revenue secured, but not until then." To provide against increasing the public debt was the "mandate of duty, the certain and easy remedy for most of our financial difficulties." The receipts of the Government must be made to equal or exceed the expenditures, otherwise a deficiency is inevitable. "While a large annual surplus of revenue may invite waste and extravagance, inadequate revenue creates distrust and undermines public and private credit." Deficiencies, he pointed out, can be met either by loans or by increased revenue. "Between more loans and more revenue there ought to be but one opinion. We should have more revenue, and that without delay, hindrance, or postponement. A surplus in the Treasury created by loans is not a permanent nor safe reliThe best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes-not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt — through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both."

ance.

In these plain words so characteristic of McKinley for their simplicity and common sense, the President correctly indicated the starting-point where the country might expect to begin a successful rebuilding of its shattered industries. Revenue first, was the important consideration. The method of raising this necessary revenue must be through

the restoration of the principles of the Protective Tariff. That, in the President's judgment, had been as clearly demanded by the people at the polls as the soundness of our money. He maintained that protective tariff legislation had "always been the firmest prop of the Treasury," and that the passage of such laws would strengthen the credit of the Government both at home and abroad, and go far toward stopping the drain upon the gold reserve. With confidence restored, the revision of the currency laws could proceed with deliberation, until the right solution should be agreed upon.

Perhaps the public who heard or read these expressions in the Inaugural Address did not fully realize the shrewdness of judgment that lay behind them. The President knew that more revenue was not only imperatively demanded, but was obtainable at an early date. He also knew that any change in the currency laws intended to establish more securely the soundness of our money would be practically impossible under conditions then existing. The Fifty-fourth Congress, elected in 1894, was strongly Republican, and had already taken steps to prepare a tariff bill along the lines which the President would naturally favor. The Fifty-fifth Congress was also Republican in both branches, and on the Tariff the party was united. A bill to provide

revenue along the lines of protection could therefore be expected to pass readily — although as the event proved there were difficulties in the Senate. On the other hand, the prospect for such legislation on the currency as the country imperiously demanded was not so bright. The House was antiSilver by a good majority, but this was not so in the Senate, where there were 46 Republicans, 34 Democrats, 5 Populists, 3 Independents, and 2 Silver Party men. The combined opposition were all in favor of free silver and could count at least four Republicans to act with them. Any attempt to pass a gold-standard measure through a Senate of such complexion would have been futile.

Under these circumstances, the President's determination to settle the Tariff question first of all, and for that purpose, to call an extra session of Congress immediately, was a wise one.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE DINGLEY TARIFF

HE Fifty-fifth Congress convened in extra

TH

Tression and the President

session, on March 15, 1897, and the President sent a message urging an increase in the revenues of the Government by means of additional duties on foreign importations, so levied as "to preserve the home market so far as possible to our own producers; to revive and increase manufactures; to relieve and encourage agriculture; to increase our domestic and foreign commerce; to aid and develop mining and building; and to render to labor in every field of useful occupation the liberal wages and adequate rewards to which skill and industry are justly entitled."

Thomas B. Reed was again elected Speaker, and he promptly appointed the Committee on Ways and Means, naming Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, as chairman. Mr. Dingley immediately introduced a new Tariff bill. It had been prepared in the Fiftyfourth Congress by a committee composed of nearly the same membership, after long deliberation and many public hearings, which had ended only a few days before. The majority of the committee were therefore already agreed on the new measure, and four days after the session began it was favorably

reported to the House. Acting under the famous "Reed Rules," which both political parties now endorsed, the bill was taken up for consideration on March 22, and March 31 was fixed upon as the day for a final vote. With this small opportunity for debate and amendment the bill was passed on the date named, by a vote of 205 to 122. In the Senate, its course was not so smooth. The Committee on. Finance, to which it was referred, reported the bill to the Senate on May 4 and it was taken up for consideration on the 25th. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, the chairman of the committee, stated that the amendments which the committee proposed were in the nature of reductions in the duties proposed by the House and intimated that the Republican Party did not desire any extreme legislation on the Tariff. It soon developed, however, that the Silver Senators held the balance of power, and did not hesitate to demand, as the price of their support, concessions in the direction of higher duties. The result was that when the bill was passed by the Senate, on July 7, it carried duties higher than those of the House bill, instead of lower as Senator Aldrich and his Republican colleagues intended. Some of these were still further increased in conference. Thus it happened that the Dingley Tariff, originally intended by its author to impose duties lower than