means of elevating the standards of elections. The action of Massachusetts was followed by nine other States in 1889, by seven more in 1890, and by eighteen in 1891. Before the next presidential election the reform was national in its scope and neither the purchase of votes nor the intimidation of voters ever recurred on the scale in which they existed before the adoption of the Australian ballot.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The tariff histories mentioned under Chapter VIII, above, continue to be of use. William L. Wilson, The National Democratic Party (1888), is a partisan compilation, but has considerable value in the absence of more serious histories of parties. Joseph B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life (1916), prints numerous letters relating to this campaign, and should be read in connection with Charles S. Olcott, Life of William McKinley (1916).

CHAPTER XV

PROTECTION

JAMES G. BLAINE was more prominent during the canvass of 1888 than was Benjamin Harrison, the candidate, and received the reward of his unquestioned party Harrison's leadership in the appointment as Secretary of Cabinet State. In the management of the campaign it was clear that Republican manufacturers were providing the campaign funds and that they expected action from the new Government in the direction of the extension of the protective system. The rest of the Cabinet was made up of party workers loyal to protection. William L. Windom was made Secretary of the Treasury, although Thomas C. Platt declared the post had been promised to him. Most of the other members were unknown in national affairs; but one, John Wanamaker, of Philadelphia, who was appointed Postmaster-General, occasioned considerable remonstrance. Wanamaker was described by Harper's Weekly as the purveyor of money to be spent by Quay and Dudley. In the closing days of the canvass he was believed to have raised nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the party treasury, extracting the funds from his manufacturing acquaintances who feared interference with their tariff rates. The editor of the New York Tribune was made Minister to France and Corporal Tanner was made Commissioner of Pensions.

Organiza

The election of 1888 resulted in Republican majorities in both houses in the Fifty-First Congress, but left the majorities so small that party business could be transacted only in case it was possible to keep tion of the whole majority continually at work. In Fifty-First the Senate with forty-seven Republicans against thirty-seven Democrats the margin was large enough for safe operation. In the House of Representatives, with one

Congress

hundred and seventy votes the Republicans possessed only five more than the absolute majority necessary to produce a quorum. Under the practice in the House the quorum was determined by the number of members who answered on a roll-call. When the Mills Bill was introduced in November, 1888, the Republican members, under the leadership of Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, sat silently in their seats during the roll-call and compelled the Democrats to provide the whole quorum out of their own membership before they could proceed to business. If this practice were now turned against the Republican majority the end result would be impotence in the House whenever six Republicans were absent. The practice was a scandal, sanctified by long continuance. Thomas B. Reed was elected Speaker with the support of most of his party votes, after a caucus in which the nomination had been contested by Joseph G. Cannon, William McKinley, and David B. Henderson. Reed raised McKinley to the chairmanship of the Committee on Ways and Means, and determined upon his policy in case the minority should impede a new revision of the tariff by a filibuster against a quorum. The test occurred on January 29, 1890, when the minority remained silent during a roll-call, and the Speaker directed the clerk of the House to record the names of the Democrats not voting and to count them present. ruling was autocratic and revolutionary and precipitated a parliamentary riot among its Democratic victims, who leaped angrily to their feet to insist that they were not present. With inflexible good humor Reed observed that they appeared to be present and continued to count their names. After some days' discussion the ruling of the chair was upheld and the House rules were changed, abolishing the old abuse. Reed received the nickname "Czar," and earned it in so far as he used his power as Speaker and as chairman of the Committee on Rules to prevent a minority of the House from interfering with the performance of its business by the majority. The McKinley tariff was taken up as the first important party measure.

The

There was reasonable room for doubt as to the nature of

The

the mandate of 1888, since Cleveland received a majority of the votes cast, while Harrison was elected President. But there was no doubt as to the in- McKinley tariff tention of the Republican Party to regard the election as a victory for the new dominant issue. “We are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection," said their party platform. "We protest against its destruction as proposed by the President and his party. They serve the interests of Europe; we will support the interests of America." The new measure that McKinley reported to the House represented the first attempt to apply the principle of protection systematically. Burrows, of Michigan, expressed the party intent:

"If there is any article on the free list in this bill the like of which, by fair and adequate protection, could be produced in this country in sufficient quantities to meet the home demand, it is an oversight on the part of the majority of the committee, and, if it can be pointed out, we will move that it be transferred to the dutiable list and given such protection as will insure its production in this country.

"If there is a single article on the dutiable list where the duty is so low as to expose the like domestic industry to a ruinous foreign competition and thus endanger its permanency, it has but to be indicated to secure such measure of protection as will insure its safety.

"If the proposed rate of duty on any article on the dutiable list is in excess of what is required to give fair and adequate protection to the competing domestic industry, none will be more ready than the majority of your committee to reduce the rate to the level of such requirement."

The McKinley Bill passed through the usual phases of tariff construction; passed by the House in one form, it was rewritten in the Senate and became a law in still a third guise after a thoroughgoing revision in the conference committee. It contained novel features in its final form with reference to agriculture, infant industries, and reciprocity. The agricultural schedules were promised in 1888 to hold in line discontented farmers in the West. The lukewarm

ness of the Mississippi Valley toward protection was largely inspired by its dependence upon staple crops. Its complaint that the tariff was for the benefit of the manufacturers was now met by the adoption of rates to protect American food from foreign competition. Since almost no food was imported that could be raised in the United States at all, these schedules were chiefly political in their intention. Sugar, however, was placed upon the free list because, by abolishing the revenue derived from it, the surplus could be lowered about fifty million dollars a year. The sugar duty was the largest single item in the tariff revenue and the easiest to control. In order to prevent free sugar from working injury to the American producers, who raised about one eighth of the national supply, a bounty of two cents a pound was provided for these, with the additional advantage of lowering the surplus still further.

The Republican theory that every commodity that could be produced in the United States must be protected, reached its logical extension in the treatment not only of infant industries, but of the unborn. For over half a century protectionists had described the national advantage of encouraging the beginnings of manufacture in order that the infant industries might ultimately be able to supply the nation and make it independent of the outside world. The party of Cleveland declared that "the tariff is a tax" and that this protective rate increased the cost to the American purchaser for the selfish benefit of the manufacturer. The Republican Party officially denied this charge and sought to prove that the foreign manufacturer paid the duty, taking it out of the profits he would otherwise have extorted from the American public without altering the retail price. The treatment of tin plate carried the protective theory to the extreme. This industry was developing rapidly because of the growing use of tin containers for the preservation of food, but the British manufacturer had maintained his monopoly of the manufacture of tin plate despite the wide distribution of both tin and steel in the United States. The McKinley Bill provided a duty upon tin plate to be made