There has not been a presidential election in our time when the tariff positions of the two great parties were as perfectly defined as in 1888. Each had a bill practically complete to offer the country. The Republicans had elected a president and the majority of the House of Representatives. It was natural that they should now demand that their bill be at once adopted. Although the Allison Bill had been practically finished before the election, it had not been sent to the House, because it was claimed that the Democrats were malicious enough and Mr. Cleveland clever enough to pass it in order to have a completed reform to go to the country on. The Senate bill being what we have seen, and Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Mills being the leaders of the House, such action was of course unthinkable, but it was an excuse as good as another for not sending in the bill, and no doubt was accepted by the devout.

As soon as Congress met in December the Allison Bill was taken up, again compared with the Mills Bill, and finally on January 22 passed as an amendment to the latter. In sending the bill over to the House the Senate suggested that it be referred to a Conference Committee of the two Houses. This was to avoid the objection the Democrats were sure to raise, that the Allison Bill was a violation of the Constitutional provision that all revenue measures must originate with the House. Mr. Reed and Mr. McKinley both urged the Conference. To Mr. Reed it was an absurdity that the rules in force could prevent prompt action. At least if the Democrats did refuse to allow a conference on the bill, he wanted to make sure that the country understood that it was not the Republicans who were delaying action in the all-important matter of reducing the revenue; it was the Democrats, the very gentlemen who had so long and so loudly urged the necessity of action!

Mr. McKinley’s proposition sounded reasonable. “The House,” he said, “has given to the country one bill framed upon one principle and based upon the line of party policy with which the majority is in accord. The Senate has given to the country another bill resting upon an entirely different principle and following out an entirely different line of public and party policy. The Senate has asked the House to consent to a committee of conference to consider the disagreement so presented, that they may see if in some manner this great difference between the two Houses cannot be reconciled.

“Now, what do we want to do as practical men? What does the country expect of us? We want to reduce the public revenues and we can reduce them without my friend from Texas being called upon to surrender one jot of his free-trade principles or this side surrendering one jot of its protection principles. If the House of Representatives meets the Senate in free and open conference and those provisions are adopted where the two bills meet on common ground, we can reduce the revenues from thirty-five to forty millions of dollars and still preserve for future settlement the general policy of taxation respectively adhered to by the two parties.

“All we have to do, Mr. Speaker, is to take up these two bills and look at the duties and changes in rates which are common to both. First, the abolition of the tax upon tobacco—$30,000,000; that is common to both bills. Then you take the free list; that is common to both bills. Then you take the administrative features of both bills. Both seek the same purpose; both look to an honest collection of the revenue and an honest administration of the customs laws.

“This administrative bill has nothing to do with politics; it has nothing to do with free trade; it has nothing to do with protection; it has nothing to do with party principles or policies. It is above politics and should be divorced from party. But it has everything to do with an honest administration of the customs laws, whether they are based upon the principle of protection or upon the principle of free trade.

“Now, why not, as practical men, seeking to relieve the Treasury of the United States of its congestion, as described by the President of the United States, meet this condition and relieve the Treasury of its accumulating surplus and leave this vast sum of money with the people, where it belongs? ‘It is not a theory; it is a condition.’ Shall we run away from the condition which we can in part relieve, or waste our valuable time now upon theory?”

The answers of Mr. Mills and his supporters to these arguments were as indignant as to be expected. “Mr. Speaker,” said Mr. Mills, “we have sent to the Senate a bill to reduce taxation. They had originated in that Chamber, or were preparing before we sent this bill to them, in defiance of the Constitution, a bill increasing taxation on the people of this country, an act which they were prohibited by the great charter of our fathers from doing. They have sent that bill so prepared here in defiance of the rules of this House, and it is now proposed that we accept their invitation to appoint a committee of conference and pass this extraordinary measure, and that, too, at a time when the coffers of this Government are loaded with the excess of revenue, at a time when the people of this country are groaning with unnecessary taxation; a bill to reduce the revenues by destroying the commerce of the country and increasing the load of taxation upon the people for private purposes.”

Mr. McMillan was equally severe: “The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. McKinley) has not even pretended that this Senate bill is an ‘amendment’ to the House bill. He could not. He is too intelligent to believe it and too candid to assert it. It is, as he describes it, an entirely different bill; a distinct proposition framed on a different ‘theory.’ As a matter of fact, the Senate does not assume to amend the House bill. The Senate struck out every section of our bill or threw it aside and framed one of their own. In doing so they violated the Constitution, and they now ask us to meet them in conference and concur in this demolition.

“What I want to know of the members of this House is, are you ready to do this in the face of that declaration of the gentleman from Ohio that this is a different and new bill? Have you so far degenerated from those principles that your sires held of adherence to the Constitution as to be willing at the request of the gentleman from Ohio to give up the people’s right to frame a bill in accordance with the people’s principles, and give it over to the Senate, not elected by the people directly, but by the states? Others may do as they please, but for me, I will never, never consent to such a cowardly and ignoble degradation of the rights of the people and the privileges of the House.”

The Allison Bill went to the Ways and Means Committee and that was the last of it under the name of the gentleman who had led in its making.

It was not until a year after its election that the new House got a chance at the tariff. In his first message to Congress President Harrison had recommended a revision of both the schedules and the administrative features of the tariff. He feared, he said, that some disturbance of business might result from the consideration of the subject, but he was certain that this would be reduced to the minimum by “the assurance which the country already enjoys that any necessary changes will be so made as not to impair the just and reasonable protection of our home industries.”

The new organization of the House and of the Ways and Means Committee was admirably adapted to put through a bill satisfactory to the dominant faction of the party—also a bill in which the manufacturer would get what he asked. The chairman of the Committee was no longer William Kelley. Mr. Kelley was in his last illness and the man who for nearly six years had been his chief lieutenant had taken his place. This was William McKinley of Ohio. In 1883, it will be remembered, Mr. Kelley thought he had found his successor in William D. Haskell of Kansas. Mr. Haskell had shown unusual ability both as a parliamentarian and a debater, but the work of the session had been too much for him. He did not recuperate from the strain through the summer, and twelve days after Congress opened in December, he died in Washington. Kelley wept like a child when he heard of Haskell’s death. “Why could not I have gone in his place,” he said; “my work is nearly done, his was only begun.” But Kelley was not alone. Close to Haskell throughout the winter of 1882–1883 had been another young protectionist, one in whom Kelley had great and affectionate confidence. This was William McKinley. Indeed, it had been uncertain at the beginning of the movement for tariff reform in 1880, whether Haskell or McKinley would become Kelley’s first lieutenant. The former had won by his superior energy and superior intellect and it is altogether probable that he would have kept his place if he had lived. At his death McKinley naturally succeeded him. At that time he was about forty-five years old. He had been in Congress since 1876, and from the first the tariff had been his chief interest. His amiability, his earnestness, his almost devout attitude towards the dogma of protection, endeared him greatly to Kelley, and by the time the debate on the Mills Bill came on he was firmly in place. His speeches in that debate and the campaign which followed were among the most popular made. McKinley had an advantage at that time which few of his colleagues enjoyed,—that of believing with childlike faith that all he claimed for protection was true. Moreover, he had no tariff reform record behind him as the best of them had; no speech like Allison’s of March, 1870, could be thrown up at him. Moreover, McKinley was one of those amiable persons who likes to agree with everybody, and even when President, rarely sent away a visitor without making him feel that they agreed more than they differed. He was friendly with many of the Democrats, particularly Colonel Mills, and often consulted him at vexing points. Believing, as McKinley did, in the infallibility of protection, there could not be too much of it; he could with clear conscience give all that the manufacturer asked, and then add a little, confident that he was really fostering prosperity.

But at this particular moment it needed something more than an ardent and amiable chairman to put through the House of Representatives such a bill as it was obvious would be reported. There was a majority of but twenty-one, and with the rules as they were, almost endless obstruction was possible. The probability was, too, that the Democrats would see that all the obstruction possible was applied. The speaker the Republicans had chosen could be counted to take care of this situation. This was Thomas B. Reed of Maine. Mr. Reed was, like McKinley, a protectionist, but he never regarded the dogma as inspired. His well-developed humor, his cynicism, and his large practical sense all helped him to view it for about what it was worth. But that made him no less strenuous a supporter. Indeed, it made him a more adroit and effective one. You could tell beforehand about what phraseology Kelley or McKinley would offer in defence of a schedule. Reed could be counted on for the unexpected. He had no patience with delaying the tariff bill. He believed in doing what the majority wanted done,—when he agreed with the majority,—and he laid down at the start in defiance of precedent a set of orders which enabled him to force rapid action.

When Mr. McKinley called the Committee on Ways and Means, it had before it two bills carefully prepared by members of his own party, providing for what President Harrison had pointed out in his message should be done. These were Mr. Allison’s Customs Administrative Bill, which after passing the Senate had been referred to the Committee nearly two years earlier (March, 1888), and the same Senator’s Tariff bill which in January of 1889 had been referred to the House as an amendment to the Mills Bill. Both of these measures were thoroughly familiar to Congress and the country. McKinley seems to have had the idea at first of making a tariff bill which would include administration as well as duties, but Colonel Tichenor, who had been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of customs and internal revenue, urged so hard for immediate action on the Administrative Bill that McKinley finally introduced it separately and it was promptly passed and signed by the President. This is practically the law under which our customs are still administered. It is usually credited to Mr. McKinley, but with its framing he had, as we have seen, very little to do.

Hearings on the tariff were at once begun. They perhaps were never less justifiable. The Committee had as a guide a great mass of recent testimony which further hearings could do little more than duplicate. But Mr. McKinley took the whole matter too devoutly to omit any of the ceremony. Hearings were a good Republican tradition, and hearings he would have. His was to be no “Dark Lantern bill,” as the opposition delighted in calling the Mills Bill.

The Allison Bill was accepted as a foundation by Mr. McKinley for the new measure which was first reported on April 16. In reporting the bill Mr. McKinley gave notice that general debate would be limited to four days. “I have interpreted the victory to mean, and the majority in the House and Senate to mean,” he said, “that a revision of the tariff was not only demanded by the votes of the people but that such revision should be on the line and in full recognition of the principle and purposes of protection. The people have spoken and want their will registered and their decrees embodied in public legislation.”

Mr. Mills and his colleagues were eloquent in their remonstrances against the limit on the debate, but the program was in too firm hands to be modified by arguments or tactics. The bill passed the House on May 21. The Senate Committee on Finance added hundreds of amendments to it, and the Senate spent some seven weeks debating it. On the 10th of September it passed the upper House and was referred to a Conference Committee. Both Houses agreed to the report of this Committee, and the President signed the bill and it became a law on October 1, 1890.

The matter of first moment in the new bill was of course the method taken for reducing the surplus, which had been piling up in an alarming fashion throughout the three years’ struggle. When Mr. Cleveland made his demand in 1887 for general tariff reduction in order to bring this overtaxation down to a normal figure, the Republicans had offered as a counter proposition—“spend it.” Mr. Blaine started the cry in his letter from Paris suggesting one of the most dubious schemes for handling revenues ever proposed by an American public man of any weight. It was to appropriate the whiskey tax (the internal revenue tax on distilled spirits amounted in 1888 to over $69,000,000) to coast fortifications. If there was something over after this was done and the National government had no use for the money, he would divide it among the Federal Union, with the specific object of lightening the tax on real estate. Mr. Blaine evidently had forgotten for the moment that the Constitution in defining the taxing powers of Congress does not include that of “lightening the tax on real estate.”

There had been various other plans offered. Mr. Aldrich would apply the surplus to the purchase of United States bonds, or as a prepayment of interest on the National debt. One Congressman wanted it applied in bounties to wheatgrowers, another wished it loaned, another would devote it to building the Ead’s ship railway, several proposed using it in elaborate educational schemes. The general consent that the best way to get rid of it was to spend it, of course made Congress reckless in appropriations, particularly of pensions. They jumped from $87,500,000 to about $107,000,000 in Harrison’s first year, and in his fourth year, they had risen to $159,000,000. But spending it was not enough. The taxes must come down some $60,000,000 a year and the Republican suggestion had been, “cut down the internal revenue.” The Republican platform declared, “We favor the entire repeal of internal taxes rather than the surrender of any part of our protective system.” Mr. Allison and his committee considered many suggestions for the repeal of all internal revenue taxes but stopped after taking them off tobacco. Mr. McKinley announced that he had not been compelled to abolish the internal revenue though he was ready to do so if it was necessary to save the protective system. He estimated that the taxes on tobacco and alcohol used in the arts, which his bill did abolish, would amount to $10,000,000. The other $50,000,000 of reductions he proposed to meet in two ways. The first was by so increasing duties that importations would fall off, i.e. Mr. McKinley accepted the principle of Mr. Kelley and Mr. Aldrich that the way to reduce revenue from customs is to make foreign goods which might compete with domestic products too dear to buy. When the Democrats attacked his increase with the assertion that he would increase taxation and so revenue, he answered: “That statement is entirely misleading. It can only be accepted upon the assumption that the importation of the present year under this bill, if it becomes a law, will be equal to the importations of like articles under the existing law; and there is not a member of the Committee of Ways and Means, there is not a member of the minority of that Committee, there is not a member of the House on either side, who does not know that the very instant that you have increased the duties to a fair protective point, putting them above the highest revenue point, that very instant you diminish importations and to that extent diminish the revenue.”

The chief articles which he hoped to make too dear to import were woollens and higher grade cottons, cotton knit goods, stockings, linens, and all iron and steel and metal products, the articles, it will be noted, which are essential to everybody. It was not necessary to raise the rates on all these products to make them too dear to import. Not a few rates then in force could be lowered and still be prohibitive. Thus in the case of structural steel and steel rails, the McKinley bill reduced the existing rate slightly without in the least disturbing the situation.

Mr. McKinley’s pet duty in the metal schedule, and indeed in the bill, was that on tin plate. There had been a duty of a cent a pound on tin plate for some years and throughout much of this period there had been a steady pressure to raise it to 2½ or 2½ cents. In the early ’70’s there had been a little tin plate manufactured in the country. The price at the time had been abnormally high on account of the Franco-Prussian War and the premium on gold. When things dropped back to normal, the industry lagged. But the would-be manufacturers—and many makers of iron plates naturally wanted to turn them into tin plates—for ten years at least had kept up an agitation. The tariff commission of ’82, through Commissioner Oliver’s influence probably, had advised 2½ cents, but Congress refused to raise the duty in the Bill of 1883. The Tin Plate Association and the Iron and Steel Association continued their work. An increased duty on tin plate became, in a way, in the ’80’s, a test of a Republican’s soundness in the minds of the big interest which had put themselves behind the party. If he hesitated, recalled that we had developed no tin mines, that inevitably the price would be higher for a long term, that such a duty would be a blow to an industry many times greater than tin plate could ever be,—that of canning,—that the burden would fall directly on the poor, they being the chief consumers of tin buckets, and cups, of canned fish, meat, and vegetables—the answer was the answer of “Pig Iron” Kelley!—“In God’s name do not let the gentleman lead us to declare that the people of this country shall never manufacture tin plate!”

With the Iron and Steel Association taking the important place it did in the campaign of 1888, it was of course inevitable that the Allison Bill should recognize its demand for an advance on tin plate. Mr. McKinley found the duty then in the bill he inherited and Mr. Allison, who believed sincerely that the tariff on tin plate had justified itself, was sore to the day of his death because Mr. McKinley never credited it to the Allison Bill. It is doubtful if an important duty was ever laid on facts so distorted and in answer to pressure so questionable. The chief advocate was the American Tin Plate Association. Their circulars went out broadcast as appeals to patriotism. “If this little circular should fall into the hands of a patriotic lady or gentleman,” wrote the Secretary in a circular which was printed in 1888, “we ask that you kindly give this matter some study; it is a patriotic feeling and nothing else that instigates the members of this association.” The patriotic lady or gentleman who had given the circular study would have found it started with a statement so absurd that he would have only continued because of the amusement he might get from it. According to this circular we consumed about $35,000,000 worth of tin plate a year (the figure was greatly exaggerated), and “if it were made in this country several hundred thousand residents of the United States would gain a livelihood thereby.” If the value of the tin plate consumed were $35,000,000 and the sum was divided into one-third for materials and two-thirds for wages and the “several hundred thousands” were reckoned as 300,000, their annual wages would have been about $78.00 a year!

Mr. McKinley saw a wonderful future for the industry—23,000 men employed directly in the business (in 1900 there were 4000; in 1905, 5000), $30,000,000 of capital invested (in 1905 it was $10,000,000). He did not seem to think there was any impropriety in a part of the capital ready to go into tin plate making, being that of a member of the House long a supporter of the duty, F. G. Niedringhaus, of Missouri. This gentleman wrote on November 27 a letter read in Congress by Mr. McKinley, saying one of his mills had been arranged for tin plate work and in case of a “proper duty,” he could turn out tin plate on short order, and “if the fact as I believe it to be can be generally established in the minds of the people, that the Republicans will continue to govern this country in the future, there will be plenty of money forthcoming to embark in the manufacture of tin and terne plate.”

The violent attack upon this duty and the very plausible reasons for believing that the industry could never be selfsupporting, led to the adopting of an ingenious provision, limiting the time that manufacturers might have to establish the business. Tin plate was to be admitted free of duty after October 1, 1897, unless in some one of the years between 1891 (when the duty was to go into effect) and 1897, one-third as much tin plate was produced here as was imported in any one of the other six years. This clever device originated with Senator Spooner of Wisconsin.

The Tin Plate and Iron and Steel Associations practically wrote their own schedules in the McKinley Bill. The wool growers and woollen manufacturers did the same. A series of poor years in wool occurred in the ’80’s. There were legitimate causes outside of the tariff for the depression, but a large and influential part of the industry believed or professed to believe the trouble to come solely from reductions in duties made in 1883. These reductions had disturbed the “harmony” in wool which they claimed the growers and manufacturers had established in 1867, and which they now loudly affirmed must be restored if the two branches of the industry were again to be prosperous. There were long petitions presented by manufacturers asking for free wool, arguing that the industry could never hope to compete until it was on an equal footing with other nations in the matter of raw materials; but this point of view was not supported by the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, which by this time had become one of the most powerful political organizations in American industry. It held that the manufacturer must support the duty on wool if he did not wish to set the growers against the duty on woollens. It had been established in 1867 “almost as economic law,” Mr. Whitman, the president of the organization claimed, that the wool-grower was to have his duty, and that the wool manufacturer was to be given two kinds of duties, one which would compensate him fully for the tariffs on his raw materials, not only wool but dyestuffs, and that after that, he was to have the same measure of protection that other industries received. Mr. Whitman claimed that the lowering of the compensating duty in 1883 had particularly disturbed the “economic law.” As we have seen, this duty had been dropped from 50 to 35 cents. In making this drop the Committee had decided that it was a mistake to count 4 pounds of grease wool to one pound of cloth as had been done in 1867, since 4 pounds were rarely used. It had said that 3½ pounds was a generous allowance—as it was. Mr. Whitman remonstrated against this decreased compensation. He wanted the duty based on the 4 pounds and he wanted other upward revisions. The program proposed by the Association was practically adopted. It contained one curious provision new to the wool schedule and important in the later history of the tariff; that was a duty on tops and all wools and hair advanced beyond a washed condition. Tops are wool in one of the early stages on the way to yarn. Mr. Whitman, asked how the cost of making tops compared with that of making yarn, said it was about one-half. In the same examination Mr. Whitman also said the principle which he wished applied in the fixing of the duties was that there should be a higher duty on cloth than yarn, on clothing than cloth, and he suggested that the relative per cent of the three should be 40 per cent for yarn, 50 per cent for cloth, and 60 per cent for clothing. As to tops, which could be made according to Mr. Whitman at one-half the expense of yarn, he suggested for them a duty not lower, as one would expect from the “principle” he had himself laid down, nor indeed did he fix a direct duty. Mr. Whitman suggested that the rate on tops be that fixed for the basket or catch-all clause of the schedule. Turning to that clause we find it to be not less than the rate on yarn, but considerably more. The suggestion was embodied in the McKinley Bill apparently without anybody except Mr. Whitman understanding its motive. Other suggestions of the manufacturers were also adopted, resulting in increased protection on those classes of goods where there was any amount of importation. Generally speaking, the efforts of the manufacturers was to secure advances in both the wool and cotton schedules where competition still persisted.

The wool growers were equally successful. The duties were raised on the various classes of wool. Moreover, the duty on shoddy, mungo, and wool wastes which had been low were raised so high that importation became impossible. This change was made on the imperative demand of the Ohio “Wool Trinity,” who declared these substances were taking the place of pure wool and so injuring the wool-grower. The same argument was largely responsible for an increased duty on carpet wool. We grow no carpet wool in this country and probably can never afford to do so, our land and labor being too valuable. The wool-growers contended, however, that the manufacturer was using carpet wool in making cloth and that they must be protected against this injustice. It is probable that considerable carpet wool does find its way into some grades of cloth, but not enough to have any effect on domestic wool production.

The largest lump of reduction provided for in the new bill came by making raw sugar free and by reducing the duty on refined sugar to one-half a cent a pound. The revenue from sugar was so great, about $55,000,000 annually in this period, that the schedule had been a favorite point of attack for years, when reduction was necessary. There were two difficulties in the way of the Republican protectionist in reducing the duty on raw sugar. The American sugar cane and American sugar beet growers under the high duty which they had been enjoying had come in 1890 to produce about one-seventh of the sugar we used. This amounted to something like 220,000 tons. Of this amount only a little over 3000 tons were made from beets and sorghum. Small as was the amount, the beet and sorghum advocates were as insistent in their demands for protection as the tin plate people. The Kansas (sorghum) and California (beet sugar) Congressmen were certain that, properly protected, these states would produce great quantities of sugar, and it is pretty certain that they were ready to fight the tin plate, wool, cotton, or any other duty if their demands were not granted. Take care of them and they would soon grow all the sugar the United States could eat, they said. Their product, small as it was, caused high protectionists like Kelley, Haskell, and McKinley to rejoice. It was proof of what they claimed—protection did diversify industry, and Kelley, at least, always carried in his pocket a sample of beet sugar raised in this country to show to the doubting. At the same time even Kelley and McKinley found it hard to defend a tax of $55,000,000 a year, to protect an industry which after a century’s experience had been able to supply no more than one-seventh of our wants. The sugar bill was really staggering when it came to be counted up for the century as one advocate of free sugar did; he estimated we had paid $1,400,000,000 in the period. To cut down this tax and at the same time to satisfy the growers, Mr. McKinley proposed that raw sugar should be free and that the sugar-growers should receive a bounty. The idea did not originate with his committee. It had been a provision of the Allison Bill to which Mr. Allison confessed he came slowly, but which he had consented to try “as an experiment.” It had been a hobby of various members for years. John Sherman had long believed in sugar bounties and had often advocated them. In 1888 Joseph Cannon of Illinois had proposed a bill providing for free sugar and bounties for growers. There were many Republicans who baulked at the idea, declaring it unconstitutional. They might not object to an indirect tax like a custom duty, being so applied as to subsidize the man’s business, but when it came to appropriating undisguisedly to this purpose funds raised by taxation they could not consent. It was a case of a distinction without a difference, however, and as they became familiar with the idea the scruples of many of them, enough of them at least, to pass the bill, seem to have disappeared.

The bounty provision gave a fine opportunity to Mr. Mills. According to his way of thinking it was a “bribe,” an “extortion,” a violation of the Constitution, and where might it not lead? Why should not everybody have it? Why should not the “people who are raising corn, cotton, wheat, oats, hogs, and beeves, all slip up the counter and say ‘we will take sugar in ours, too.’” It is difficult to believe that the sugar bounty could have survived a test before the Supreme Court. The Constitution is quite clear in the definition of the taxing powers it gives to Congress. It is for the “general welfare.” If this means anything, it means that the tax shall be for a public purpose; or, as Richard Olney has defined it, “It is the power to raise money from the public for the public.” No stretch of the Constitution could include in this definition the power of raising money to help a few farmers raise sugar beets and sorghum, any more than it could to pension an artist while he learned to paint.

The duty fixed on refined sugar in the McKinley Bill was intended as an attack on the monopolistic powers of the so-called “Sugar Trust.” The official name of the sugar trust in 1890 was the Sugar Refineries Company. It had been formed in 1887, but the operations of the leading concerns which organized it had long been a scandal. In those years, as now, these beneficiaries of the nation’s tariff policy had worked in every conceivable way to avoid paying the duty on their imported raw sugar. False weighing, under-classification, over rebate duties for drawbacks on exports, adulterations, were methods they practised boldly and repeatedly in the ’70’s and ’80’s in their effort to cheat the government. The sugar schedule had lent itself admirably to the manipulation. The aim of the trust was, of course, to keep out all sugar which was eatable, i.e. they aimed to supply the country. Now the line between refined and unrefined sugar is difficult to draw strictly. There are high grade clean raw sugars, and partially refined sugars which may be used without further treatment. These sugars are of course cheap and bought by the poor. The refiners aim to keep the duty on this class of sugars, known in the schedule as Nos. 13 to 16, Dutch Standard (the Dutch Standard is a color test) so high that it will not pay to put them on the market. In the bill of 1883 they had succeeded in doing this. The sugar refiners had not only manipulated the duty on this class of sugar until it was too dear to eat, but they had practised some of their most successful frauds in this region of the sugar schedule. A sample of their operations had been presented to the Senate only a short time before by Secretary Fairchild. It related to a cargo of sugar brought into San Francisco by the American Sugar Refinery (the Spreckles concern). In this case the enterprising importers caused the sugar to be artificially colored in order to reduce the grade below No. 13, Dutch Standard. They had also caused it to be invoiced at 88 degrees, but its actual strength was found to be from 96 to 98 degrees. The attempted fraud made a difference of $61,000 in the duty. The American Sugar Refinery was caught in this instance, but there is no doubt that tricks of this sort had been frequently successful. To take away the duty on these grades then would not only serve the poor, but it would also go far towards breaking up the monopoly. The independent refiners themselves had in the recent hearings advised this. “The remedy for the monopoly in sugar is in your hands absolutely,” one of the independents told the Ways and Means Committee; “that is by putting just so much duty and no more on refined sugar, that if we undertake to get more profit than we ought, England, Germany, and France can send in their refined sugars. The remedy is entirely with you and we expect you to apply it.”

The way in which Mr. McKinley proposed to reach the abuses was to make all sugar below No. 16, Dutch Standard free. Here again the provision was not original. It had been in the first drafts of both the Mills and Allison Bills, but had been so strenuously fought by the sugar interests that it had been dropped in both cases. When this provision of the McKinley Bill reached the Senate it met the opposition of the same gentleman who had been most influential in raising the rates in the Allison Bill, Nelson W. Aldrich. Mr. Aldrich moved that Nos. 13 to 16 be made dutiable. Senators Sherman and Allison both fought him, but Aldrich carried the day. His power at that time, however, was not great enough to rule the conference to which the bill was finally submitted, and the original House arrangement was adopted and became the law.

There was no industrial development related to the tariff which gave the Republicans deeper concern at this period than the trusts. Mr. Cleveland in his message of 1887 had called attention to the aid a high duty gave to combinations struggling for the entire control of a commodity, and the country could not but see that he was right. There was a type of protectionist who refused to admit the connection. According to Mr. Kelley and Mr. Aldrich there could be no monopoly in a protected article. Domestic competition would prevent it. Nevertheless the trusts multiplied and the majority of them were in highly protected industries. Moreover, it was obvious that if there was no duty, the industry would have to sustain a competition which would make monopoly very difficult if not impossible. It was not the Democrats alone who saw this. Senator Sherman, who felt particular anxiety over the question, which he realized might easily defeat the party if it were not settled, thought and said frequently before 1889 that the trust could only be reached through the revenue laws. He had been ready to take all duty from refined sugar in order to destroy the sugar trust, but the majority of his party did not agree with him. They hesitated at admitting a connection between anything so unpopular as a trust and anything so sacred and infallible as protection. An effort was made to dismiss the troublesome phenomenon as of no consequence. Mr. Blaine tried this. “Trusts,” he said, “were state issues.” “They have no place in a national campaign.” In mentioning them he would put in the proviso, “If they are evils,” etc. But this was no more effective than the similar attempt to make people believe that the surplus was a good thing, a proof of prosperity. The unrest increased rather than diminished, and numerous bills were introduced into Congress between 1887 and 1890, aimed at defining, regulating, or suppressing combinations. Bills to tax, to take the tariff from, to investigate and to forbid trusts, pepper the proceedings. Among these bills was a measure of Senator Sherman’s making a combination in restraint of trade a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment. This was first introduced in 1888. It was repeatedly discussed and amended, and now that the tariff revision was on, it was felt that it should be passed. The Democrats did not hesitate to declare that the Republicans’ sudden zeal for the bill was due to their desire to have an answer for those who might criticise their tariff bill as a trust-breeder. At all events, the measure was passed ahead of the tariff bill. Thus an answer was ready for the critics. As Senator Morgan said, “The bill was a good preface to an argument upon the protective tariff.”

More difficult to meet than any other criticism on high protection had always been the fact of the burden it put upon the farmer. Practically everything he had to buy was made dearer by the import duties. His domestic market was undoubtedly enlarged by the stimulus the tariff gave to manufacturers. There were more buyers at home for his products, but they paid the prices of the open-world market. There was no protection for his corn or wheat or barley or potatoes, nor was it generally of an advantage to him that there should be. He was the great exporter of the United States. He produced more than we could consume, and sold abroad. His prices were generally not made here but in the London market. In the cases where we did import agricultural products, high duties had not been levied for the good reason that they would make the necessities of life dearer. It would be a tax on food, and there had always been a reluctance to imposing that. If we did not raise potatoes enough for our people and must import, should we penalize the consumer because the farmer had failed to take advantage of the market at his door? Should we penalize him for the crop failure which might occur at any time? But, argued the protectionist of 1890, we are buying too much food abroad. What are we building up the home market for unless that it may supply all its needs from the home farmer, and it is not doing so. In 1889, said Mr. McKinley, we bought $256,000,000 worth of agricultural products abroad. This should be stopped. It was unjust to the farmer. When the figures Mr. McKinley quoted are analyzed they are less impressive, for upward of $200,000,000 of the importations were sugar, tea, coffee, and articles which we did not produce or in very small quantities, i.e. they were articles which the American farmer as well as factory hand must import if he uses them at all. This fact was slurred over in the argument. We were buying $256,000,000 worth of agricultural products abroad. The domestic market was not doing its duty by the farmer; that duty was to supply all its needs at home. The only reason it was not doing this was because there was too low a duty on the farmer’s products. The factory hands must be forced to buy home-grown potatoes, eggs, and meats. It was as logical, of course, to force the public at large to eat only home-grown food as it was to force the farmer to buy only home-made iron and steel. So in the interests of the farmer the McKinley bill for the first time in our tariff history taxed food generally and heavily. Eggs which had been free, 5 cents a dozen; potatoes, 25 cents a bushel; bacon, 5 cents a pound; barley, 30 cents a bushel. With this program the Republicans hoped to quiet the farmer’s discontent.

It was a political manoeuvre pure and simple. No tariffs can protect the farmer’s products save locally and sporadically. His is the basic world industry. The inhabitants of the earth, all the earth, not a corner of it, are his market. The most imperious cry of men, that for food, calls him. Laws as all-powerful as gravitation govern him. Petty and temporary interferences like tariffs may hinder his labors for a season, but the word of the Almighty is his guarantee that the little schemes of men to keep the fulness of the earth from its creatures are bound to end in confusion. Already the farmers had striking proof that the radical interference with the laws of supply and demand, which had been forced upon the country by the Civil War and which had been kept alive since by a combination of greed, superstition, politics, and loose thinking, were telling on his industry. The entire agricultural production of 1890 was worth only about ten per cent more than that of 1890, but the population had increased some twenty-five per cent. That which had been repeatedly prophesied had happened. The privileges granted to manufacturers had enticed capital from the farms and men from the soil. It was natural that this should be so. Effort will go where the way is made easiest and the results are quickest. There was sound reason in the charge of the free trader. You have ruined our commerce on the high seas, now you are injuring our agriculture.

Moreover, nations will not buy freely of nations that close their doors. The country was beginning to feel this fact. We were antagonizing the foreign market. The member of the Harrison Administration who saw this fact most clearly was James G. Blaine, Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine had been guilty of some curious quakery in the campaign for tariff reform, which Mr. Cleveland had forced. His treatment of the surplus and the trust in their relation to the tariff had been superficial. But to the question of our foreign trade he had given serious thought. He saw clearly enough that increased duties would injure trade and that limiting our trade would hurt the Republican party. There was no mistaking the sentiment of the country on the need of extending foreign markets. Mr. Blaine feared above all things to excite further suspicion that the new bill would be to decrease rather than to increase them. Before the measure had even been reported he made at least one strong protest against a proposed duty on an article heretofore free. This was the duty on hides. For over twenty-five years hides had been free and we had been importing large quantities from South America. The demand for a duty came from the cattle-growers of the West and Mr. McKinley proposed to grant it. When Mr. Blaine heard of this he wrote a letter to Mr. McKinley so sound that one can hardly believe it to be from the same man who had proposed to perpetuate an exorbitant surplus and use it to fortify American cities.

“Dear Mr. McKinley:—It is a great mistake to take hides from the free list, where they have been for so many years. It is a slap in the face of the South Americans, with whom we are trying to enlarge our trade. It will benefit the farmer by adding five to eight per cent to the price of his children’s shoes.

“It will yield a profit to the butcher (Beef Trust) only, the last man that needs it. The movement is injudicious from beginning to end—in every form and phase.

“Please stop it before it sees light. Such movements as this for protection will protect the Republican party only into speedy retirement.

This letter was dated April 10, six days before Mr. McKinley reported his bill. It was effective. Hides were kept on the free list in 1890.

As the debate on the bill went on, Mr. Blaine appears to have become more and more uneasy as to its effect on foreign trade, and to meet the difficulty he proposed a system of what might be called forced reciprocity with the countries of the American Hemisphere. So long as they admitted free to their ports all the products of the United States our market should be open and free to their products; but if they applied their tariffs to our goods or put export duty on their own, they should not enjoy the advantages of our free list. This proposition was made in a report to President Harrison and by him sent to Congress. It caused much discussion and Mr. Blaine was obliged to explain himself repeatedly. On July 11, he wrote Senator Frye, saying:

“The charge against the protective policy which has injured it most is that its benefits go wholly to the manufacturer and the capitalist and not at all to the farmer. Here is an opportunity where the farmer may be benefited—primarily, undeniably, richly benefited. Here is an opportunity for a Republican Congress to open the markets of forty millions of people to the products of American farms. Shall we seize the opportunity, or shall we throw it away?

“I do not doubt that the tariff bill pending in the Senate is a just measure, and that most of its provisions are in accordance with the wise policy of protection. But there is not a section or a line in the entire bill that will open the market for another bushel of wheat or another barrel of pork.”

Mr. Blaine in another letter said:

“If, in the pending tariff, sugar is placed upon the free list, we give to certain countries a free market for $95,000,000 of their products, while they are not asked to open their markets to the free admission of a single dollar of American products. We ought to have, in exchange for free sugar from certain countries, a free market for breadstuffs and provisions, besides various fabrics from all parts of our country. In short, we ought to secure, in return for free sugar, a market for $60,000,000 or $70,000,000 of our own products. It will not require reciprocity treaties to secure this boon. The tariff bill can contain all the necessary conditions. The legislative power is able to secure the desired end. Within the last twenty years we have given the countries south of us free admission for nearly $60,000,000 worth of their products without receiving a penny’s advantage in exchange. If sugar be now made unconditionally free, we shall have given to the Latin-American countries free admission for $150,000,000 of their products. It is time, I think, to look out for some reciprocal advantages. We are a very rich nation, but not rich enough to trade on this equal basis.”

Although Mr. Blaine’s idea was not adopted as he had presented it, a reciprocity clause based on it was embodied in the Tariff Act of 1890. This clause gave the President power to impose duties on sugar, molasses, tea and coffee and hides, all free in the McKinley Bill, if he found that a country which was exporting any of these articles into the United States was levying duties on the products of the United States which seemed to him unjust. There was of course a lively skirmish over giving the President this power. The Democrats declared it unconstitutional and in this view they were supported by Republican Senators as able as Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Evarts; however, it became a law.

As finally passed, the McKinley Bill was a complete victory for that group of protectionists who had been struggling for twenty-five years to force the Republican party to break the pledges repeatedly given during and after the war to lower the customs as rapidly as the financial condition of the country would permit, to repudiate its long accepted moderate interpretation of the doctrine, and to substitute for it the teaching, that the wealth of this country had been produced by protection and that its stability depended upon protection being accepted as a permanent national economic policy. It was equally a victory for the theorist like Kelley to whom protection was sacred because he saw in it a panacea for poverty, and for William Whitman and Joseph Wharton who saw fortunes for themselves in wool, nickel, iron, and steel if they could secure the duties they asked. For John Sherman and Morrill and Allison it was a half-victory only. They had held moderate protection as the only wise and safe policy, but they had been overruled.

The most significant side to the victory was that it established firmly the politico-industrial alliance which organizations like the Industrial League, the Iron and Steel Association, and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers had worked so indefatigably ever since the war to build up. Moreover, in the making of this bill, that alliance had found the Congressional leader it needed—a man who was willing to accept its dictates as to classifications and rates, to fight for them with skill, energy, and technical knowledge, and who took it as a matter of course that he and his party should receive in exchange what financial and organizing aid they required. This man was Nelson W. Aldrich. The part he had played in the Senate in the making of the Allison and McKinley Bills had proved him the first entirely able and what was quite as important, entirely cynical leader, the high protectionists had developed. Those whom he had served so well were not ungrateful. Particularly jubilant was the National Association of Wool Manufacturers. It publicly acknowledged its “great obligations to Senator W. Aldrich of Rhode Island for the masterly manner in which he advocated its cause in the Senate.” “Indeed,” the Bulletin went on to say, “it is proper that we should bear testimony in this connection to the remarkable familiarity with all branches of industry displayed by Senator Aldrich in his management of the tariff bill. Every detail of the most complicated of the schedules was present in his mind for instant response to any criticism or inquiry. Day after day he stood at his post, alert and watchful, rarely speaking except when a response was required, but armed cap-À-pie for attack from any quarter. Rarely in the history of tariff legislation in this country has the whole burden of so protracted a debate fallen upon one man, and certainly no representative in Congress ever acquitted himself more admirably of so great a responsibility.”

The best reason for believing that the methods and principles embodied in the bill would have more than a brief life, that the revolt already begun against its excesses and makeshifts would not weaken it, lay in the fact that the ideal leader for the measure had developed in the Senator from Rhode Island.