ABSTRACT
Another new factor arising out of the European war necessarily enters into our present revenue considerations. A lesson every nation has long since learned is that during a period of general war tariff taxation becomes utterly unreliable as a means of meeting either ordinary or extraordinary expenditures. Nations, therefore, no longer hesitate, when such wars come, to turn at once to internal duties as the only certain dependence for suitable and adequate revenues. Viewed from any standpoint, the citizen must be selfish, greedy, and shortsighted who would demand or seriously suggest tariff revision before normal conditions develop and reveal themselves. Since this Government now has in operation an honest, fair, sound, and well-balanced system of tariff taxation, to which all business has become adjusted, it would be both unwise and suicidal commercially to start an agitation or propaganda to materially change or modify the existing system.
