The Tariff in Our Times

by Ida M. Tarbell

“Very hastily,

“James G. Blaine.”

This letter was dated April 10, six days before Mr. McKinley reported his bill. It was effective. Hides were kept on the free list in 1890.

As the debate on the bill went on, Mr. Blaine appears to have become more and more uneasy as to its effect on foreign trade, and to meet the difficulty he proposed a system of what might be called forced reciprocity with the countries of the American Hemisphere. So long as they admitted free to their ports all the products of the United States our market should be open and free to their products; but if they applied their tariffs to our goods or put export duty on their own, they should not enjoy the advantages of our free list. This proposition was made in a report to President Harrison and by him sent to Congress. It caused much discussion and Mr. Blaine was obliged to explain himself repeatedly. On July 11, he wrote Senator Frye, saying:

“The charge against the protective policy which has injured it most is that its benefits go wholly to the manufacturer and the capitalist and not at all to the farmer. Here is an opportunity where the farmer may be benefited—primarily, undeniably, richly benefited. Here is an opportunity for a Republican Congress to open the markets of forty millions of people to the products of American farms. Shall we seize the opportunity, or shall we throw it away?

“I do not doubt that the tariff bill pending in the Senate is a just measure, and that most of its provisions are in accordance with the wise policy of protection. But there is not a section or a line in the entire bill that will open the market for another bushel of wheat or another barrel of pork.”

Mr. Blaine in another letter said:

“If, in the pending tariff, sugar is placed upon the free list, we give to certain countries a free market for $95,000,000 of their products, while they are not asked to open their markets to the free admission of a single dollar of American products. We ought to have, in exchange for free sugar from certain countries, a free market for breadstuffs and provisions, besides various fabrics from all parts of our country. In short, we ought to secure, in return for free sugar, a market for $60,000,000 or $70,000,000 of our own products. It will not require reciprocity treaties to secure this boon. The tariff bill can contain all the necessary conditions. The legislative power is able to secure the desired end. Within the last twenty years we have given the countries south of us free admission for nearly $60,000,000 worth of their products without receiving a penny’s advantage in exchange. If sugar be now made unconditionally free, we shall have given to the Latin-American countries free admission for $150,000,000 of their products. It is time, I think, to look out for some reciprocal advantages. We are a very rich nation, but not rich enough to trade on this equal basis.”

Although Mr. Blaine’s idea was not adopted as he had presented it, a reciprocity clause based on it was embodied in the Tariff Act of 1890. This clause gave the President power to impose duties on sugar, molasses, tea and coffee and hides, all free in the McKinley Bill, if he found that a country which was exporting any of these articles into the United States was levying duties on the products of the United States which seemed to him unjust. There was of course a lively skirmish over giving the President this power. The Democrats declared it unconstitutional and in this view they were supported by Republican Senators as able as Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Evarts; however, it became a law.

As finally passed, the McKinley Bill was a complete victory for that group of protectionists who had been struggling for twenty-five years to force the Republican party to break the pledges repeatedly given during and after the war to lower the customs as rapidly as the financial condition of the country would permit, to repudiate its long accepted moderate interpretation of the doctrine, and to substitute for it the teaching, that the wealth of this country had been produced by protection and that its stability depended upon protection being accepted as a permanent national economic policy. It was equally a victory for the theorist like Kelley to whom protection was sacred because he saw in it a panacea for poverty, and for William Whitman and Joseph Wharton who saw fortunes for themselves in wool, nickel, iron, and steel if they could secure the duties they asked. For John Sherman and Morrill and Allison it was a half-victory only. They had held moderate protection as the only wise and safe policy, but they had been overruled.