of this kind offered rare ammunition to those who needed it in a political campaign. Grant was not fastidious in his friends. He picked them as he chose without regard to others' liking. When Rawlins died he lost the only man whose judgment about others had a deciding influence on his own. No one could fill the place which Rawlins left in his affection and respect, and Grant's associates became more miscellaneous after death robbed him of Rawlins at the very threshold of his term. "What Grant needs," Charles Eliot Norton wrote to Curtis, "... is independent, sympathetic, intelligent, and trustworthy counselors. . . . He is easily influenced by what one may call second-class ideas if skilfully put before him; and his magnanimity, which was conspicuous during the war, degenerates into something not far from a vice in the peaceful regions of politics." Norton here deftly caught a phase of Grant which few have seen; and yet there is no patent on his remedy. It takes no prescience for a stranger to discerna ruler's need of suitable advice. The counselor whom Norton had in mind was Curtis or some one else agreeable to both. But Grant had his own tastes and ways; he could not be made over. It is just possible that in the long run it was quite as well. 1 Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. 1, p. 413. REFORMS CHAPTER XXXVIII THE TARIFF; THE CIVIL SERVICE; It was open season for reformers; they were trying their luck at all sorts of abuses, real and imaginary. The protective tariff was a favorite shot, and "revenue reform" a popular cry - a recrudescence of the "free trade" policy which had prevailed since the beginning whenever Democrats were in control. But now it was not limited by party lines, for there were good Republicans who strongly urged revision of the Morrill Tariff enacted just before the outbreak of the Civil War. This sentiment was strong especially among Republicans in the Middle West, who had come to look upon the tariff as a scheme to benefit New England and Pennsylvania manufacturers. Men like Allison and Garfield, just rising into prominence in the House, urged a reduction in duties. Garfield, a student, was almost a free trader, an honorary member of the Cobden Club of England, but he was "practical" in his conception of the application of reform. "Whatever may be the personal or political consequences to myself," he told the House, "I shall try to act, first for the good of all and within ... that limitation for the industrial interests of the district which I represent. . . . If I can prevent it I shall not submit to a considerable reduction of a few leading articles in which my constituents are deeply interested when many others of a similar character are left untouched or the rate on them increased." The agitation resulted in the Tariff Act of 1870, in which after a hard struggle the friends of protection retained their advantage, the reduction in duties, counting both the free and dutiable list, averaging only about five per cent. The chief gain the reformers made was in reducing the duty on pig iron from $9 to $7 per ton. The battle raged around pig iron. Horace Greeley told Garfield that if he could he would make the duty one hundred dollars a ton, and all other duties in proportion. It was a time of general recrimination. The friends of protection then as now were charged with working for the "interests," while the attitude of the reformers was attributed to the malign influence of the Cobden Club and lavish expenditure of "British gold." Grant made no boast of economic wisdom, but in his annual message of December, 1870, he said just enough to show that he had the tariff on his mind. It was the beginning of the short session of an expiring Congress and there could be no further legislation for at least a year. "Revenue reform has not been defined by any of its advocates to my knowledge," he wrote with pertinent irony, "but seems to be accepted as something which is to supply every man's wants without any cost or effort on his part." His own opinion was that "with the revenue stamp dispensed by postmasters in every community, a tax upon liquors of all sorts, and tobacco in all its forms, and by a wise adjustment of the tariff, which will put a duty only upon those articles which we could dispense with, known as luxuries, and on those which we use more of than we produce, revenue enough may be raised after a few years of peace and consequent reduction of indebtedness to fulfill all our obligations. . . . Revenue reform, if it means this, has my hearty support. If it implies a collection of all the revenue for the support of the Government, for the payment of principal and interest of the public debt, pensions, etc., by directly taxing the people, then I am against revenue reform, and confidently believe the people are with me. If it means failure to provide the necessary means to defray all the expenses of government and thereby repudiation of the public debt and pensions, then I am still more opposed to such kind of revenue reform." A year later at the beginning of the new Congress he again took up the question urging that the surplus be reduced "in such a manner as to afford the great est relief to the greatest number," and recommending the "free list" for many articles not produced at home "which enter largely into general consumption through articles which are manufactured at home from which little revenue is derived." Should a further reduction be advisable, he suggested "that it be made upon those articles which can best bear it without disturbing home production or reducing the wages of America's labor." Two tariff bills were enacted by the new Congress; one which Grant signed on May 1, 1872, put tea and coffee on the free list, thus contributing to "the free breakfast table" extolled by Republican protectionists. The second, approved May 3, 1872, was a compromise. It lowered duties on a good many articles, among them salt, bituminous coal, tin, leather, manufactures of cotton, wool, iron, and steel, shaved the stamp taxes, and forgot to renew the friendless income tax. The act, like all tariff compromises, was a log-rolling affair. Samuel Bowles wrote one of his comforting letters to his dear friend Henry L. Dawes, who managed the bill in the House as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee: "You certainly have won a brilliant victory on the tariff. . . . It is not statesmanship and you know it. . . . There is a better way of making a tariff than by a combination or compromise of all the cotton mills and woolen mills |