It takes no extended examination of any period in the last fifty years—the term covered by the phrase “Our Times” in the title of this book—to convince an unprejudiced student that as far as the tariff is concerned public opinion has never been fairly embodied in the bills adopted. If the popular understanding of protection as expressed in our elections had been conscientiously followed, there would be to-day no duties on iron and steel products, on cheap cottons and cotton mixtures, and, certai

If there was any public question on which the minds of the people of the United States were made up fifty years ago, it was that of the tariff. They had not been made up in a day. On the contrary, it had taken nearly seventy years of experimenting to bring them where they were—seventy years in which all forms of taxation on imported goods had been tried, from the supposed 8½ per cent of the first Congress to the 43 per cent of the “tariff of abominations” in 1828. Some of their experiments had b

The Civil War wrought many changes in the people of the United States, and none more amazing than that in their attitude toward money—the amount they could spend—the methods by which it could be raised. Here was a people who in 1859 had looked with dismay on a debt of $58,000,000 facing confidently one of $2,800,000,000; a people to whom in 1860 raising an income of $62,000,000 had seemed difficult, actually provided in 1866 one of $559,000,000; a people to whom direct taxes had always been abho

Whatever hope moderate protectionists in Congress may have had that the new President would be influenced by their arguments in favor of tariff reform, was soon scattered. General Grant was of uncertain political antecedents. It is doubtful if he ever had any particular interest in the tariff question, and it is certain that he did not at that moment consider it a question for his administration to meddle with. In his first message he advised postponement of revision and against the renewal of t

The bill of 1875 took away from the tariff reformers of the Republican party practically all they had won in an eight years’ fight. The duties were again on a war basis, and while the need of revenue had been the plea for putting them back, everybody knew that the real victory was to the high protectionists. What could the Republican revenue-reformers do? The question came home with force now, for they were on the eve of a presidential campaign. It became still more difficult to answer with the

In a message sent to Congress in December, 1882, President Arthur said: “ The present tariff system is in many ways unjust. It makes unequal distributions both of its burdens and benefits.... I recommend an enlargement of the free list so as to include within it the numerous articles which yield inconsiderable revenue, a simplification of the complex and inconsistent schedule of duties upon certain manufactures, particularly those of cotton, iron, and steel and a substantial reduction of the dut

The most conspicuous political figures in the United States in the fall of 1883 were two Democrats—John G. Carlisle of Kentucky and Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, rival candidates for the Speakership of the House of Representatives. Their contest was something more than a struggle for leadership. A grave question was at stake. Should or should not the Democrats open the tariff question? The Republicans had passed a bill violating their own promises. It was the second time in twenty-two years

It is one of the ironies of the political history of this period that the Democrat who for many years had been among the most devoted to a reform bill, William R. Morrison of Illinois, should not have been in Congress now that the tide had turned to lead in its making. Mr. Morrison had been defeated in the fall of 1886 and it was necessary to have a new chairman for the Ways and Means Committee. Roger Q. Mills of Texas was chosen. The appointment was a red rag to the high protectionists, for Mr.

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 c

“Gentlemen, you can pass your bill. You can pass it when you please,” Colonel Roger Q. Mills told the Republicans in Congress at the outset of the debate on the McKinley Bill; “but whenever it does pass it will have a Hell Gate to go through after it leaves the House and Senate. There is a whirlpool with sunken rocks beneath the surface of the water through which your little craft will have to sail. “You say that this question was settled at the last presidential election. Yes, Grover Cleveland

Two months after the Wilson Bill became a law, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives suffered as thorough a reverse as had the Republicans in 1892. The House stood, after the election, 246 Republicans, 104 Democrats, and 7 Populists. The South returned 33 Republicans. The painful failure of Congress to make the honest and thorough revision of the tariff which the country had expected was certainly one cause of the party’s overthrow. Honorable men could not sanction the scandal

The last man to be heard from in the making of the Dingley Bill, as indeed of its predecessors, was the man who was to buy the goods. In 1896, when the tariff hearings were going on, Mr. Louis Brandeis of Boston, at that time unknown outside of his own professional circle, appeared “for the consumers” as he told the Committee. He was laughed at for his pains. “What’s the use?” was Mr. Dalzell’s protest; “Oh, let him run down,” his sneer, when Mr. Brandeis insisted that it was his right to say wh

No one can study the drift of public opinion in each of the great agitations of the tariff question in the last fifty years without realizing that at least nine-tenths of the people have stood only for such duties as would produce needed revenue and would give industries which were trying to prove their ability to exist in the United States, protection through a limited period. But when it came to the point the people have never had such duties. To those familiar with the methods of tariff-makin

Difficult as it would be for one to realize it who took up for the first time the present tariffs of the United States, they rest on a formula which as it always has been understood by the majority of the people of the country is not especially intricate or confusing. Put yourself back a hundred years or so, when the country was busy with agriculture and commerce and mining. We had an enormous advantage in these pursuits. We were at a disadvantage in manufacturing. To be sure, from the start we