The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

It costs the people five times more than it produces to the treasury, obstructs the processes of production, and wastes the fruit of labor.

It promotes fraud, fosters smuggling, enriches dishonest officials, and bankrupts honest merchants. We demand that all custom-house taxation shall be only for revenue.

It is evident from what we have seen of the record of the Republican tariff-reformers that no great number of them would follow the Democrats in any such radical program as Mr. Watterson’s. Wells and Brinkerhoff, in fact, were about the only prominent tariff leaders of 1872 who turned to the Democrats in 1876. Carl Schurz, Murat Halstead, and Horace White all stayed with the party. But there was an even more important question than what the Republicans would do. It was what the Democrats themselves would do. Were they ready as a party to stand by “tariff for revenue only”? The question of Mr. Hayes’s election was no sooner settled than it became evident that they were not. The Democrats in the House divided completely on the question, the wing following the party platform being led by Colonel W. R. Morrison of Illinois and Roger Q. Mills of Texas—the protectionist wing being led by Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Randall was an avowed protectionist-Democrat, and a man who, his colleagues had learned, usually was able to get his way. Randall had first entered Congress in 1862. He was a quiet, persistent, hard-working person who attracted little attention for several years; then the Republicans, sure of their majority and wishing to expedite business, undertook to adopt rules which would prevent obstruction. The quiet Mr. Randall set himself against the attempt. He led the small Democratic minority with a skill so unusual that more than once he blocked the Republicans’ way until it was too late to pass the measure. His endurance seemed unlimited. From one session lasting 46 hours and 25 minutes where Randall had forced the roll to be called seventy-five times, he came out as fresh as he went in. At another time in the fight over the “Force Bill” he was on the floor for seventy-two consecutive hours. After his party secured the House in 1874, Randall was put at the head of the Committee on Appropriations, where he cut down appropriations some $30,000,000. He came to the Speaker’s chair in time to preside through one of the most critical episodes in the history of Congress—the dispute over the Tilden-Hayes election. His conduct at this time was eminently cool, wise, and fair, and greatly strengthened his position in the country. It was not alone his parliamentary skill which won him followers. His presence counted for much. Randall was one of the handsomest men of his day—with a face chiselled like an old Roman’s and lit by a pair of large dark eyes of amazing fire and softness. Speak of Sam Randall to-day to one of his old colleagues and it will not be long before he will tell you with softened voice of “those wonderful eyes,” “that classic face.” Randall’s force and charm were such that they overcame a lack of studious habits, of reflection, and of broad views.

But as has been said, Randall was a protectionist, and he put now at the head of the Ways and Means Committee a man of moderate protectionist leanings, an old-time shipping merchant of New York City, Fernando Wood. Wood was a picturesque character, who had made a name for himself politically as the mayor of New York from 1854 to 1858, when the town needed reform quite as badly as it ever has since. He succeeded in getting himself reëlected mayor again in 1861, when he stirred up the ire of the North by proposing seriously that New York City secede and set up as a free town! Wood at once went to work on a tariff bill, but he took few of his party into his confidence, and he ignored those who, like Wells, were considered experts. Indeed, he went his way so arrogantly that the opposing wing of his party broke out in expostulation in December, 1877, Roger Q. Mills introducing the following resolution:

“That the Committee of Ways and Means be instructed so to revise the tariff as to make it purely a tariff for revenue, and not for protecting one class of citizens by plundering another.”

The resolution stirred up Mr. Wood considerably. It was “nonsense,” he said. The Committee of Ways and Means would discharge its duty faithfully, irrespective of the resolution. It would in due time report the results of its deliberations to the House, and in the meantime it required no instructions of any kind in the matter. A more menacing sign of unrest over the Wood Bill than Mr. Mills’s resolution, came about the same time—a flood of petitions against any revision of the tariff not made by its friends. By actual count 177 petitions were introduced. They came from twenty-nine different States: from New York 22, from Pennsylvania 28, from Massachusetts 17, from Maine 15. That they originated with a protective steering committee somewhere in the background—that is, that they were not spontaneous outbreaks—was evident from the fact that the phrasing of the whole 177 was practically identical. Whether they came from Alabama or Maine, Pennsylvania or Kansas, whether they pleaded for iron, or lumber, or cotton, or copper, or paper, or silk, they nearly all plead in identical terms that Congress would take no action concerning a revision of tariff duties “until after it shall have ascertained by an official inquiry the condition of the industries of the country and the nature of such tariff legislation as in the opinion of practical business men would best promote the restoration of general prosperity.”

Whether it was known to Congressmen generally or not where this flood of petitions originated, it must have been to many. As a matter of fact the “steering committee” behind it was the most powerful protective organization the country had seen at that time—the Industrial League of Pennsylvania. Formed about 1867, the League was intended to be national in extent and to represent all protected industries. Its first president was Peter Cooper, and its executive committee was made up of the foremost manufacturers of the day. From the beginning the Pennsylvania branch dominated in the League largely because of the energy of its president, the Hon. Daniel J. Morrell, and of its secretary, Cyrus Elder, and of the ability and far-sightedness of its Executive Council, including Mr. Joseph Wharton and Mr. Henry C. Lea of Philadelphia.

At once on its organization the League had become a power in Washington. The rapid removal of the internal war taxes had been due to its pressure. The Schenck Bill of 1870 had been practically written by the chairman of its Executive Council, Mr. Joseph Wharton. The League’s latest achievement had been the restoration of the 10 per cent reduction of duties made in 1872. It thus came to its new attack—a tariff made by “practical business men”—with all the prestige of an important victory.

The methods used by the League in carrying on campaigns were simple enough. It had secured, after much careful selection, a body of correspondents in manufacturing centres, chiefly laboring men. These correspondents circulated the League’s literature and secured names to its petitions. The petitions once filled out were returned to the headquarters of the League, and from there forwarded to the proper Congressman, who, so far as any printed sign went, might have supposed the document spontaneous in his district. The petitions were then followed up by personal letters from individual workingmen, sent direct to the Congressmen, and by personal visits from manufacturers. It was one of the most extensive and thorough organizations for bringing apparently spontaneous pressure to bear on Congressmen which the country has ever seen. It goes without saying that the political power of the organization was enormous—particularly in Pennsylvania, where it practically dictated who should be elected. Already Mr. Blaine himself had recognized the influence of the Pennsylvania branch by consulting the head of the Executive Council of Pennsylvania, Mr. Joseph Wharton, about whom he should make chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in 1871. It was this powerful association which now came out for no revision until after the “opinions of practical business men” had been secured.