“Mr. Havemeyer.—The American Sugar Refining Company has no politics of any kind.
“Senator Allen.—Only the politics of business?
“Mr. Havemeyer.—Only the politics of business.”
Whatever the Democrats received in 1892 from the Sugar Trust,—and it is probably as certain that they received, not $500,000, but a good sum, as it is certain that Mr. Quay received something like $100,000 from the same source in the campaign of 1888,—it was the sugar refiners who succeeded in getting the rates they wanted into the Wilson Bill, not the sugar-producers. So strong was their position with the faction remodelling the bill, that is, with Mr. Gorman and Mr. Brice, that they were able to overpower even the Louisiana Senators, on whom the victory of the insurgents was supposed to depend, and to replace the specific duty which these interests wanted and which raw sugar long had had, by an ad valorem rate, a form which was believed to work and probably did work decidedly to the advantage of the trust.
The charge in the Press article that many Senators had speculated in sugar stock, was investigated. Men like Cushman K. Davis, George Gray, George F. Hoar, Roger Q. Mills, John M. Palmer, John Sherman, and John P. Morgan had to suffer along with Quay and Brice, Smith of New Jersey and Murphy of New York, the humiliation of an examination. Senators McPherson and Quay acknowledged that they had been dealing in sugar while the schedule was in the Senate. In no other cases was the fact established, but the suspicion remained in spite of denials that other Senators were equally guilty. This popular belief was more strongly entrenched around Senator Aldrich than any other member of the body. He had been the chief advocate of the refiners in the Senate for a number of years. He was a friend of John O. Searles, and the two had been much together while the schedule of 1894 was making. His fortunes apparently expanded rapidly about this time. The suspicion crystallized in a nickname for his country home which still clings to it,—“the sugar house,”—but there was never a vestige of proof, so far as the author knows, that sugar had anything to do with Senator Aldrich’s fortune.
Of course, it would have been impossible for the sugar Senators to have received the favors they did if they had not acquiesced in similar gifts to other interests. They paid for their advantages by consenting to a duty on iron-ore, on silverore containing lead, and on coal, all of which should have been free under Democratic doctrine. They paid by consenting to scores of increased duties on manufactured articles, which in some cases raised rates to the McKinley level. A typical transaction was the duty on collars and cuffs. It had been cut by the House. Senator Murphy of New York wanted it raised to oblige certain constituents. He threatened to vote against the bill if he was denied. He, of course, got what he wanted.
Nor was it the Democrats alone who raided the Wilson Bill. The revolt of Senators Gorman and Brice was an invitation to the Republicans to see what they could do for their constituents. When the news of what was going on spread through the country, Washington rapidly filled up with the agents and counsel of the protected industries, and under the leadership of Senator Quay a campaign of obstruction was carried on. Unless you give us what we ask, you shall have no bill at all, said Senator Quay; I will talk it to death. He began to execute his threat on April 14, and ended on June 16. Day after day, the Congressional Record states laconically, “Senator Quay resumed the floor in continuance of the speech begun on the 14th of April,” and occasionally it adds, “speech will be printed when finished.” Senator Quay occupied twelve days of the period in his filibustering. He ceased because he had assurance that the duties he sought would be granted. His speech covers some 235 pages of the Congressional Record, an exhibit of legislation by violence which happily has few parallels in our history. James M. Swank, the manager of the Iron and Steel Association, says that Senator Quay secured higher rates of duties in “hundreds” of cases by his filibuster. He and Senator Aldrich seem to have turned their advantage mainly to saving their own chief industries,—iron and steel and cotton,—for both schedules were written by the manufacturers.
The chief industry which did not get about what it wanted was wool. The House had provided for free wool and a 35 per cent duty on all manufactured goods. This was 5 per cent less than Mr. Mills had proposed to put on woollens in 1888. Of course the Republicans prophesied the most terrible disasters from this change. The industry had been sharing in the general depression of the country, that is, the McKinley Bill had not been able to make it prosperous. The National Association of Wool Manufacturers, confronted by this fact, pleaded that the bill be given a longer test. They declared that there was a “universal agreement between manufacturers” that the “tariff was now scientifically adjusted.” Nobody was going to suffer from the rates, they said, and in time they would insure permanent prosperity. The Association, of course, overlooked the fact that the rates they were then enjoying had, with only slight decreases in 1883, been in force since 1867, and that they had not prevented periodical depressions. They overlooked the fact, too, that, far from being united, as they declared, a very large body of the ablest woollen manufacturers in the country were at that moment petitioning for free wool and advising lower duties on their own products. All of this had little effect on the Democrats. The schedule went to the Senate as it had been prepared by Mr. Wilson’s committee; and when the sub-committee took hold of it, the duty on woollens was made 30 per cent instead of 35 per cent. This schedule was reported to the Senate on March 20, and soon after that the wool-growers and wool manufacturers learned of the Democratic insurgent movement for higher duties led by Gorman and Brice.
“As soon as it became known that all the schedules were being written up to or towards protective rates,” one of their leading historians wrote afterwards in the Bulletin of the Association, “the woollen manufacturers began to gather in Washington with a view to discovering what could be done to save their own industry from destruction. The first efforts to this end were directed towards securing compound duties. Many variations in the compound rates originally suggested were made, finally resulting in a schedule in which all manufacturers acquiesced.
“The compound schedule was thrown out of court almost immediately, coupled with the information that under no circumstances would the suggestion of compound duties on woollen goods be considered. If at this juncture the woollen manufacturers had been so fortunate as to possess among the Democratic Senators a single friend, so earnestly and honestly their friend as to do for them what certain Senators did for certain other industries (notably several branches of the iron and steel industry), this compound schedule could have been forced into the bill, as other specific duties were forced into it everywhere else, as the condition precedent to its passage. But they had no such friend, none at least who was willing to go as far as other Senators went for other industries. Thus it happens that the wool schedule is almost the only one in the Senate bill which was not dictated by some one powerful enough to make its terms fairly satisfactory to the industries concerned.”