Stability of economic policy must always be the prime economic need of this country.  This stability should not be fossilization.  The country has acquiesced in the wisdom of the protective-tariff principle.  It is exceedingly undesirable that this system should be destroyed or that there should be violent and radical changes therein.  Our past experience shows that great prosperity in this country has always come under a protective tariff; and that the country can not prosper under fitful tariff changes at short intervals.  Moreover, if the tariff laws as a whole work well, and if business has prospered under them and is prospering, it is better to endure for a time slight inconveniences and inequalities in some schedules than to upset business by too quick and too radical changes.  It is most earnestly to be wished that we could treat the tariff from the standpoint solely of our business needs.  It is, perhaps, too much to hope that partisanship may be entirely excluded from consideration of the subject, but at least it can be made secondary to the business interests of the country—­that is, to the interests of our people as a whole.  Unquestionably these business interests will best be served if together with fixity of principle as regards the tariff we combine a system which will permit us from time to time to make the necessary reapplication of the principle to the shifting national needs.  We must take scrupulous care that the reapplication shall be made in such a way that it will not amount to a dislocation of our system, the mere threat of which (not to speak of the performance) would produce paralysis in the business energies of the community.  The first consideration in making these changes would, of course, be to preserve the principle which underlies our whole tariff system—­that is, the principle of putting American business interests at least on a full equality with interests abroad, and of always allowing a sufficient rate of duty to more than cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad.  The well-being of the wage-worker, like the well-being of the tiller of the soil, should be treated as an essential in shaping our whole economic policy.  There must never be any change which will jeopardize the standard of comfort, the standard of wages of the American wage-worker.

One way in which the readjustment sought can be reached is by reciprocity treaties.  It is greatly to be desired that such treaties may be adopted.  They can be used to widen our markets and to give a greater field for the activities of our producers on the one hand, and on the other hand to secure in practical shape the lowering of duties when they are no longer needed for protection among our own people, or when the minimum of damage done may be disregarded for the sake of the maximum of good accomplished.  If it prove impossible to ratify the pending treaties, and if there seem to be no warrant for the endeavor to execute others, or to amend the pending treaties so that they can be ratified, then the same end—­to secure reciprocity—­should be met by direct legislation.