The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

From the very beginning of the debate on the bill it became evident that each faction was ready to fight strenuously to carry out its program. The Carlisle Democrats began by bringing to issue almost every item as it was read. They made amendments, debated them, forced them to vote by voice, by rising divisions, and by tellers, and they openly declared that they would keep this up until the Fourth of March rather than allow Mr. Kelley’s bill to come to vote. Their tactics indeed were very like those Mr. Beck was using in the Senate and their effect was identical; that is, they constantly forced the Republicans to put themselves on record against lowering duties. Not infrequently they were aided in their work of obstruction by revenue reform Republicans, particularly from the West, where the tariff on lumber and an increased duty on barbed wire were causing indignation.

So strong a program of opposition was developed that in ten days after the discussion opened it became evident that if any bill was passed it would be because the high protection faction yielded to the demands of the majority of the party for a reduction or that they carried their program by superior parliamentary tactics. That they were in strong position for the latter everybody saw. As a fact they held all the strategic positions: the speakership, the chairmanship, and a majority of the Ways and Means Committee, and of the Committee on Rules. For the moment, however, the work was all in the hands of Chairman Kelley and his lieutenants. Mr. Kelley had been ill from the beginning of the session and he had asked Mr. Haskell to take charge of the bill on the floor. A more sympathetic and vigorous understudy than Haskell, Kelley could not have had. He was a man only forty years old, a powerful individual, over six feet high, with a voice as big as his body, and with the face and eyes of an evangelist. His earnestness for a cause he had espoused was almost tragic in its intensity, and forced him to work and fight for it passionately and untiringly. Two subjects had occupied him so far in the six years he had been in Congress, polygamy and protection. He hated the first as he revered the second. Indeed, for Haskell protection was as complete a solution of all economic difficulties as it was for Kelley, and he had the same fanatical devotion to the doctrine. The only question he asked himself in making a tariff bill was whether an article could or could not be raised in this country. If it could not, he would put it on the free list. If it could, he would protect it beyond the possibility of foreign competition. Of course, this reduced his labor to finding out how much each article needed to be put beyond competition. This was a matter of fact. As soon as he was put on the Committee of Ways and Means, which was at the opening of the 47th Congress, he went to work with unparalleled industry to master the conditions of each article. He became a veritable encyclopædia of information on the “needs” of industries. When the work on the bill of 1883 began, he doubled his efforts. His days he spent in committee and in the House, his nights receiving representatives of all sorts of industries. The facts and figures they gave him he attached in long festoons to copies of the bills which he was making ready for the debate.

Convinced as Kelley and Haskell were of the perfection of their doctrine, it was not to be wondered at that they looked on the Democratic opposition to the duties they were trying to carry through as outright filibustering or that they were willing to lend themselves to almost any manœuvres which would thwart it. Their first move was to try to stop debate. The attempt threw the Democrats into violent excitement, for so far only two out of sixteen schedules had been considered. It was an effort to gag the House, they declared. “Such a proposition,” said Mr. Carlisle, “has never been heard of in the parliamentary history of this country, a proposition to destroy the freedom of debate on a bill to raise revenue.” “Stop your filibustering then,” was the gist of Mr. Haskell’s retort. “Never under gag rule,” retorted Mr. Carlisle.

The failure of this attempt to get his bill to vote discouraged Kelley, and it began to be rumored that he and his colleagues were going to drop it and go to the country with the charge that the Democrats had killed it by obstruction. The rumor reached the White House and Arthur let it be known that if Congress failed to pass a bill he should call them in extra session.

The dilemma was a serious one for Mr. Kelley. It was evident that the Democrats would never allow his bill to come to vote unless its duties were materially reduced. He could never consent to that. But the President demanded a bill of some kind, would call an extra session to get it if necessary. The only hope seemed in the Senate bill, which was already fairly advanced and which Kelley knew would soon be reported. But this Senate bill did not suit him at all. Its duties he saw were bound to be considerably lower than those recommended by the Tariff Commission. Supposing that he waived the constitutional objection to a revenue bill originating in the Senate and let it come before the House, was there any method by which he could make it suit his notion before it came to vote? The question was a difficult one, and for the moment there seemed no answer.

As day by day passed and nothing was done, irritation and uncertainty grew on both sides. Only the lobby rejoiced. There would be no reduction after all! But they did not reduce their pressure. Indeed it increased rather. The iron and steel men called down Commissioner Oliver. The mineral water men stirred up their attorney, Roscoe Conkling. Every interest engaged the highest-sounding names it could secure for a final day and night attack.

The effect of all this on the two chambers was deplorable. Particularly in the House did the debate lose all semblance of sincerity and order. Again and again it was broken up by charges and counter-charges—by contradictions, appeals to the Speaker, cries of “Hear, hear!” “Order, order!” “Rule, rule!” The Democrats, gloating over the apparent predicament of the Republicans, taunted them repeatedly with not intending to pass a bill—charges which maddened Mr. Haskell especially. One day when these taunts were unusually sharp, Haskell lost control of himself. Towering like a giant, his face white as a sheet, he shouted, “We will see who wants reduction! We will see who are the obstructionists. I move that the committee rise”—a motion intended to close debate on the bill. The Democrats almost as a body were on their feet at once, rushing down the aisles, dragging in members from committee rooms, haranguing on gag rule. A long and acrimonious debate followed, but as before, the attempt to close debate failed.

Another day, when both sides were heated and bitter, Townshend of Illinois declared that the bill of the Ways and Means Committee did not originate in Congress at all, but was “sired by a lobby of hired agents of monopoly and was brought forth in a secret conclave unknown to the rules of the House.” Mr. Haskell’s wrath was terrible. “Every word of his declaration is a scandalous falsehood,” he thundered. There was confusion on both sides for a moment but the friends of the two calmed them down. The next morning, however, Mr. Morrison waited on Mr. Haskell at his boarding house on Eighth Street with a peremptory demand that Mr. Haskell make public retraction of his offensive utterance or he, Mr. Morrison, would feel obliged to request Mr. Haskell to name some gentleman to confer concerning further remedies for his friend’s wounded honor. Mr. Haskell laughed at the idea of a duel, but he assured Mr. Morrison that so long as Mr. Townshend’s statement stood on record, his assertion of its falsehood would stand against it. And there the matter remained.

Such was the temper of the House when the Senate bill reached it on February 20—a poor temper indeed for candid legislation. Nevertheless, the bill could probably have been passed promptly if Mr. Kelley had been willing. The Carlisle Democrats criticised it, but they declared it too good to obstruct. As for the majority of Republicans, they were in favor of it. But Mr. Kelley was not willing. His first business then was to block any attempt to get the bill off the Speaker’s table and pass it by a regular procedure; a thing not difficult to do, for Speaker Keifer was playing perfectly into his hands and could be depended upon not to recognize anybody whom Kelley and Haskell were unwilling should get a hearing. Indeed, the Democrats had been saying for days that nobody could catch the Speaker’s eye unless Kelley first gave the wink. In this matter of keeping back the bill so small a matter as a misplaced semicolon aided Kelley materially. In looking over the engrossed copy sent to the House from the Senate, Mr. Haskell had discovered one which considerably changed duties on iron. He would not consider a bill so “ragged, ill-considered, and half made,” he declared. The poor little semicolon held up the House and gave half the papers in the country a subject for editorials. The Senate clerk hastened over to correct the error. It was only a slip. He could easily remedy it, he urged. “No,” said Speaker Keifer sternly. He was not going to allow a Senate clerk to make a tariff bill for them. The bill had to be taken back to the Senate and corrected by proper procedure.

While the semicolon and other small matters were taking up time the Republican leaders were closeted with the Committee on Rules, which they controlled, in an effort to find a way out of their dilemma. If they could get the bill into a conference of their own kind and revise it and then pass it, they would be satisfied. It all amounted, as a matter of fact, to finding a way to defeat a bill which the majority would accept and to make and pass one which the minority wanted.