The most significant side to the victory was that it established firmly the politico-industrial alliance which organizations like the Industrial League, the Iron and Steel Association, and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers had worked so indefatigably ever since the war to build up. Moreover, in the making of this bill, that alliance had found the Congressional leader it needed—a man who was willing to accept its dictates as to classifications and rates, to fight for them with skill, energy, and technical knowledge, and who took it as a matter of course that he and his party should receive in exchange what financial and organizing aid they required. This man was Nelson W. Aldrich. The part he had played in the Senate in the making of the Allison and McKinley Bills had proved him the first entirely able and what was quite as important, entirely cynical leader, the high protectionists had developed. Those whom he had served so well were not ungrateful. Particularly jubilant was the National Association of Wool Manufacturers. It publicly acknowledged its “great obligations to Senator W. Aldrich of Rhode Island for the masterly manner in which he advocated its cause in the Senate.” “Indeed,” the Bulletin went on to say, “it is proper that we should bear testimony in this connection to the remarkable familiarity with all branches of industry displayed by Senator Aldrich in his management of the tariff bill. Every detail of the most complicated of the schedules was present in his mind for instant response to any criticism or inquiry. Day after day he stood at his post, alert and watchful, rarely speaking except when a response was required, but armed cap-à-pie for attack from any quarter. Rarely in the history of tariff legislation in this country has the whole burden of so protracted a debate fallen upon one man, and certainly no representative in Congress ever acquitted himself more admirably of so great a responsibility.”
The best reason for believing that the methods and principles embodied in the bill would have more than a brief life, that the revolt already begun against its excesses and makeshifts would not weaken it, lay in the fact that the ideal leader for the measure had developed in the Senator from Rhode Island.
CHAPTER IX
THE WILSON BILL
“Gentlemen, you can pass your bill. You can pass it when you please,” Colonel Roger Q. Mills told the Republicans in Congress at the outset of the debate on the McKinley Bill; “but whenever it does pass it will have a Hell Gate to go through after it leaves the House and Senate. There is a whirlpool with sunken rocks beneath the surface of the water through which your little craft will have to sail.
“You say that this question was settled at the last presidential election. Yes, Grover Cleveland had a majority of one hundred thousand votes of the American people. If there is anything in the signs of the times, they indicate that that majority will be greatly increased in the near future. I want you to pass your bill and go with it out West; take it with hair, hide, and wool all over it, and discuss it there; I want you to meet the people whom you have ‘not hesitated’ to tax from 1 to 200 per cent on the necessaries of life.
“Mr. Chairman, we promise our friends that we will examine their bill. It needs discussion, and will get whatever we are permitted to give it; and then when we have done that you will pass it, and when you leave this House and Senate with this enormous load of guilt upon your heads and appear before the great tribunal for trial, may ‘the Lord have mercy upon your souls.’”
This was in May of 1890. The bill became a law in October. In the interval, wise Republicans like John Sherman and James G. Blaine were doing their utmost to prepare for the passage of the “Hell Gate,” which Colonel Mills had prophesied and the roar of which became louder with each week’s approach to the fall elections. While his party granted the duties which bolstered the trusts, Mr. Sherman hurried through his bill making trusts a crime. While his party raised higher the wall which shut trade both in and out, Mr. Blaine worked for free trade between ourselves and our neighbors on the American hemisphere. But these were palliatives, not cures, and sensible people recognized their character. The storm was on the party almost as the measure went through. In the Congress which passed the McKinley Bill, the Republicans and Democrats stood 166 to 159. In the House of Representatives elected a little over a month after the passage of the McKinley Bill the proportion was 88 to 236: they had lost 78 votes. No such avalanche as overwhelmed the party in the fall of 1890 is loosened by one cause. It is always a number, but in this case it was a number of which the prohibitive duty and the political methods it had required to force it through Congress was the centre and strength. The other causes were kindred in their nature. The overthrow of the party at bottom was a plain revolt against the political immorality, the intellectual humbug, and the unholy greed which had produced the bill. At the heart of the Democratic victory was the inspiration of a real cause. The defeat of ’88 had left the party determined rather than cast down. They knew they were fighting for a right principle. Their joy in the conflict grew rather than diminished as the months passed.
The Democrats had won the House and Senate and all the indications were that they would win the presidency in 1892. The first fifteen months’ trial of the new measure admirably served their ambition, for that happened which, lack of work aside, makes life hardest for the world in general,—the price of food went steadily up. The fact that a dollar would buy more sugar did not compensate for the fact that it bought less flour, less corn-meal, less meat, and fewer potatoes. Moreover, there were other advances which irritated the world in general,—advances in the prices of coal, lumber, and particularly tin ware and canned goods. Tin plates which sold for $4.79 a box in 1890 sold for $5.33 in 1891, and by the time the tin found its way into a milk pan or a dinner pail or a tomato can there was a still greater per cent of increase. It was so palpably a higher cost because of the duty, it was so generally and correctly believed that the increase would not for many years benefit more than a few, that irritation increased with every purchase. Among manufactured goods it was tin plates almost alone which advanced. Manufactured goods generally fell in price in 1891. Some of the high grade cottons and woollens advanced, but these were exceptions. The fact of a decided increase in a common article like tin plate, the fact that coal and lumber were dearer, quite overshadowed the fall in the prices of goods generally.
There was no hesitation in the minds of the Democrats about what they should do with their power when they took possession of Congress in December, 1891. They proposed to begin at once to reform the McKinley Bill. The history of their efforts in the ’80’s being what we have seen, and Roger Q. Mills being still a member of the House of Representatives, it was to be expected that he would be elected speaker of the House. Mills was a candidate, so were Charles F. Crisp of Georgia and William M. Springer of Illinois. On the Tuesday before the Democratic caucus, Colonel Mills had one hundred and twenty votes pledged. When the first vote was taken, Mr. Crisp was in the lead. On the thirtieth ballot Mills was defeated by one vote. After the contest, he took the Congressional Directory and checked off the names of twenty-four men who had asked him for committee assignments, promising to support him in return; the doughty Colonel had refused. Once in the contest Springer sent him word that he would withdraw if Colonel Mills would make him chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Colonel Mills asked to have the proposition submitted in writing! Tom Johnson, who was devoted to Mills, came to him once when the balloting was going on, and said, “I do wish you wouldn’t be a fool; give me two chairmanships and ask me no questions and I will elect you on the next ballot.” The Colonel only shook his head. There is no doubt that if he had withdrawn with his followers from the caucus and thrown the election into the House, the Republicans would have elected him. Indeed, they so sent him word.
Mr. Crisp was elected, and he appointed Mr. Springer chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. To Colonel Mills he offered the second place on the Committee; this Mills refused, “Having been a member of the committee of the Ways and Means for ten years, and chairman in the fiftieth Congress,” he wrote Mr. Springer, “the reasons which have in your judgment rendered my appointment as chairman unwise would disqualify me for service on any other part of that Committee, and it would not be sincere to say that it would be agreeable to accept your tender.