On the 6th of December it went to Congress. The effect was instantaneous. All over the country thinking people cried out that not since the Emancipation Proclamation had a President of the United States shown equal courage and wisdom. The patience with which Mr. Cleveland had waited for Congress to take the action needed and to which he had in both his previous messages urged it, the deliberation and caution with which he had worked out his duty when Congress failed to do its duty; the courage with which he acted when he felt the time had come for his interference, the high patriotism with which he had swept away all thought of the result to himself and the party for what he believed to be the general good—all these features appealed to the thoughtful and led many to draw a parallel between Abraham Lincoln in 1862 and Grover Cleveland in 1887.
The immediate important political result of the message was that it crystallized tariff sentiment in both parties. The Democrats who had been trying to mix enough protection with their “ultimate free-trade” or “tariff-for-revenue only” principles to ease the fears of protected industries, and win over Mr. Randall, turned exclusive attention to revision without compromise. As for Mr. Randall, it was plain his day was over—if his fight was not.
At first the message caused something like a panic among Republicans. The Tribune appealed to Mr. Blaine for help and he sent from Paris a famous interview. If anything was needed to emphasize the worth of Mr. Cleveland’s message, it was supplied by Mr. Blaine’s interview. The combination of the two documents caused something like a split in Republican ranks. The Chicago Tribune and a number of other Western papers came out with as strong a commendation of Mr. Cleveland as the New York Nation, and in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa particularly, many leading Republicans publicly approved it. Nevertheless, the final effect on the party was to solidify the varying degrees of protectionists into one body. Cost what it might the Democrats must not be allowed to reform the tariff. Nothing was better campaign capital for Republicans than the charge of “free-trade.” If Mr. Cleveland’s will prevailed, the value of the epithet might be materially lessened. Protection must be preserved. If its operations were to be corrected, this must be done by its friends, not its enemies. Whatever their differences about the degree and extent of duties, all good Republicans must now stand together.
CHAPTER VII
THE MILLS AND ALLISON BILLS
It is one of the ironies of the political history of this period that the Democrat who for many years had been among the most devoted to a reform bill, William R. Morrison of Illinois, should not have been in Congress now that the tide had turned to lead in its making. Mr. Morrison had been defeated in the fall of 1886 and it was necessary to have a new chairman for the Ways and Means Committee. Roger Q. Mills of Texas was chosen. The appointment was a red rag to the high protectionists, for Mr. Mills was an out-and-out free-trader. After Mr. Carlisle he was the ablest and best informed man in Congress on the tariff. There are two classes of Congressmen, those who study their subjects and those who do not. While three-fourths of Mr. Mills’s colleagues visited with constituents, dined with their fellows, looked after their fences, held their ears to the ground, he was poring over tables and reports. He had entered Congress in 1873, an ex-confederate officer thrice wounded during the war but still as handsome a man as there was in the body—one of the few Congressmen who never allowed Ben. Perley Poore to put his biography into the Congressional Directory! Mr. Mills was the soul of chivalry, and more than once exasperated his Democratic colleague by his generosity to his opponents. He had refused in 1883 to join the Democrats in their opposition to the admission of the colored members from South Carolina. They had been elected, they must be admitted. In 1884 McKinley’s seat was contested. Mr. Mills became convinced that McKinley had really been elected and he voted accordingly. Poor “Pig Iron” Kelley, ill and distracted over the attack on his favorite doctrine of protection as well as over the corruption in his own party which had at last become too general and high-colored to escape even his blind eyes, had angered the House and it had moved to reprimand him. Mr. Mills protested: he was old, he had faithfully served his country, he would have no part in so cruel and unjust a measure.
Mr. Mills had been brought up in the fine old school of Democracy. Free speech, free trade, independent action, self-reliance were cardinal virtues to him. He took his principles as he found them in Thomas Jefferson, and he literally followed Jefferson’s advice to go back frequently to the ideas on which the government had been founded for encouragement and advice. The interpretation of protection which he had found in force when he entered Congress and the growing combinations of business men to support it, he despised, and from the first all his fighting blood had been up against them. He had been on the Ways and Means Committee continually since his first appointment and had contributed some of the strongest arguments and sayings to be found in the various debates. “Free poker and a taxed Gospel” was his phrase; his way of characterizing the failure to get Bibles on the free list and playing cards off.
Naturally Mr. Mills brought to his chairmanship some positive ideas. One of the most positive was that there should be no hearings given to manufacturers. If he had denied the right to life, liberty, and happiness, no louder wail would have arisen. With every tariff bill the “hearings” had been growing longer and more futile, declared Mr. Mills, and one who undertakes to read them, even to look over them, cannot deny that he was right. Admitting all that any candid protectionists could claim for the value of the hearings there was already an accumulation of recent ones as great as any committee could digest. There were the two big volumes of the tariff commission dated 1883, perhaps on the whole the best which had been taken; there were several volumes from Mr. Morrison’s committee and from the Senate Finance Committee. This was enough in Mr. Mills’s opinion and he set his foot down about taking further testimony of this kind. He even held out against meeting socially the gentlemen who haunted Washington for the purpose of keeping their representatives in mind of what might happen “back home” if what they had asked was not given. Several amusing incidents resulted from his obstinate stand on the matter. One came through the determination of the “Parsee Merchant” to force Mr. Mills to talk with some of the manufacturers. The “Parsee” was as devoted a free-trader as Mr. Mills, but he did not share Mr. Mills’s antipathy to lobbyists. He was a man of the world, a great diner-out, a brilliant talker. At his own dinners in Washington he brought together people of the most varied tastes. One night he entertained the Ways and Means Committee, including the Chairman. The dinner was under way when a card was brought in. With assumed surprise Mr. Moore exclaimed, “Why, it’s my friend Mr. Havemeyer, bring him in.” Now for some time Mr. Mills had been besought to meet Mr. Havemeyer, and he had persistently refused. He did not propose to be trapped into a meeting. The great sugar man came in one door; Mr. Mills went out the other.
Mr. Mills had of course decided notions about the principles to be embodied in the bill. He stood for free raw materials, and consequently increased the free list considerably; wool, salt, lumber, wood pulp, flax, hemp, and jute were the important additions. Tin plates and cotton-ties were the leading manufactured items he made free. His chief hobby, however, was no specific duties. As the schedules then stood both specific and ad valorem were assessed on a great variety of articles. As an illustration, take dress goods, which started with a division into part wool and all wool. The former class was then divided according to value, those goods worth 20 cents or less per square yard carrying a specific duty of 5 cents per square yard and 35 cents ad valorem; those worth more than 20 cents, 7 cents and 40 per cent ad valorem. All-wool goods were divided according to weight: those weighing 4 ounces or less per square yard carried 9 cents per square yard, and 40 per cent ad valorem; those over 4 ounces, 35 cents per pound and 40 per cent ad valorem. The confusion resulting from this complexity was constant and opportunity for fraud increased with each variation. The scandals through the ’70’s and ’80’s charged by the Republicans solely to ad valorem duties were largely due to the irritating classifications according to value and the mixture of ad valorem and specific duties.
When Mr. Mills went to work on the bill he had before him a trial measure on which he had spent six months at home before his appointment and which for his own satisfaction he had had printed. He had attempted in his bill to avoid all specific duties; thus in the case of dress goods he wiped out all classifications and put a straight 40 per cent on the value, but as he afterwards said: “When I got to work with my brethren on the bill I found it would not go and I had to abandon my ad valorem tariff bill. The schoolmaster had not been sufficiently around to bring our people back to the Democratic principle of taxation as to value.” Mr. Mills simplified the complicated cotton schedule in the same way that he had the woollen schedule, by sweeping away the confusing classifications and assessing a straight 40 per cent on their value. The duties were reduced less drastically on iron and steel, and sugar suffered a reduction of only 18 per cent. The failure to apply the same rule to iron and steel and sugar as to wool and cotton was probably “geographic,” as Tom Reed charged. “This bill, far from being philosophical, is political from one end to the other,” Mr. Reed said in debate. “Is it not singular that this great principle of labor cost somehow or other seems to be strictly geographical—that it strikes the Canadian line with cyclonic force and that the Southern states seem to be so far removed from the storm centre as not to be in the slightest degree even ruffled?” Mr. Mills’s committee was made up largely of Southerners; iron and sugar interests were strong in their districts, both claimed special protection and both received it.
The Mills Bill aroused a tremendous discussion. The “Great Debate,” as it is called in tariff annals, lasted for over a month. One hundred and fifty-one speeches were made, those of Mr. Mills, McMillin of Tennessee, Wilson of West Virginia, Scott of Pennsylvania, Cox of New York, and Carlisle of Kentucky were the most important on the Democratic side: those of Reed of Maine, McKinley of Ohio, Burrows of Michigan, Butterworth of Ohio, and Kelley of Pennsylvania, the leading ones on the Republican side. The Democratic attack was along the lines of Mr. Cleveland’s message with particular emphasis on the small per cent of wages directly affected by the tariff and the large amount of the duty which went elsewhere than to labor. A large body of expert calculations on these points were at their service. The first point had been recently solved by three able statisticians, each working independent of the other. They were Worthington Ford, E. B. Elliot, and Simon Newcomb. The results at which they arrived were bad for the claim that high wages depended on protection. They showed that as a fact the duties affected but a small amount of labor; according to Mr. Ford 4.07 per cent, according to Mr. Elliot 4.34 per cent, to Mr. Newcomb 5½. That is, there was 94 per cent of the wages of the community which were not affected by tariffs, although the earners of these wages were paying higher prices for many of the necessities of life because of these tariffs.