Now in anticipation of the difficulty in which they expected to be when the Senate bill reached them, Mr. Kasson had some days before this proposed a revision of the House rules which would allow a majority to take the Senate bill from the table to concur in, or to non-concur in, and send to a conference. If Mr. Kelley could have been sure of a majority for nonconcurrence he would have risked this procedure, but he found he could not. In caucus and out he canvassed the Republicans and always with the result that he feared a vote would result in concurrence. He was afraid of the Kasson rule.
It was certainly not an easy problem, but it was solved, and the man to solve it was a member of the Committee on Rules, Thomas B. Reed of Maine. Reed had been six years in the House and in this time had shown himself an excellent debater and parliamentarian. On the tariff he was sound enough to suit Mr. Kelley and “practical” enough to suit Mr. Sherman. From his point of view it was idle to discuss the matter. Protection, he said, was the accepted doctrine of the country—a closed question. His business was to get what his constituents wanted. His remarks on the lumber tariff and its relation to forest preservation show his general attitude. “I want to know why this country should preserve my forest for the benefit of some other gentleman? I should like to know why the principal industry of the State of Maine should be destroyed because the gentleman from Illinois thinks that his state needs a more humid atmosphere? Why, sir, the very purpose of forests in the course of nature is to be cut down and have houses built of them.... I tell you each generation can take care of itself, each generation is sufficient unto itself.”
The rule Mr. Reed now proposed for extracting the high protectionists was an admirable introduction to his later career as a parliamentarian. It ran as follows:
“That during the remainder of this session it shall be in order at any time to move to suspend the rules, which motion shall be decided by a majority vote, to take from the Speaker’s table House Bill No. 5538, with the Senate amendment thereto, entitled a bill to Reduce Internal Revenue Taxation, and to declare a disagreement with the Senate amendment to the same, and to ask for a committee of conference thereon, to be composed of five members on the part of the House. If such motion shall fail, the bill shall remain on the Speaker’s table unaffected by the decision of the House on said motion.”
It was a rule which allowed the House to declare a disagreement but not an agreement. It allowed a majority to non-concur, but forbade it to concur! A New York Herald correspondent characterized Mr. Reed’s rule perfectly when he declared that it realized the Irishman’s dream of a gun which should fire so as to hit the object if it was a deer and miss it if it was a cow! It was on Saturday, the 24th of February, that Mr. Reed reported his rule, and on Monday it was taken up. Only seven days then remained of the session. The storm which burst over the rule when it was read on Monday was quite worthy of its audacity. It was a “monstrous proposition,” said Mr. Carlisle. “It is a fraud on parliamentary law; a fraud on all that is just and fair in our politics; it is revolutionary,” said Mr. Cox. Mr. Reed listened placidly to it all and finally closed the discussion by declaring coolly that he himself considered the procedure he was introducing as “forcible,” that he should never be in favor of such a rule save in a “great emergency,” but that such an emergency he considered to be at hand. The country demanded a revision. The Democrats had defeated the House bill by a systematic course of obstruction. The Senate bill was not satisfactory to business men; it was unconstitutional to adopt it, but something must be done to relieve distress. There was nothing to do but revise the Senate bill “in the quiet of a conference committee.” The rule was adopted after nearly a day’s debate by a vote of 129 to 22.
But the Democrats were not through yet. They raised the constitutional question—was the House of Representatives to waive its right to originate revenue measures? Never. The discussion precipitated lacked sincerity, for leading Democrats had already testified to their willingness to let the Senate bill go through as it stood. Mr. Haskell finally stopped debates by a resolution which was carried. It turned the constitutional question over to the Tariff Conference for decision. The manœuvre was adroit. It simply meant that if the Tariff Conference did not result satisfactorily to the high protectionist members, they had the plea of unconstitutionality to fall back on, or as somebody put it, “If pig-iron goes up, the amendment of the Senate will be constitutional; if pig-iron goes down, it will be unconstitutional.”
It was late on Tuesday, the 28th day of February, before finally things were adjusted, and the conferees appointed by both House and Senate. The appointments precipitated another tangle. As was to have been expected, Speaker Keifer appointed a high protectionist committee—packed it, moderate Republicans, who were not represented at all, said. Mr. Randall, who was one of the two Democratic appointments, felt so badly about the make-up that he refused to serve. This tangle was straightened out, and finally on the evening of the 28th the conferees had their first meeting. Among those from the Senate were Beck and Bayard. They were disturbed by the idea that the conference might not be “full and free,”—that is, that the constitutional question might be raised,—and when they found they could get no assurance to the contrary they withdrew. Ten different Senators were appointed before two could be found to accept! These were Mahone and McDill, both Republicans!
When the Committee was finally under way it made quick work of revision—as indeed it could do, having a powerful high protection majority. There were sharp contests—more than once rumors ran up and down the Capitol, where for the last few days all Washington had congregated, watching developments, that the conference would fail because Sherman was not getting his desired increase on wool or because Morrill was failing in his efforts to keep down the rate on pig-iron. The tension the uncertainty caused was broken at noon on March 2, when Mr. Morrill entered the Senate and said: “I desire to ask unanimous consent for the printing of the report of the Conference Committee.” It was granted and at nine o’clock that evening the printed report was before the Senate. Of course everybody turned at once to the items over which the great struggles had come. Had Sherman secured his rate on pig-iron and wool, Mahone on iron ore, Kelley on steel and quinine and nickel, the Louisiana planters on sugar?
The most cursory examination showed that the high protectionists had got much that they asked. Iron ore had been raised to 75 cents a ton after having been given 50 by tariff commission, by House, and by Senate. Pig-iron was restored to $6.72; steel rails, after having been given $15.68 in the Senate and $15.00 in House, were raised to $17.00. Mr. Beck attacked the bill violently, making a most imposing array of duties raised, but of course saying nothing of those lowered! At the same time he attacked Sherman for his part in raising duties. Sherman was not jubilant, however, over what he had done. Indeed, he was almost in despair. For if he had succeeded in the metal schedule, he had failed in the wool. The wool bill of 1867 had put compound duties on wool—10 cents a pound and 11 per cent ad valorem on all wools costing 32 or less cents a pound; 12 cents a pound and 10 per cent ad valorem on all costing over 32 cents. The ad valorems were dropped in the bill of ’83. The rate on carpet wool was also lowered. The duties on manufactured goods were lowered less on the whole than those on raw wool. In the bill of ’67 the manufacturer had been allowed a specific duty of 50 cents to compensate him for the duty on wool and dyestuffs; this was dropped to 35 cents in the bill of ’83; but on several grades of woollens the ad valorem duty was raised. It was raised indeed in every case where importations were large. On cheap goods the duties were so high there could be no competition; indeed they could have been lowered considerably and the situation remained unchanged. But wool-growers and wool manufacturers were both incensed at the bill. Senator Sherman took his failure much to heart and he refused to sign the conference report. It was a question if he would vote for the bill. But when the matter came to a test, as it did about midnight of Saturday, March 3, he voted yea.
“I have always regretted,” Mr. Sherman wrote twelve years later, “that I did not defeat the bill, which I could have readily done by voting with the Democrats against the adoption of the conference report, which passed the Senate by the vote of yeas 32, nays 30. However, the propriety and necessity of a reduction of internal taxes proposed by the bill were so urgent that I did not feel justified in denying relief from burdensome and unnecessary taxes on account of provisions in the bill that I did not approve. With great reluctance I voted for it.”