A final novelty, reciprocity, was the favorite scheme of the Secretary of State. Blaine, in his foreign policy, saw in the tariff wall an obstacle to friendly trade relations, and induced Congress to permit the duties on the chief imports from South America to be admitted on a special basis in return for reciprocal favors. McKinley, as his experience widened, accepted this principle in full, and died with an expression of it upon his lips. But in 1890 most protectionists inclined toward absolute exclusion, regardless of foreign relations, and were ready to raise the rate whenever the imports were large.
In the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill it was noticed that a third body was sharing largely in such legislation. After each house had passed the bill and disagreements on amendments had been reached, it was sent to a Joint Committee of Conference whose report was, by rule, unamendable. In the Conference Committee the bill was finally shaped, and so shaped that the Republican majority was forced to accept it or none. The party leaders who sat on the Committee of Conference were a third house with almost despotic power, and were, as well, men whose association with manufacturing districts or protected interests raised a fair question as to the impartiality of their decisions. The Republican reply, in their hands, to the assertion that the tariff was the mother of trusts was to raise the tariff still higher and to forbid the trusts to engage in interstate commerce.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Life of Henry Demarest Lloyd, by C. Lloyd (2 vols., 1912) contains an admirable and sympathetic survey of the growth of anti-trust feeling, and should be supplemented by the writings of H.D. Lloyd, more particularly, "The Story of a Great Monopoly" (in Atlantic Monthly, March, 1881), and Wealth against Commonwealth (1894). The philosophy of Henry George is best stated in his Progress and Poverty (1879), and is presented biographically by H. George, Jr., in his Life of Henry George (1900). The most popular romance of the decade is based upon an economic hypothesis: E. Bellamy, Looking Backward (1887). J.W. Jenks, The Trust Problem (1900, etc.), has become a classic sketch of the economics of industrial concentration. The histories of the Standard Oil Company, by I.M. Tarbell (2 vols., 1904) and G.H. Montague (1903), are based largely upon judicial and congressional investigations. The Sherman Law is discussed in the writings and biographies of Sherman, Hoar, and Edmunds, and in A. H. Walker, History of the Sherman Law (1910). For the election of 1888, consult Stanwood, Andrews, Peck, the Annual Cyclopædia, the tariff histories, and D.R. Dewey, National Problems, 1885-1897 (in The American Nation, vol. 24, 1907).
CHAPTER XI
The Republican protective policy had its strongest supporters among the industrial communities of the East where the profits of manufacture were distributed. In the West, where the agricultural staples had produced a simplicity of interests somewhat resembling those of the Old South in its cotton crop, the advantage of protection was questioned even in Republican communities. The Granger States and the Prairie States were normally Republican, but they had experienced falling prices for their corn and wheat, as the South had for its cotton, in the eighties, and had listened encouragingly to the advocates of tariff reform. Cleveland's Message of 1887 had affected them strongly. Through 1888 and 1889 country papers shifted to the support of revision, while farmers' clubs and agricultural journals began to denounce protection. The Republican leaders felt the discontent, and brought forward the agricultural schedules of the McKinley Bill to appease it, but dissatisfaction increased in 1889 and 1890 through most of the farming sections.
The farmer in the South was directly affected by the falling price of cotton, and retained his hereditary aversion to the protective tariff. He could not believe that either party was working in his interests. The dominant issues of the eighties did not touch his problems. He was not interested in civil service reform, which was a product of a differentiated society, in which professional expertness was recognized and valued. He knew and cared little about administration, and being used to a multitude of different tasks himself saw no reason why the offices should not be passed around. In this view American farmers generally concurred.
The Southern farmer was without interest in the pension system and was prone to criticize it. The Fourteenth Amendment had forced the repudiation of the whole Confederate debt, leaving the Southern veterans compelled to pay taxes that were disbursed for the benefit of Union veterans and debarred from enjoying similar rewards. They could not turn Republican, yet in their own party they saw men who failed to represent them.