All of these questions had to be answered, but how was it to be done? Not by a Congress in which “tariff for revenue only” Democrats and “revenue-reform” Republicans were at large, decided the Industrial League. Their notion of revision was to have it done by their own representatives, and at once they began an active campaign for a commission, such as was hinted at in the petitions of 1877 and in Mr. Wharton’s Pittsburg speech in 1879, quoted above. In November, 1881, a great tariff convention was called in New York by the manufacturers, and this body committed itself to the idea of a Tariff Commission.
Naturally, all this agitation had stirred Congress. Early in 1880 the Senate had passed a bill providing for a commission, but the House, jealous of its rights in the matter of devising revenue bills, did not agree. Now, however, the Secretary of the Treasury asked for a commission, President Arthur in his first message asked for one, the Industrial League kept up the pressure, and finally in the spring of 1882 the House consented. The idea of Senator Eaton of Connecticut, with whom the bill for the commission originated, was that it should be composed of nine members—six experts, one for each of the six great industries of the country; two statisticians such as “David A. Wells of Connecticut and R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia,” and as chairman “one of the great governing heads of the country, not an expert in anything except in all that makes men great.”
Mr. Wharton’s idea, as given at the Tariff Convention, was that “each of the chief groups of industry should be represented by one man.... For president, a man of high standing, preferably one known to his fellow-citizens as having acceptably performed important public service, and of really exalted character and intelligence, should be chosen. For secretary, a man well versed in the working of our existing laws, in Treasury rulings and judicial decisions, and in the ways of custom houses and the tricks or evasions of unscrupulous importers, would be most valuable.
“It might be necessary that what is loosely called the Free Trade element should be represented on the commission; both political parties should certainly be. Seeing that the appointments would be made by a Republican President, and that the Republican party is firmly committed to the principle of Protection to home industry, it would obviously be right that a majority of the commission should be Republicans and that a majority also should be distinctly Protectionists, but extremists of every kind are to be avoided.”
President Arthur evidently had both of these views in mind in appointing the commission, which he did as soon as the House gave its consent, but his own notion was somewhat more liberal. He cut the representatives of special industries down to four: wool manufacturers, wool growers, sugar, and iron and steel. John L. Hayes, the efficient manager and lobbyist of the Wool Manufacturers’ Association, was made chairman of the body—a choice probably obligatory on Arthur, such was Hayes’s influence among high protectionists in the country. The suspicion the wool growers had of the wool manufacturers (the latter wanting free wool) made it necessary to give them a special representative, and Austin M. Garland of Illinois was appointed—a fair-minded man willing to consider that there were other interests than wool in the country. Sugar was looked after by Duncan F. Kenner of Louisiana. He had been a member of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate Congress, and since the close of the war had been active in the reconstruction of his state. Kenner’s interest in a protective tariff centred around sugar entirely. The one really broad-minded man among the representatives of industries was Henry W. Oliver, Jr., of Pennsylvania, an iron manufacturer. Oliver was a man of large experience and foresight, and a keen judge of men, and from the start he threw his influence on the commission to the consideration of the general interest as well as of iron and steel—which he by no means neglected!
An excellent appointment, made at the suggestion of Mr. McKinley, was Judge Jacob A. Ambler of Ohio. Judge Ambler was an old-fashioned country lawyer, able, learned, and honest—a man jealous of the honor of any office he held or trust he handled, full of contempt for greed, extravagance, and grafting, shrewd in detecting them, and relentless in punishing them. His influence on the commission was most healthy. It was due to President Arthur’s knowledge of the Custom House administration (Arthur was Collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878, when he was suspended by Hayes) that William H. McMahon, for twenty years an officer of the New York Custom House, was put on the board. McMahon had no interest in any phase of the question except administration, but that he knew from top to bottom, and his knowledge was invaluable to the commission. In order that there might be a statistician in the number, Arthur appointed a young man from the Census Bureau, Robert P. Porter. Porter was an Englishman and a free trader, who had found his way to America at sixteen, and had become a journalist in Chicago. In 1877 he had published an article in the Princeton Review which attracted the attention of President Hayes, and from which the latter quoted fully in one of the speeches made on his Western journey in 1878. When Hayes reached Chicago on this trip, Porter was presented to him, and the President at once claimed him for the Census Bureau. Here he made many friends, among them Judge Kelley, who lost no time in converting him to protection and gladly backed him for the commission.
The remaining members were John W. H. Underwood of Georgia and Alexander R. Boteler of West Virginia, two gentlemen who were appointed chiefly that their respective sections might be represented.
The announcement of the commission awakened no great enthusiasm anywhere. It was not sufficiently strong in business representation to make the Industrial League feel secure, and the appointment of Mr. Hayes as chairman naturally aroused the suspicion of moderate tariff men. Nor did that portion of its work obvious to the public increase confidence. Its first business, of course, was to get information about the actual industrial condition of the country. It set out to do this chiefly by means of public hearings in various cities. Starting out in July at Long Branch for three months it junketed about from Long Branch to New York, from New York to Boston, from Boston to Rochester, from Rochester to Buffalo, then in turn to Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Des Moines, St. Louis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Wilmington, North Carolina, Richmond, Baltimore, New York again, then Pittsburg, Wheeling, Philadelphia, and finally back to Long Branch.
In this time 604 witnesses were listened to, and many of them questioned at length. They were of all shades of opinion, from the uncompromising free trader, like Professor W. G. Sumner, to the equally uncompromising higher protectionist, like the Iron and Steel Association. They were of all shades of selfishness, from the petty selfishness of a man who refused to consider what effect the duty he wanted would have on a related industry on the ground that he “had no interest in that business,” to the enlightened selfishness of the big iron man who advised lower tariff on iron and steel in order to placate public opinion and so save the system. A great number of witnesses wanted more protection. The chemists pleaded for a restoration of the duty on quinine. Mr. Joseph Wharton pointed proudly to his great nickel and steel works as proofs of what protection could do for infant industries, and urged that it be applied next to tin plate. Mr. John Roach of Chester, Pennsylvania, farmer, iron manufacturer, ship-builder and ship-owner, employer of 3000 workingmen with a weekly pay roll of $33,000, gave his experience as a proof that upon protection depended the prosperity and the future of the country. In Mr. Roach’s judgment all business irregularities came from a failure to carry out the doctrine to its logical results, which logical results were prohibitive tariffs for all raw and manufactured products possible to our country, and subsidies for all industries which could not be reached by duties, such as ship-building.
While praises of the results of protection and pleas for more of it were in the majority, there was considerable complaint of its damages and demands for freer trade. It is true, said the German silver makers in answer to Mr. Wharton, that you are making money, but how about us? We have to pay so much for nickel that we cannot sell in foreign markets, and it was pointed out that the Meriden Britannia Company had been obliged to establish a factory in Canada in order to keep a foreign market for its goods—a factory it still operates. What of that? said Mr. Wharton. “There is no market in the world that is comparable to this country as a market of manufactured goods.” All very well, retorted the people who used nickel, if you have a nickel monopoly and the market wants more than you can supply!