The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

Mr. McMillan was equally severe: “The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. McKinley) has not even pretended that this Senate bill is an ‘amendment’ to the House bill. He could not. He is too intelligent to believe it and too candid to assert it. It is, as he describes it, an entirely different bill; a distinct proposition framed on a different ‘theory.’ As a matter of fact, the Senate does not assume to amend the House bill. The Senate struck out every section of our bill or threw it aside and framed one of their own. In doing so they violated the Constitution, and they now ask us to meet them in conference and concur in this demolition.

“What I want to know of the members of this House is, are you ready to do this in the face of that declaration of the gentleman from Ohio that this is a different and new bill? Have you so far degenerated from those principles that your sires held of adherence to the Constitution as to be willing at the request of the gentleman from Ohio to give up the people’s right to frame a bill in accordance with the people’s principles, and give it over to the Senate, not elected by the people directly, but by the states? Others may do as they please, but for me, I will never, never consent to such a cowardly and ignoble degradation of the rights of the people and the privileges of the House.”

The Allison Bill went to the Ways and Means Committee and that was the last of it under the name of the gentleman who had led in its making.

It was not until a year after its election that the new House got a chance at the tariff. In his first message to Congress President Harrison had recommended a revision of both the schedules and the administrative features of the tariff. He feared, he said, that some disturbance of business might result from the consideration of the subject, but he was certain that this would be reduced to the minimum by “the assurance which the country already enjoys that any necessary changes will be so made as not to impair the just and reasonable protection of our home industries.”

The new organization of the House and of the Ways and Means Committee was admirably adapted to put through a bill satisfactory to the dominant faction of the party—also a bill in which the manufacturer would get what he asked. The chairman of the Committee was no longer William Kelley. Mr. Kelley was in his last illness and the man who for nearly six years had been his chief lieutenant had taken his place. This was William McKinley of Ohio. In 1883, it will be remembered, Mr. Kelley thought he had found his successor in William D. Haskell of Kansas. Mr. Haskell had shown unusual ability both as a parliamentarian and a debater, but the work of the session had been too much for him. He did not recuperate from the strain through the summer, and twelve days after Congress opened in December, he died in Washington. Kelley wept like a child when he heard of Haskell’s death. “Why could not I have gone in his place,” he said; “my work is nearly done, his was only begun.” But Kelley was not alone. Close to Haskell throughout the winter of 1882–1883 had been another young protectionist, one in whom Kelley had great and affectionate confidence. This was William McKinley. Indeed, it had been uncertain at the beginning of the movement for tariff reform in 1880, whether Haskell or McKinley would become Kelley’s first lieutenant. The former had won by his superior energy and superior intellect and it is altogether probable that he would have kept his place if he had lived. At his death McKinley naturally succeeded him. At that time he was about forty-five years old. He had been in Congress since 1876, and from the first the tariff had been his chief interest. His amiability, his earnestness, his almost devout attitude towards the dogma of protection, endeared him greatly to Kelley, and by the time the debate on the Mills Bill came on he was firmly in place. His speeches in that debate and the campaign which followed were among the most popular made. McKinley had an advantage at that time which few of his colleagues enjoyed,—that of believing with childlike faith that all he claimed for protection was true. Moreover, he had no tariff reform record behind him as the best of them had; no speech like Allison’s of March, 1870, could be thrown up at him. Moreover, McKinley was one of those amiable persons who likes to agree with everybody, and even when President, rarely sent away a visitor without making him feel that they agreed more than they differed. He was friendly with many of the Democrats, particularly Colonel Mills, and often consulted him at vexing points. Believing, as McKinley did, in the infallibility of protection, there could not be too much of it; he could with clear conscience give all that the manufacturer asked, and then add a little, confident that he was really fostering prosperity.

But at this particular moment it needed something more than an ardent and amiable chairman to put through the House of Representatives such a bill as it was obvious would be reported. There was a majority of but twenty-one, and with the rules as they were, almost endless obstruction was possible. The probability was, too, that the Democrats would see that all the obstruction possible was applied. The speaker the Republicans had chosen could be counted to take care of this situation. This was Thomas B. Reed of Maine. Mr. Reed was, like McKinley, a protectionist, but he never regarded the dogma as inspired. His well-developed humor, his cynicism, and his large practical sense all helped him to view it for about what it was worth. But that made him no less strenuous a supporter. Indeed, it made him a more adroit and effective one. You could tell beforehand about what phraseology Kelley or McKinley would offer in defence of a schedule. Reed could be counted on for the unexpected. He had no patience with delaying the tariff bill. He believed in doing what the majority wanted done,—when he agreed with the majority,—and he laid down at the start in defiance of precedent a set of orders which enabled him to force rapid action.

When Mr. McKinley called the Committee on Ways and Means, it had before it two bills carefully prepared by members of his own party, providing for what President Harrison had pointed out in his message should be done. These were Mr. Allison’s Customs Administrative Bill, which after passing the Senate had been referred to the Committee nearly two years earlier (March, 1888), and the same Senator’s Tariff bill which in January of 1889 had been referred to the House as an amendment to the Mills Bill. Both of these measures were thoroughly familiar to Congress and the country. McKinley seems to have had the idea at first of making a tariff bill which would include administration as well as duties, but Colonel Tichenor, who had been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of customs and internal revenue, urged so hard for immediate action on the Administrative Bill that McKinley finally introduced it separately and it was promptly passed and signed by the President. This is practically the law under which our customs are still administered. It is usually credited to Mr. McKinley, but with its framing he had, as we have seen, very little to do.

Hearings on the tariff were at once begun. They perhaps were never less justifiable. The Committee had as a guide a great mass of recent testimony which further hearings could do little more than duplicate. But Mr. McKinley took the whole matter too devoutly to omit any of the ceremony. Hearings were a good Republican tradition, and hearings he would have. His was to be no “Dark Lantern bill,” as the opposition delighted in calling the Mills Bill.

The Allison Bill was accepted as a foundation by Mr. McKinley for the new measure which was first reported on April 16. In reporting the bill Mr. McKinley gave notice that general debate would be limited to four days. “I have interpreted the victory to mean, and the majority in the House and Senate to mean,” he said, “that a revision of the tariff was not only demanded by the votes of the people but that such revision should be on the line and in full recognition of the principle and purposes of protection. The people have spoken and want their will registered and their decrees embodied in public legislation.”

Mr. Mills and his colleagues were eloquent in their remonstrances against the limit on the debate, but the program was in too firm hands to be modified by arguments or tactics. The bill passed the House on May 21. The Senate Committee on Finance added hundreds of amendments to it, and the Senate spent some seven weeks debating it. On the 10th of September it passed the upper House and was referred to a Conference Committee. Both Houses agreed to the report of this Committee, and the President signed the bill and it became a law on October 1, 1890.