will look into the whole business."

That was the beginning of the investigation of the Tariff Commission by a select committee. I think there are two members of this Committee on Finance who sat on that select committeeSenator Reed and Senator La Follette-and you have before you the testimony given before the select committee.

Senator HARRISON. From this testimony before the select committee it appears that you stated that when you first went on the commission, or afterwards, it organized into groups, and that you finally had to fight one of the groups, and you named in the group Mr. Marvin and Mr. Brossard among some of the members. Is that right?

Mr. DENNIS Oh, yes. Do you want me to go into that?

Senator HARRISON. No; I am just asking you if that is what you said.

Mr. DENNIS. That is true. For the first four months of the commission things went along pretty peacefully. We had no serious controversy. I was appointed in March. I think I signed two or three reports that went in, and there was not a discordant note; but the straw-hat case came up. Some of the members of the commission laid down the principle that a straw hat as it emerged from the factory in Tuscany, Italy, should be compared in its cost of production to an American straw hat in New York and Baltimore. I took the ground that the straw hat in Italy was not competitive; that we had no interest in it until it landed on American soil; that it did not become competitive until transportation charges were paid on the hat. These commissioners whom I was opposing, or who were opposing me, calmly ruled out transportation as a factor in international competition. I carried the matter to a Republican President, who referred the matter to a Republican Attorney General, who supported my contention. That wound up that phase of the transportation controversy.

No sooner had they been compelled to include transportation, however, as a factor in international competition, than they put it to a wrong use, and they began to assess transportation on domestic articles to a common market, when in some cases 90 per cent of those articles never moved to the market or under any conceivable con

dition ever would move. That whole controversy was interwoven with the Canadian log case, which dragged along for about four years. I do not want to go into the sanguinary struggles and fights over that case; but I do want to say that I had something to fight for, and was compelled to fight; and I feel that I am justified by the action of Congress a little later on in giving quasi support to my doctrine of transportation charges.

I do not believe that a man sitting in his comfortable office here in Washington with a stroke of the pen can move one billion feet of logs, made up into rafts, away from their mills in the southern part of Puget Sound up north to the Canadian border and then assess transportation charges on them; nor do I believe that transportation charges should be assessed theoretically on corn grown in Ohio for market in San Francisco, when under no conceivable conditions would that corn ever go to San Francisco. If the San Francisco people want to buy corn in the domestic market, they buy near-by corn, produced in States such as Nebraska, Kansas, or even Iowa. They do not cross Iowa and Illinois and Indiana and go into Ohio to buy corn for use on the Pacific coast.

That one controversy, transportation, split the commission in twain, and it was never settled until we referred it to the arbitrament of the Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. Was corn ever purchased in San Francisco from Ohio?

Mr. DENNIS. It never was, Senator. That was my objection.

The CHAIRMAN, That is why I asked; I thought it could not have been.

Mr. DENNIS. But they assessed it with theoretical transportation charges; and, as I recall, the theoretical charge on Ohio corn delivered on a Pacific-coast market was 43 cents. Well, you can get any answer you want. You can embargo practically every article of commerce that comes into this country if you use transportation charges in that indefensible way.

Senator KING. On the same theory you could have imposed freight charges upon corn raised in New York or down in South Carolina, and hypothetically transported it to San Francisco.

Mr. DENNIS. And you could have taken steel made in the Utah Steel Co., out in your State, theoretically to New York for sale there in competition with Belgian steel.

The CHAIRMAN. I wish we made steel in Utah, but we do not. We hope some day to do it.

Mr. DENNIS. I thought you did.

Serator KING. We make good pig iron-the best in the world.
The CHAIRMAN. Yes; we make pig iron.

Senator SHORTRIDGE. Take a given product raised or produced in Sicily, and a like product raised or produced in California, the principal market being New York City. What have you to say in respect to the element or factor of transportation?

Mr. DENNIS. It is perfectly clear and logical. Ascertain the actual transportation charge on lemons from Messina, if that is your port. or Taormina or Catania, wherever they are shipped from, and set over against that the charge for taking your California lemons to the common principal market of New York. That is the actual movement. But if, perchance, it were possible to raise lemons in the

heart of the Behring region of northern Alaska, I would not want to have that lemon crop taken from northern Alaska to New York. Senator SHORTRIDGE. But in the case which you give us, the true rule, as you understand it, under the law, is to take into consideration the element of transportation in fixing the rate of duty?

Mr. DENNIS. Absolutely, but based on actual movements of goods which under any reasonable condition might move. Suppose the tariff were raised. Then perhaps goods would move from a longer distance to the principal market. That was my view.

The CHAIRMAN. Then your view is the same as that of almost everybody else who has anything to do with the Tariff Commission.

Mr. DENNIS. Senator, why was it that we had to fight for our lives for nearly five years?

Senator HARRISON. And you did not put it in at all until the Attorney General expressed an opinion that you could take it into consideration.

Mr. DENNIS. We did not put it in at all; and after it was put in recently under this method-and that was the method that killed the Canadian log case after it had been prolonged for four years and a half-to show that it was a specious reasoning, when that item came before the last session of Congress you swept away the duty entirely. All that I was asking for was a 50 per cent reduction in that ridiculous duty of $1 a thousand feet on logs imported into Puget Sound from Canada; and you people, looking at the facts of competition as we did-and we had all the figures before us-swept away the duty entirely.

Senator SHORTRIDGE. Then freight rates do enter into this problem? Mr. DENNIS. Oh, absolutely. That was the thing that I contended for.

Senator HARRISON. And it is now stated specifically in the law that transportation shall enter into it.

Mr. DENNIS. Yes; but we did not have it before.

Senator SIMMONS. Mr. Dennis, when you were originally appointed, I suppose when the appointment was finally made you were called by the President and had an interview with him? Mr. DENNIS. Yes, sir.

Senator SIMMONS. Did the President discuss with you in that interview what your views were about the tariff?

Mr. DENNIS. Not at all. The President knew me much better, perhaps, than you do, Senator. As I say, I had lived with him. practically for five years when he was a young, obscure lawyer in Northampton, Mass.

Senator SIMMONS. Of course, he knew you were a Democrat; but did he know

Mr. DENNIS. He ought to have known it. I opposed him in every Northampton election.

Senator SIMMONS. Was there any argument or discussion one way or the other about what your views were?

Mr. DENNIS. Not in the least. He asked me to go on the Tariff Commission. I expressed a disinclination to go on. I told him in the first place that I had some magazine writing which Mr. Hoover permitted me to do in between times, including Sundays, when I ought to have been at church; also, I had two investigations to com

28096--30- -5

plete for Mr. Hoover himself. He said, "Well, think about it. I will give you time to complete the work."

Things drifted along. He wanted to nominate me in Lewis's place on the 6th of September. He did not actually nominate me until the following 5th of March. He was kind enough to help. me along.

Senator SIMMONS. Did he indicate why he did not wish to retain Mr. Lewis?

Mr. DENNIS. Not a word.

Senator SIMMONS. There was no discussion between you and him as to your tariff views?

Mr. DENNIS. None whatever. He ought to have known, though, that I was supposed to know something about the fundamentals of political economy. I had studied the subject. I had three higher degrees at that time. I was a professor in Smith College at Northampton.

Senator SIMMONS. At that time did you in any way differ with the supposed Democratic theory of the tariff?

Senator WATSON. What particular year was that?

Senator SIMMONS. When he was called in conference by President Coolidge.

Mr. DENNIS. That was in 1925.

Senator SIMMONS. Immediately before his appointment.

Mr. DENNIS. Well, that is a hard question to answer "yes" or "no." If one of the fundamental cleavages in opinion which serves to distinguish a Democrat from a Republican is a belief in free trade, I do not believe in free trade, and I do not know that many

Senator HARRISON. Do you know any Democrats now who believe in free trade?

Mr. DENNIS. I do not believe I do; no. I know some college professors, and I think probably Plato, in his Republic, might have been an advocate of free trade, or Sir Thomas More in his Utopia; but I do not know any practical American to-day who is an advocate of free trade. Certainly I am not. I am a protectionist and always have been. I think the industries of this country would go to pot without a measure of protection.

Senator SIMMONS. At that time did you understand the Democratic position to be in favor of protection?

Mr. DENNIS. No; I did not. You have a twilight zone, Senator. Senator SIMMONS. That is the question I asked you-if at that time you entertained views upon the tariff different from those entertained by the Democratic Party as illustrated in its legislation and in its platforms.

Mr. DENNIS. I think, Senator, whether it is in religion or in politics or in philosophy or anything else, no two people in this world think exactly the same. If you will tell me what is the norm or what is the standard of Democratic doctrine, I do not know whether I am orthodox or heterodox or not; but unless I know I am not able to debate the question with you. I think I am a good Democrat.

Senator SIMMONS. But were your views in harmony with the Democratic view on the question of the tariff as enunciated in the previous national convention?

Mr. DENNIS. Why, certainly; and I supported the ticket and contributed to it.

Senator SIMMONS. I am not talking about supporting the ticket. I am talking about your views about the tariff. That is what we are inquiring into now.

Mr. DENNIS. In a broad, general sense; yes. I am a Presbyterian, but I can not swallow everything in the 107 questions in the Presbyterian catechism; but I think I am a good Presbyterian.

Senator SIMMONS. You were at that time known to be in favor of the principle of protection?

Mr. DENNIS. Limited protection; yes-moderate protection.

Senator HARRISON. Then what caused you to get on such friendly terms with Mr. Brossard? Was it because, as you expressed it in your testimony before the select committee, you felt grateful to him later on for having voted with you, so that you had been given an opportunity to speak your views before the commission, you at that time complaining that some of the members had monopolized all the time?

Mr. DENNIS. Senator, you are in error if you think that Mr. Brossard ever supported me in my views on the Tariff Commission. Senator HARRISON. I am asking you about this particular proposition with reference to liberality of discussion and equality of discussion in the commission.

Mr. DENNIS. For about four years in the commission there was no equality of discussion. I was in a hopeless minority. Whatever I brought into a commission meeting and submitted, whether it was oral or written, was figuratively thrown into the wastebasket. Mr. HARRISON. In your testimony on page 193 I note that you say this:

I protested against the disproportionate amount of time allowed to one member of the commission by the chairman. I made a protest against the slipshod, haphazard methods of conducting debate whereby one man could absorb two-fifths of the time of the commission. We had something of a row about that, and I was grateful to Mr. Brossard for siding with me on that occasion, and the commission came to an understanding that hereafter when a man desired to speak

And so forth; so that you could get an opportunity to speak one-fifth of the time, I think.

Mr. DENNIS. Oh, well, being a sensitive man of peace, I wanted to go along with my colleagues as best I could. I had absolutely no ground of understanding with either the chairman of the commission or Mr. Glassie. They were men who were willing to take, but they would never give. They would never yield the least thing by way of compromise on any subject. Mr. Brossard almost habitually voted with them; but I thought at the time, and I still think that he was perhaps a little less stereotyped in his views, that he did have a little more of the spirit of give-and-take in him. I do remember expressing some feeling of gratitude to Mr. Brossard for his intervention in our behalf when things were conducted on the basis of a debating society every day, when six men had to sit around there and listen to two men, one of them an extremely subtle dialectician, discuss everything to tatters out to the fifth decimal. I can give you illustrations if you want to, but I do not want to prolong this.

Senator HARRISON. Did you ever give expression to the fact that you thought Mr. Brossard might change his views after he was con