needed, and at the same time apply and confirm the doctrine of protection, as to labor, manufactures and a home market.

The war of the Rebellion helped to sanction this Act to the popular will and universal need. It was amended by the Act of December 24, 1861, so as to increase the revenues. It was still further amended by the Act of June 30, 1864, which increased rates of duty, and made them more protective. There was another amendment, March 2, 1867, which chiefly related to manufacture of woolens, an industry which had been greatly stimulated by the war, and which was threatened by foreign competition in time of peace.

The principle of both revenue and protection had now been strained to the uttermost by the exigency of war, and the period had arrived for a modification of duties. This modification came about under the amendatory Tariff Act of June 6, 1872, which reduced duties to a considerable extent, but without much discrimination, and added largely to the free list.

TARIFF ACT OF 1874.

Though this Act did not attempt general revision, and was still amendatory, it was nevertheless important in the respect that it was an attempt to correct the inconsiderate reductions of the Act of 1872. The panic of 1873 had followed the reductions of 1872, and though it was a world's panic, and hardly attributable to the legislation of any one nation, it served as a reminder that such catastrophes had invariably succeeded a too rapid reduction of duties and too wide a departure from the policy of protection. Therefore the Act of June 22, 1874, stiffened rates on dutiable articles of a kind which was liable to suffer from competition, broadened the protective idea as to new industries and home labor, and at the same time allowed a liberal free list, mostly of raw materials and unmanufactured articles. It was passed

during the first session of the Forty-third Congress, which had a large Republican majority.

TARIFF ACT OF 1883.

The Republican platform of 1880 contained a distinctive protective plank; the Democratic platform declared for “a tariff for revenue only." The Forty-seventh Congress had a Republican working majority in the House, but a tie in the Senate. Owing to the death of Garfield and the little work done by the previous Congress, it stood at the apex of an immense amount of legislation. At the first session, a bill was passed, May 15, 1882, creating a Tariff Commission. This Commission sat at various places during 1882, and its report became the basis of the Tariff Act of the succeeding session. It was a non-partisan Commission, and its existence was due to a sentiment pervading all parties that some highly deliberate step was necessary to correct the incongruities of existing Tariff Acts, and re-adapt rates of duty to our newer and more widely diversified industries.

The Commission worked laboriously, and with deference to the spirit of reform which had called it into existence, and, it may be said, with due regard to the sentiment of the hour against prohibitive, or even protective, rates as to established industries. Its conclusions pointed to measures which reduced duties along the entire line of imports, in general at least 25 per cent., in some cases more, in others less. Though the Congress did not adopt all of the conclusions of the Commission, its report, as already stated, formed the groundwork of the Act of 1883.

The Act was passed March 3, 1883, after protracted discussion. While it strove to equalize rates and abolish incongruities, it did not prove to be a success. Interests were so conflicting that it was impossible to avoid crudities and

hardships. The demands of manufacturers for lighter duties on, or for free, raw materials worked to the injury of the producing classes, and vice versa. The Act was in the nature of a compromise all round, but it showed that the entire country had come to regard this class of legislation as of the highest moment, and vital to its interests.

In the Forty-eighth Congress (1884), which, after the political "tidal wave" of 1882, contained a large Democratic majority in the House, a determined effort was made to pass the Morrison Tariff Bill, which provided for a horizontal reduction of duties to the extent of twenty per cent. The Democrats divided on the merits of the bill and it was disposed of by striking out its enacting clause.

TARIFF ACT OF 1890.

The Republican National platform of 1884 distinctly enunciated the doctrine of protection. The Democratic platform contained a pledge of "tariff revision." There was no further excitement over the tariff till President Cleveland delivered his message to Congress in December, 1887. It was devoted almost wholly to tariff systems and laws, excepted to existing duties on wool and necessaries, and directly opposed the protective idea. It was an earnest paper and had all the weight of a deliberate and special announcement to the American people. The free-trade wing of the party hailed it as a recognition of their views. The "revenue reform" element, headed by Mr. Randall, regarded it as unwise, as containing the seeds of political disaster, and as crushing out the minority element in the party. The Republicans treated it as a challenge to contest to the bitter end the issue of Free-Trade vs. Protection, though they regarded it as unnecessarily bitter in expression, especially in such sentences as, "But our present tariff laws,

the vicious, inequitable and illogical source of unnecessary taxation, ought to be at once revised and amended." The English press was profuse in its praise, and as the Spectator said, "His terse and telling message has struck a blow at American protection such as could never have been struck by any free-trade league."

What became known as the "Mills' Tariff Bill," supposably framed to meet the President's views, was reported to the House of Representatives March 1, 1888. It made significant reductions in existing tariff rates, and at once became the absorbing measure of the first session of the Fiftieth Congress. It was evident that upon it, and the repeal of internal taxation, party lines would be closely drawn, except as to the Democratic contingent led by Mr. Randall. The bill proved to have been hastily and crudely drawn, and the debates upon it took a wide range and were exhaustive of the merits of free-trade and protection. It passed the House July 21, 1888, but was met by a counter bill in the Senate, which embodied the Republican doctrine of protection. The two parties were now hopelessly wide apart, the time of the session was exhausted, and both appealed to the country on the record made in the Congress.

The Republican national platform of 1888 pledged uncompromising favor for the American system of protection. The Democratic platform reaffirmed that of 1884, endorsed the views of President Cleveland in his last annual message, and also the efforts of the Democratic Congress to secure a reduction of excessive taxation.

The issue of the campaign of 1888 is well known. With Harrison was elected a Republican Congress. The issue had been so wholly that of Free-trade vs. Protection that the way of the Republican majority was plain. The Com

mittee of Ways and Means, whose chairman was William McKinley, invited all the interests concerned in tariff revision to a hearing. A bill was finally framed, which became known as the "McKinley Bill." The effort was to embody in the bill the experience of all former tariff legislation, and what was best of all former Acts; to impose rates of a distinctively protective character, and in the interest of American labor, on manufactures which could exist here, but whose existence was threatened by foreign competition; to impose similar rates on goods, such as tin plates, which we did not, but could manufacture, and ought to; to largely reduce the duty on necessaries, or exempt them altogether, as by making sugar free; to increase the free list by placing all raw materials on it whose importation did not compete with the home growth of the same; to introduce the policy of reciprocity by which we could gain something by enlarged trade in return for the loss of duties on sugars and such articles.

A great deal of thought was given to the bill, and it was fully debated in Congress. Perhaps no Tariff Act was ever passed, in whose preparation so many interests had been so fully consulted, and with whose provisions the varied interests were so fully satisfied. Certainly none ever passed that had to undergo more minute criticism, whose merits were more elaborately discussed, and respecting which so many prophecies, good and bad, were indulged. Its passage occupied the entire time of the first session of the Fifty-first Congress, and it was not until October 1, 1890, that it became a law. No other enactment of the Congress approached it in importance.

So prominent was this legislation, and such the character of prophecies respecting it, that hardly anything else was heard in the Congressional campaign of 1890. As the im