It was inevitable that when the effect of the changes was made clear there should have been at once a cry raised that Mr. Aldrich, in allowing these increases of duties, was rewarding Mr. Lippitt for the able work it was known that he had done in the last senatorial campaign. It was pointed out that the goods affected were not common coarse goods. They were the higher grades which are made in the Manville Mills, and well made. It was also said that Mr. Lippitt was adding to his mills a big mercerizing plant. “He expects to pay for it out of that extra cent,” the cynical said. It was certainly natural and necessary that Mr. Aldrich should resent these charges, but Mr. Aldrich went a little too far in his denials, and, taken _seriatim_, they look queer, at least. “No manufacturer has been before the Committee on Finance in regard to this schedule. Every change that was made in it was made upon the recommendation of the government experts and nobody else.” But later Mr. Aldrich said: “They (the new rates) are the creation of the _committee itself_, and no man was consulted either on the Board of Appraisers or anywhere else with reference to these provisions until the committee had decided what they should be”; and again—“The _committee_ having decided what to do, they turned the matter of _regulating_ the schedules to the experts of the government, and never to any manufacturer at any time.” It is probably true that Mr. Lippitt was not before the Senate committee. It was not necessary. His suggestion made to the Ways and Means Committee had been used by Mr. Aldrich almost intact. Moreover, the work of the “experts” to which Mr. Aldrich referred had been done with Mr. Lippitt. It was an open secret in Washington that Mr. Lippitt spent weeks with Messrs. Sharretts and De Vries, the government experts, whom Mr. Aldrich said first had made every change in the cotton schedule and whom, a little later, he said had done nothing of the kind, but simply _regulated_ them.