The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

It has been frequently said that when Grover Cleveland became the President of the United States he knew nothing of the tariff. At least one tariff expert of that day has recorded a very different opinion. In an interesting unpublished manuscript of reminiscences by the late Professor Perry of Williams College there is an account of a talk the professor had with Mr. Cleveland in the fall of 1883 in Albany. Professor Perry had gone to Albany at the request of Thomas G. Shearman, of Brooklyn, to speak in behalf of free trade at a public meeting the Democratic leaders had organized, and the afternoon before the lecture he had been taken to the Capitol to meet the governor. “He and I stood in the corridor for half an hour talking on the subject which had brought me to Albany,” Professor Perry writes. “The governor, as was proper, did most of the talking, and his interlocutor was surprised and gratified at the clearness and strength of his views on the whole tariff question and began to think he had this time brought coals to New Castle, since the first official in the state apparently knew as much about tariffs as he did, and could express himself even better. The governor said he was glad I came to Albany, thought he had better not attend the meeting himself, but hoped everybody else would go, and on parting gave me his best wishes for the efforts made and making in behalf of the good cause, with which efforts he seemed to be familiar. He impressed me as few other men ever did on first acquaintance, as a strong man, a frank man, and a man every way to be trusted.”

But in any case Mr. Cleveland was too wise a man to take radical action on a subject at the outset of a first presidential term, particularly when that subject was sharply dividing his followers. The election had by no means healed the breach between the Carlisle and Randall factions. If anything, indeed, it was widened, for Randall had by a clever manœuvre apparently strengthened his side from the South. He had done this by campaigning in aid of Southern Democratic candidates for Congress who favored protection. Together with his first lieutenant, William McAdoo of New Jersey, Randall went in the fall of ’84 to Louisville, Kentucky, and spoke under the very nose of his enemy, Watterson. From Kentucky he continued his work into Tennessee and Alabama. He did not meet with a cold reception. Everywhere he had large audiences and proofs of sympathy, everywhere he found newspapers to support him. To those on the inside it was apparent that Pennsylvania had been busy in the Southern manufacturing centres, and that its money and influence accounted largely for the candidates and the interest. But it was not a sign to be lightly regarded, and Mr. Randall took care that its full strength be known to Mr. Cleveland.

But however cautious Mr. Cleveland meant to be, his first message showed that he stood with Mr. Carlisle and not with Mr. Randall. He was for revision at once. “The fact that our revenues are in excess of the actual needs of an economical administration of the government justifies a reduction in the amount exacted from the people for its support,” he wrote. “The proposition with which we have to deal is the reduction of the revenue received by the government and indirectly paid by the people from the customs duties. The amount of such reduction having been determined, the inquiry follows, where can it best be remitted and what articles can best be released from duty in the interests of our citizens? I think the reduction should be made in the revenue derived from a tax upon the imported necessaries of life.” “The question of free trade,” Mr. Cleveland said, “is not involved, nor is there any occasion for the general discussion of the wisdom or experience of a protective system.” He also interpolated a paragraph assuring the protected industries and their working-men that there was no intention in his mind of any ruthless changes which would hurt their interests.

As was to be expected, Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Morrison returned to the charge as soon as Congress opened. Four months were spent in preparing a new bill and on it the very best brains of the party were engaged. Abram Hewitt, who had in the previous session presented a bill embodying his ideas, now went to work with Morrison. David Wells and J. S. Moore, the “Parsee Merchant,” came to Washington to give their help. The greatest care was taken to meet the just objections to the previous measure, and when the bill was reported in April, 1886, it was found to be more moderate than its predecessor. The objectionable horizontal levelling had been given up. Duties had been studied in relation to labor cost. The free list was larger, including coal, salt, and iron, copper and lead ores. It was a bill for which both Republicans and Democrats might have voted without violating party platforms, but there was no hope for it. The Randall faction again joined the Republicans when Mr. Morrison asked the House to go into a Committee of the Whole to consider his bill, and voted him down by a vote of 157 to 140. Four Republicans voted with Morrison, 35 Democrats against him.

Mr. Morrison might be defeated, but tariff revision could not be. Indeed, the situation was becoming more complicated every day. For four years a serious business depression had harassed the country. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, who, as commissioner of labor, investigated the condition and reported a little later, found that in the year ending July, 1885, there had been fully 1,000,000 persons out of employment. He estimated that year of idleness meant a loss of $300,000,000 to the country. Strikes were incessant, and in 1884 and 1885 over 20,000 failures had occurred, many of them being in highly protected industries. Indeed, some of the chief advocates of the system had gone down in the general distress, among them John Roach, whose panegyric on protection as the source of prosperity was one of the choice pieces collected by the Tariff Commission of 1882, and Henry Oliver, the representative on the Commission of the iron and steel industries. The piling up of the surplus, too, was causing more and more uneasiness. In the year ending just after Mr. Morrison’s second bill was denied consideration, the surplus was found to be nearly ninety-four million dollars, with no profitable provision for spending. Even Mr. Randall was willing to admit that this was serious, and to remedy it he now prepared a bill. The gist of it was the reduction of the surplus by increasing the duties; that is, making them prohibitory. If nothing was imported, nothing would be collected. Of course, there was no hope for Mr. Randall’s proposition, though the Ways and Means Committee gave prominence to it by an adverse report and it was discussed fully in the public press, particularly in the New York Times, where the “Parsee Merchant” dissected it mercilessly.

This, in substance, was the condition of things when it came time for Mr. Cleveland to send in his second message. His first year in office had certainly given him large opportunity to study the tariff question. It had not been wasted. His notions had evidently been enlarged and intensified and in his message he urged at length upon Congress the “pressing importance” of revision. He made a strong argument against the system which had produced the surplus he was laboring with and at the same time caused “abnormal and exceptional business profits,” “without corresponding benefit to the people at large,” and it ended with a plain warning to Congress that nothing could be accomplished “unless the subject was approached in a patriotic spirit of devotion to the interests of the entire country and with a willingness to yield something to the public good.” This message is particularly interesting in comparison with the famous one of a year later. Indeed, it contains nearly all the points elaborated there. But it fell on deaf ears. Mr. Morrison proved this when, a few days later, he tried again to get his second bill reported, and was defeated. Not only did Congress refuse to consider Mr. Morrison’s bill, it adjourned in March, 1887, without any action of any kind in regard to revenue.

And while the members of Congress sullenly refused to consider the needs of the country lest in so doing they might sacrifice party advantage, Mr. Cleveland and his cabinet were spending anxious days trying to find means to unclog the treasury and avert panic. In the first six months after the message of December, 1886, nearly $80,000,000 were applied to taking up 3 per cent bonds. Financial uneasiness continuing, some eighteen to nineteen millions more were spent on the same bonds, and twenty-seven and one-half millions in taking up bonds not yet due and in anticipating interest. Even after this Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Fairchild, his Secretary of the Treasury, did not feel at all certain that trouble would not return, and as the hot weather came on and the cabinet members prepared to leave for their summer homes, the President arranged that they keep him informed of all their movements. He wanted to be able to reach them, he told them, for he had made up his mind that if there was a recurrence of trouble he would call an extra session of Congress and lay matters before the members in such a way that they would be forced to act.

But the summer passed and business grew better rather than worse. In September Mr. Cleveland went to Philadelphia to the centenary of the Constitution and there he met Mr. Fairchild. The two talked matters over and agreed that no extra session would be needed. “I was almost sorry,” Mr. Cleveland once told the writer “—not sorry that the trouble was over, but that my opportunity was lost.” But the cause of the trouble remained and continued to worry the President. It continued, too, to worry the country. Ugly evidences of this were continually coming from press and people. Mr. Cleveland was accused of not realizing the situation, of fearing the Randall faction of his party, of doing nothing because he was playing for a second term,—the old-time charges against the man who in a difficult situation with a divided party behind him, studies his case and waits for a favorable moment to act. Later in September, something happened which set everybody agog. Secretary Fairchild and Speaker Carlisle were reported to be at Oak View in consultation with the President and Mr. Randall was not present. It was taken as a sign that the President had concluded to ignore the Randall faction. But Mr. Cleveland did nothing more at the September council than to get the opinion of his colleagues on the situation; he did not reveal his plan of campaign, though at that moment he had it in mind, indeed had practically decided upon it, and a bold, original plan it was.

Mr. Cleveland had come to the conclusion that the country must be forced to think about the tariff and its relation to the business disorders, and that the only way open to him to force this attention was to devote his entire forthcoming message to Congress to that subject. No such thing had ever been done by a President of the United States. But there was no constitutional objection to the idea. Nothing but precedent was against it and Mr. Cleveland concluded that here was a case where the breaking of a precedent was more useful than the observance. For weeks he turned the matter over in his mind, taking nobody into his confidence, until finally early in November he told his cabinet what he had determined upon. He regretted, he said, not to use their several reports as was the custom, particularly when everybody had made so good a showing, but in his judgment the situation justified the action. There was not an objector to the suggestion; on the contrary, there was hearty and unanimous approval. Every member of the cabinet seems to have realized that the President had hit on a move of undoubted wisdom.

The writing of the message was a serious task for Mr. Cleveland. He realized that its effect depended upon the completeness of his argument and his making himself clear and convincing to plain people. It was really a literary task, and Mr. Cleveland was not a literary man. He was a lawyer, accustomed to presenting what he had to say in the forcible and exact but more or less technical and ponderous terms of the law. He had a taste, too, for sonorous and unusual words and phrases, but now he wanted to be simple,—as simple as he could be, and still be dignified. For weeks he kept his message within reach in the drawer of his White House work-table, whenever he had a moment, taking it out to add to and to correct. Finally he had the structure worked out to his satisfaction. He would begin at the end of the story with what the high tariff had done, the dangers and hardships it had brought on the country, and he would tell Congress plainly, this is your work and you alone can remedy it. With dignity and clearness he worked out the situation: