“For the sun is a ‘foreigner,’” explained Mr. Cox. “He comes from abroad, and we must shut out the light of the sun in order to gratify these Pennsylvania gentlemen who have a monopoly of this article of coal.”
The real fight on the Schenck Bill was not, as already said, between Republicans and Democrats; it was as it had been in 1866 and 1867, in the party, between Mr. Kelley and his friends and the moderate protectionists, led by Allison and Garfield. Almost without exception the speakers on this middle ground opened by disclaiming that it was a question of protection or of free trade. It was a question of revenue, of moderate temporary protection, and of keeping promises made in the war. And nearly all of them having thus defined their positions attacked the bill, because it did not summarily cut down the tariffs on salt, iron, leather, coal, lumber, and other articles, where it could be conclusively shown that they were working chiefly for the benefit of the few.
Mr. Allison, who was particularly hard on the excessive duty on iron, wanted a reduction of at least 20 per cent on all leading articles. He knew he differed from the majority of the Ways and Means Committee on this, he said, but—
“It is not a question of political partnership. It is a question of affecting every interest in this country and every class, and because of the great interests involved should receive careful consideration at our hands irrespective of partisanship.... I warn those who insist so pertinaciously upon a retention of these high duties upon necessary articles of consumption that they only hasten the time when a more radical change will be made in our tariff laws. What manufacturers need most of all is stability in legislation, avoiding sudden and sweeping changes. The changes which I have proposed would reduce the revenue only a few million dollars, while to the consumers of manufactures produced they would reduce the cost of those products many million dollars. In my judgment such a policy would revive many industries now languishing, and not interfere with the great industries already established, and which under any change we are likely to make will still be largely protected. Our policy should be so to cheapen manufactured products that we can revive our export trade, now swept away, because we cannot compete with other nations in the markets of the world. If we could restore what we have lost, and in addition greatly enlarge our exportations of manufactures, we should then have an enlarged home market for our agricultural products, which would then be exported in a concentrated form in exchange for other commodities which we do not now and cannot produce.”
The debate on the bill occupied the House much of the time from the middle of March until the 6th of June, when it was passed. The Senate took it up at once, and the debate there followed very much the same lines as in the House:—protestation that it was not an academic question—pleas from Mr. Morrill and his friends to remember the war time pledges—warnings against the “smell of monopoly”—plans for removing the causes of the decline of ship-building. In short, the Republicans themselves rehearsed fully and forcibly the injustice in certain tariffs then in force, and asked the party to correct them. All of the correction they got was $2.00 a ton off pig-iron. Salt, leather, lumber, wool, copper, and other articles were not touched. The relief demanded for the consumer came in the breakfast table. Thus the bill, which the President signed on July 14, reduced the duties on tea about 40 per cent; on coffee, 40 per cent; on sugar of the lower grades, 33⅓ per cent; on clarified sugars, 213
7 and 12½ per cent; on spices from 33⅓ to 75 per cent. On brandy the reduction was $3.00 to $2.00 per gallon, or 33⅓ per cent; on spirits from grain, 20 per cent. The free list was largely increased, certain important materials for manufacturing, ivory, India rubber, and rags for paper making, being included in a far greater number of unimportant items.
Mr. Kelley and his sympathizers had saved the doctrine of high protection, and they accompanied their victory by a manœuvre which they evidently hoped would preserve them in the future from the necessity of considering such troublesome arrays of facts about the effects of particular tariffs as those forced upon them in the last four years by Mr. Wells’s reports. They persuaded the President to refuse to continue the office of special commissioner of revenue, which Mr. Wells had filled since his appointment by President Lincoln in March, 1865. The majority of Congress deeply deplored this move, and joined in signing a letter to him expressing their appreciation of his services. The wise men of the party realized only too well how they would be crippled without Mr. Wells. It was a loss which time has only intensified. It is not too much to say, that if he had continued to study and expound officially the revenue system for the next twenty years with the same dispassionate thoroughness and clearness that characterized the five years’ work he did do, the problem of the equitable distribution of wealth in this country would be much nearer an intelligent solution than it is to-day.
The passage of the Schenck Bill and the removal of Mr. Wells only intensified the sentiment of the tariff reformers. A most interesting movement had sprung up in that year (1870) in Missouri. It was a new organization, called the Liberal party, headed by Colonel William M. Grosvenor, the editor of the St. Louis Democrat, Carl Schurz, United States Senator from Missouri, and Gustavus Finkelnburg, a Representative from that State. The Liberal Republicans asked for several things which they felt they were not getting under Grant: general amnesty, revenue reforms, resumption of specie payment, and civil service reform. They had put up a ticket in Missouri, and elected it. Sympathy with their aims was widely diffused, and all over the country Republican conventions began to put tariff planks into their platforms similar to theirs, or to the one General Brinkerhoff had slipped into the Ohio platform in 1869, while party organs, like the Portland (Me.) Advertiser, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Democrat, redoubled their efforts. In the fall the Free Trade League again sent out General Brinkerhoff and Professor Perry on a lecture tour. General Brinkerhoff made a stir with a lecture, which he called “The Tyrants of Syracuse.” It was a scientific dissection of the Salt Trust, which surpassed in completeness and convincingness anything which had been achieved in any one of the many analyses which had been given in Congress. The cumulative effect of the agitation began to stir the rulers of Congress, particularly Mr. Blaine, who was a candidate for re-election as Speaker. Unless he could make a compromise with the tariff reformers he saw there was danger of their uniting with the Democrats and thereby defeating him. He went to Chicago and sought Horace White “for the sole purpose of talking over the situation.” A little later he asked the four whom he evidently considered the most influential in the movement to meet him secretly in New York. The four were William B. Allison, Horace White, Charles Nordhoff, and General Brinkerhoff. There was a long discussion, ending in a proposition from Mr. Blaine that if the reformers would permit him to be re-elected Speaker he would permit them to name the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and give them a majority on it of their way of thinking. The proposition was accepted, and Mr. Blaine was asked to appoint Mr. Garfield.
There was no reason to suppose that Mr. Blaine would not keep his promise, nevertheless the suspicion that he was “slippery” in politics was not uncommon, and the Free Trade League concluded to send General Brinkerhoff to Washington to see that the arrangement was carried out.
The new Congress—the Forty-second—opened on March 4, 1871. General Brinkerhoff had made a careful study of the tariff record of the members of the new House and felt sure of a majority, but it was resolved to test the tariff sentiment by a surprise resolution. Bills were prepared putting coal and salt on the free list, and Eugene Hale of Maine was asked to introduce them, under the Monday morning rule. Mr. Hale consented, and Mr. Blaine promised to recognize him. The bills were introduced suddenly as arranged, brought immediately to vote, and, after some skirmishing, passed, to the despair of Mr. Kelley, who, as Mr. Cox said, wailed now like Jeremiah, though in the last session he had talked like Isaiah. “I was in the majority then,” said Mr. Kelley, ruefully.
Sure of the House, there now remained only to make sure of Mr. Blaine. As the days went on and the appointments promised were not made, General Brinkerhoff felt more and more uneasy, but said nothing. Finally one day as he was on the floor of the House, Mr. Blaine sent a page to him asking him for an interview: