McKINLEY IN CONGRESS.
No man ever approached the gates of public life under circumstances more
discouraging than those which confronted William McKinley when, in 1876,
his friends suggested him as a candidate for congress. Yet no man ever
achieved a more signal triumph at the polls, nor a more glorious career
in the halls of legislation. He served fourteen years in Congress. In
that time he passed from the modest position of a “first termer”—one of
the majority which never returns—to the chairmanship of the Ways and
Means committee, a place that has been described as more powerful than
that of the President of the United States. Certainly in the effecting
of legislation, in the expression of national policy, in raising
revenues and shaping the course of government there is no position
comparable to it in the United States—probably in any country on earth.
It is interesting to observe in the beginning that Major McKinley’s
start in congressional life was in itself a tribute to his popularity.
When he first launched into the profession of the law at Canton he won
early prominence among his brethren of the bar, and a position of
influence in his party. And when the managers of that party came to make
up their county ticket in 1868, they selected William McKinley, Jr., as
their candidate for prosecuting attorney. The county was strongly
Democratic, and it was only on occasion, even through the years of the
war, that Republicans could capture a county office. Anything like
sagacity on the part of the county Democrats in naming their candidates
had been certain to preclude the possibility of electing a Republican.
It seemed quite hopeless that young McKinley could capture the office of
prosecuting attorney from his opponent—a man of experience and ability.
But in the few years Major McKinley had lived in Stark county he had
been constantly winning friends. And one reason he won them was that he
deserved them. And the chief reason that he held them was because he
deserved their adhesion. For while he was making acquaintances all over
the county, widening his circle of acquaintance in the city, always
urbane, courteous, affable and yet dignified, he was preparing to
discharge the duties they would lay upon him.
It has been stated in another part of this work that Major McKinley won
in the election. He became prosecuting attorney, though not another man
on his ticket was elected. His victory surprised most of the people; but
there were some, both in his own party and in the opposition, who
recognized the promise of a man of power, and prepared the way for him.
So, in 1876, when his friends cast about for a congressional candidate,
this man who had led a forlorn hope for them in a less notable fight
eight years before seemed the man most likely to make a creditable
showing.
There was little hope of electing him. The district, the old Ohio
Eighteenth, was 1,800 strong Democratic. The Democratic nominee was the
then incumbent, and he had made a record which pleased his constituents.
Besides, the tariff was largely the issue of the campaign and Mr.
Tilden’s slogan: “A tariff for revenue only” was regarded as expressing
a popular sentiment. That other slogan, “Tilden and Reform” had lost
some of its effectiveness in the light of the Erie canal investigation
at Albany; but the tariff had more than taken its place in the popular
thought.
Besides, Major McKinley was one of the very few men in the nation who
boldly, and without apology or subterfuge, contended for the principle
of protection. It has been said elsewhere in this book that he engaged
in a debate on the tariff shortly after returning from the army, and
before he left his old home town of Poland. He had studied the question
even then, and had become convinced that the present prosperity and
future welfare of the nation demanded a policy of high tariff, and would
for a number of years.
He lost that debate because the judges, smarting under the burden of war
taxes, accepted the popular clamor for a reduction—and decided, without
regard to the facts presented or argument deduced, that Major McKinley’s
opponent had won.
It had been observed in Stark county, since his location at Canton, that
Major McKinley held to his daring theory of protection in all his
political speeches. Most other Republicans felt the need of trimming,
and conceded that protection was bad in policy, if not wrong in morals;
and promised the people that it would be abolished.
That was the condition in the Eighteenth District in the summer of 1876,
when Major William McKinley was nominated to run against Judge L. D.
Woodsworth, a wheelhorse of Democracy in Ohio.
As in 1868, when he was candidate for prosecuting attorney of Stark
county, so now, there was little hope of his election. The majority
seemed too great to be overcome. But it was overcome. And when the votes
were counted it was found that the Republican nominee had a clear
majority of 1,300—a change of 3,100 votes from the preceding
congressional election.
And it will be remembered that this was in the face of Major McKinley’s
contention for the policy of protection. He met every sophistry of his
opponents with arguments which showed him a thorough master of his
subject, and with a skill in debate which disarmed enmity even among his
opposers.
So significant a victory won for the young man the attention of the
nation; and the arrival in Washington of this strong, courageous
champion of a great public policy was occasion for gratulation among the
men who saw beyond the immediate present, and were building for the
future of the nation—preparing the Republic for that day when it must
abandon its hermitage, and take place among the mighty nations of the
earth. And they gave him every encouragement. But even they—even Judge
Kelley, of Pennsylvania, whose protectionism was less genuine because
more a matter of personal interest—found at the very beginning that they
could give William McKinley nothing, and that they would shortly be
asking favors of him.
Sociologists may interest themselves with speculations on the influences
which contributed to William McKinley’s success as a statesman. But it
is doubtful if they find anything more significant than the sorrow which
came to him at this period. His two daughters were dead. His wife had
suffered the blow from which she was never to recover; and this man’s
entry upon national legislation was through the gates of a great sorrow.
Maybe it refined him, and purified his nature of whatever dross it
contained. Maybe it intensified his thought, and added the sense of a
sacred responsibility to him as a public man. He had no children. He
knew he never again would hear the lisping call of “Father.” And in the
holy bereavement of that hour, he must—perhaps unconsciously—have
devoted himself to the service of his country. There was no need to
“trim,” to—
“Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
That thrift might follow fawning.”
He had but one ambition now, and that was so to live as a public man
that the verdict of the nation might be: “Well done, good and faithful
servant.”
That first term in Congress was judiciously utilized by William
McKinley. He knew, with that prescience which belongs to the truly
great, that this was his field, that he would return to it, that no
small considerations of oppositions and repeated elections could keep
him from the fulfillment of that duty, the discharge of that task, for
which all his life had been but preparation.
In the first session he made no speech. He was not even on a committee
of importance. But his known position as a protectionist made him a man
to be consulted, and his quickly recognized ability made him—a first
termer—share in the shaping of legislation.
That was a Democratic Congress, with Samuel J. Randall in the speaker’s
chair. And the young man from Ohio waited at the portals of opportunity,
making himself ready for the day when they should open and admit him.
He made a speech on the floor of the house. He was little considered by
the superficial and unthinking. Yet they confessed in committee the
influence of his quiet power. He made himself master of every detail. He
knew all that was to be known about the subjects that came before him
and his confreres. And in a courteous, dignified but effective manner he
said the right word in due season, and every man of them felt the
presence of greatness.
His first speech was delivered in the spring of 1878. The question of
tariff had loomed large in the eyes of the nation. It had been made an
issue. No man could escape it. Seekers for popular applause, for the
present profits that might be secured, exhausted themselves coining
verbal assaults on the policy of protection. The men on the Democratic
side, east and west, were almost a unit for a revision which meant a
repeal. The time came later when most eastern Democrats took issue with
their brothers from the West, as to the wisdom of protection. But in
that day the strongest assault was made by a New York man—Fernando Wood.
He was one of the ablest Democrats in Congress. A sharp, shrewd man,
plausible in his address, skillful in his arraignment, and attractive as
a debater. He had, in his bill, reflected well the popular clamor of
demagogues throughout the country who could not see the demands or the
possibilities of the future. And the Wood tariff bill was sailing serene
through the lower house, its friends jubilant, its supporters becoming
jealous of the lucky New Yorker—when, one day William McKinley, of Ohio,
got the floor, and began an argument against the bill. That frightened
no one. They wanted some opposition. They wanted the sport of a game
fight, since they were sure they could not be defeated.
But when they had listened fifteen minutes they saw this young man, this
unconsidered legislator, was master of the province upon which they had
entered. He knew far more about the industrial and commercial conditions
of the country than did they. He was infinitely better equipped than
they in the matter of economics. And he coined his ideas in sentences so
impressive that the jealous men were comforted. They were not frightened
on account of the bill, for they were confident in the possession of an
invincible majority. But they saw Fernando Wood at last had a foeman
worthy of his steel.
At the end of half an hour a movement was made to silence him. But other
debaters on the Republican side saw an advocate had arisen more powerful
than they. They gave him their time and he went on. Friends of the bill
tried to badger him with questions. But he met every thrust with a
dignity which disarmed and a reply which silenced them.
And when William McKinley sat down, the Wood bill was defeated, and
nothing like it was ever again offered in the American House of
Representatives.
It was a significant part of his work that day—a characteristic of his
labors through life—that results were felt in the future. From that day
the free trade army was divided. The West, neither possessing
considerable industries nor at the time appreciating their value, found
itself divided from the East. From that day no great opponent of
protection has come from the East to the halls of Congress. And—what is
more to the point—no strong popular sentiment supporting free trade has
flourished in the populous Atlantic states.
“A house divided against itself can not stand.” How then shall an army
divided against itself hope to march victorious?
But “tariff reform” still looked good as an issue, and the opponents of
protection continued their crusade against it. They could not believe
they would be defeated. They insisted that three thousand miles of ocean
was enough protection for the American manufacturer. They pointed out
that the price of each protected article was increased to the American
consumer by just the amount of the protection tax. They refused to see
that the consumer would, under a national policy which should strengthen
industries, be better able to pay the increased price than the lower
price under free trade. They were short-sighted. And they were confident
the masses of the people were as short-sighted as themselves, and would
overwhelmingly sustain them.
So their clamor continued.
So the Republicans in 1882, advised and counselled by Congressman
McKinley, provided for a tariff commission which should investigate the
whole question and recommend legislation that should settle the national
policy once and for all. The commission was appointed by President
Arthur, but before it could report the tacit agreement was broken, and
William R. Morrison, of Illinois, brought forward, in 1884, his
remarkable bill for a 20 per cent “horizontal reduction” of the tariff.
The house was again Democratic, but William McKinley, overcoming
successive gerrymanders in Ohio, was still in the house, now advanced to
a position of influence and importance; and no “horizontal reduction”
could take place while he was there, no matter what the political
complexion of the House might be. Against a hostile majority, he led the
forces of protection’s friends. A part of his address on that occasion
is as follows:
“What can be said of the capacity of the majority of the Committee on
Ways and Means as evidenced by the bill now before us? It is a
confession upon its face of absolute incapacity to grapple with the
great subject. The Morrison bill will never be suspected of having
passed the scrutiny of intelligent experts like the Tariff Commission.
This is a revision by the crosscut process. It gives no evidences of the
expert’s skill. It is the invention of indolence—I will not say of
ignorance, for the gentlemen of the majority of the Committee on Ways
and Means are competent to prepare a tariff bill. I repeat, it is not
only the invention of indolence, but it is the mechanism of a botch
workman. A thousand times better refer the question to an intelligent
Commission, which will study the question in its relations to the
revenues and industries of the country, than to submit to a bill like
this.
“They have determined upon doing something, no matter how mischievous,
that looks to the reduction of import duties; and doing it, too, in
spite of the fact that not a single request has come either from the
great producing or great consuming classes of the United States for any
change in the direction proposed. With the power in their hands they
have determined to put the knife in, no matter where it cuts nor how
much blood it draws. It is the volunteer surgeon, unbidden, insisting
upon using the knife upon a body that is strong and healthy; needing
only rest and release from the quack whose skill is limited to the
horizontal amputation, and whose science is barren of either knowledge
or discrimination. And then it is not to stop with one horizontal slash;
it is to be followed by another and still another, until there is
nothing left either of life or hope. And the doctrinaires will then have
seen an exemplification of their pet science in the destruction of the
great productive interests of the country, and “the starving poor,” as
denominated by the majority, will be found without work, shelter or
food. The sentiment of this country is against any such indiscriminate
proposition. The petitions before the Ways and Means Committee from
twenty to thirty States of this Union appeal to Congress to let the
tariff rest where it is, in general, while others are equally
importunate to have the duties on two or three classes of American
products raised. The laboring men are unanimous against this bill. These
appeals should not go unheeded. The farmers for whom you talk so
eloquently, have not asked for it. There is no appeal from any American
interest for this legislation.
“It is well, if this bill is to go into force, that on yesterday the
other branch of Congress, the Senate, passed a Bankruptcy bill. It is a
fitting corollary to the Morrison bill; it is a proper and a necessary
companion. The Senate has done wisely, in anticipation of our action
here, in providing legal means for settling with creditors, for wiping
out balances, and rolling from the shoulders of our people the crushing
burdens which this bill will impose.”
And in spite of a Democratic majority the Morrison bill failed. That
thrust—“the invention of indolence”—went home; and the nation resented
the slipshod manner in which its public servants had done their work.
And the Representative from Illinois brought from the wreck of his
losing battle no more than the comfort of realizing that to the end of
his life he would be known by the appropriate title, “Horizontal Bill
Morrison.”
But the crusade against protection was too attractive to abandon. In
1888, the House being again Democratic, Roger Q. Mills of Texas, was
made chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and he brought in a bill
that expressed really all that was best in the opposition’s case. But he
made the fatal mistake of presenting a bill prepared by his political
associates alone. It was more fair, more broad in its scope, more
statesmanlike than anything that had previously emanated from the camp
of free traders. But he had invited no Republican member of the
committee to its preparation, and excluded all who would advise or
instruct him. He might have welcomed them in safety, for he had the
votes at his back to defeat every recommendation they might make, and
adopt every paragraph that commended itself to him. But he saw fit to
refuse audience to representatives of industrial concerns who knew far
more of the subject than did Mr. Mills or his advisers, and an
opposition suddenly sprung up which could not be overcome. Mr. McKinley
made his most telling point against the Mills bill, in these burning
words:
“The industries of the country, located in every section of the Union,
representing vast interests closely related to the prosperity of the
country, touching practically every home and fireside in the land, which
were to be affected by the bill, were denied a hearing; the majority
shut the doors of the committee against all examinations of producers,
consumers and experts, whose testimony might have enlightened the
committee. The farmers, whose investments and products were to be
disastrously dealt with, were denied an opportunity to address the
committee. The workingmen of the country, whose wages were at stake,
were denied audience. The Representatives on the floor of the House were
not permitted to voice the wants of their constituents. Proposing a
grave measure, which would affect all of the people in their
employments, their labor and their incomes, the majority persistently
refused the people the right of hearing and discussion; denied them the
simple privilege of presenting reasons and arguments against their
proposed action.”
The report of the minority of the Ways and Means Committee was prepared
and presented by Mr. McKinley. He had come to be recognized as the best
equipped and most formidable protectionist in Congress, and the report
he submitted fully sustained that opinion. From that report the
following extract will still be read with profound interest:
“The bill is a radical reversal of the tariff policy of the country
which for the most part has prevailed since the foundation of the
Government, and under which we have made industrial and agricultural
progress without a parallel in the world’s history. If enacted into law,
it will disturb every branch of business, retard manufacturing and
agricultural prosperity, and seriously impair our industrial
independence. It undertakes to revise our entire revenue system;
substantially all of the tariff schedules are affected; both
classification and rates are changed. Specific duties are in many cases
changed to ad valorem, which all experience has shown is productive of
frauds and undervaluations. It does not correct the irregularities of
the present tariff; it only aggravates them. It introduces uncertainties
in interpretation, which will embarrass its administration, promote
contention and litigation, and give to the customs officers a latitude
of construction which will produce endless controversy and confusion. It
is marked with a sectionalism which every patriotic citizen must
deplore. Its construction takes no account of the element of labor which
enters into production, and in a number of instances makes the finished
or advanced product free, or dutiable at a less rate than the material
from which it is made. ‘The poor man’s blanket,’ which the majority has
made a burning issue for so many years, is made to bear the same rate of
duty as the rich man’s. More than one-third of the free list is made up
from the products of the farm, the forest and the mine; from products
which are now dutiable at the minimum rates, ranging from seven to
twenty-five per cent. and even this slight protection, so essential, is
to be taken from the farmers, the lumbermen and the quarrymen.”
But it was not until the bill was put upon its passage that he rose to
his greatest height as a debater and as a statesman. Men old in public
life concede that the speech he made, May 18, 1888, was the greatest
ever delivered on a purely economic question in the halls of the
American Congress. It did more to fix the policy of protectionism
unalterably upon the country than any other one influence. It did more
to justify the protectionists of the past, and to pave the way for
whatever great policy might come after when new occasions brought new
duties, when a subsequent era should arise, than all the campaigning and
all the labors in or out of Congress that the nation had known. Here are
some extracts from that notable address:
“What is a protective tariff? It is a tariff upon foreign imports so
adjusted as to secure the necessary revenue, and judiciously imposed
upon those foreign products the like of which are produced at home, or
the like of which we are capable of producing at home. It imposes the
duty upon the competing foreign product; it makes it bear the burden or
duty, and, as far as possible, luxuries only excepted, permits the
noncompeting foreign product to come in free of duty. Articles of common
use, comfort and necessity, which we cannot produce here, it sends to
the people untaxed and free from custom-house exactions. Tea, coffee,
spices and drugs are such articles, and under our system are upon the
free list. It says to our foreign competitor: If you want to bring your
merchandise here, your farm products here, your coal and iron ore, your
wool, your salt, your pottery, your glass, your cottons and woolens, and
sell alongside of our producers in our markets, we will make your
product bear a duty; in effect, pay for the privilege of doing it. Our
kind of tariff makes the competing foreign article carry the burden,
draw the load, supply the revenue; and in performing this essential
office it encourages at the same time our own industries and protects
our own people in their chosen employments. That is the mission and
purpose of a protective tariff. That is what we mean to maintain, and
any measure which will destroy it we shall firmly resist; and if beaten
on this floor, we will appeal from your decision to the people, before
whom parties and policies must at last be tried. We have free trade
among ourselves throughout thirty-eight States and the Territories, and
among sixty millions of people. Absolute freedom of exchange within our
own borders and among our own citizens, is the law of the Republic.
Reasonable taxation and restraint upon those without is the dictate of
enlightened patriotism and the doctrine of the Republican party.
“Free trade in the United States is founded upon a community of
equalities and reciprocities. It is like the unrestrained freedom and
reciprocal relations and obligations of a family. Here we are one
country, one language, one allegiance, one standard of citizenship, one
flag, one Constitution, one Nation, one destiny. It is otherwise with
foreign nations, each a separate organism, a distinct and independent
political society, organized for its own, to protect its own, and work
out its own destiny. We deny to those foreign nations free trade with us
upon equal terms with our own producers. The foreign producer has no
right or claim to equality with our own. He is not amenable to our laws.
There are resting upon him none of the obligations of citizenship. He
pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties; he is subject to no demands
for military service. He is exempt from State, county and municipal
obligations. He contributes nothing to the support, the progress and
glory of the Nation. Why should he enjoy unrestrained equal privileges
and profits in our markets with our producers, our labor and our
taxpayers? Let the gentleman who follows me answer. We put a burden upon
his productions, we discriminate against his merchandise, because he is
alien to us and our interests, and we do it to protect our own, defend
our own, preserve our own, who are always with us in adversity and
prosperity, in sympathy and purpose, and, if necessary, in sacrifice.
That is the principle which governs us. I submit it is a patriotic and
righteous one. In our country each citizen competes with the other in
free and unresentful rivalry, while with the rest of the world all are
united and together in resisting outside competition as we would foreign
interference.
“Free foreign trade admits the foreigner to equal privileges with our
own citizens. It invites the product of foreign cheap labor to this
market in competition with the domestic product, representing higher and
better paid labor. It results in giving our money, our manufactures and
our markets to other nations, to the injury of our labors, our trades
people and our farmers. Protection keeps money, markets and manufactures
at home for the benefit of our own people. It is scarcely worth while to
more than state the proposition that taxation upon a foreign competing
product is more easily paid and less burdensome than taxation upon the
noncompeting product. In the latter it is always added to the foreign
cost, and therefore paid by the consumer, while in the former, where the
duty is upon the competing product, it is largely paid in the form of
diminished profits to the foreign producer. It would be burdensome
beyond endurance to collect our taxes from the products, professions and
labor of our own people.
“There is no conflict of interests and should be none between the
several classes of producers and the consumers in the United States.
Their interests are one, interrelated and interdependent. That which
benefits one benefits all; one man’s work has relation to every other
man’s work in the same community; each is an essential part of the grand
result to be attained, and that statesmanship which would seek to array
the one against the other for any purpose, is narrow, unworthy and
unpatriotic. The President’s message is unhappily in that direction. The
discussion had on this floor takes that turn. Both have been calculated
to create antagonisms where none existed. The farmer, the manufacturer,
the laborer, the tradesman, the producer and the consumer all have a
common interest in the maintenance of a protective tariff. All are alike
and equally favored by the system which you seek to overthrow. It is a
National system, broad and universal in its application; if otherwise,
it should be abandoned. It cannot be invoked for one section or one
interest, to the exclusion of others. It must be general in its
application within the contemplation of the principle upon which the
system is founded. We have been living under it for twenty-seven
continuous years, and it can be asserted with confidence that no country
in the world has achieved such industrial advancement, and such
marvelous progress in art, science and civilization, as ours. Tested by
its results, it has surpassed all other revenue systems.
“From 1789 to 1888, a period of ninety-nine years, there has been
forty-seven years when a Democratic revenue-tariff policy has prevailed,
and fifty-two years under the protective policy, and it is a noteworthy
fact that the most progressive and prosperous periods of our history in
every department of human effort and material development were during
the fifty-two years when the protective party was in control and
protective tariffs were maintained; and the most disastrous years—years
of want and wretchedness, ruin and retrogression, eventuating in
insufficient revenues and shattered credits, individual and
National—were during the free trade or revenue-tariff eras of our
history. No man lives who passed through any of the latter periods but
would dread their return and would flee from them as he would escape
from fire and pestilence; and I believe the party which promotes their
return will merit and receive popular condemnation. What is the trouble
with our present condition? No country can point to greater prosperity
or more enduring evidences of substantial progress among all the people.
Too much money is being collected, it is said. We say, stop it; not by
indiscriminate and vicious legislation, but by simple business methods.
Do it on simple, practical lines, and we will help you. Buy up the
bonds, objectionable as it may be, and pay the Nation’s debt, if you
cannot reduce taxation. You could have done this long ago. Nobody is
chargeable for the failure and delay but your own administration.
“Who is objecting to our protective system? From what quarter does the
complaint come? Not from the enterprising American citizen; not from the
manufacturer; not from the laborer, whose wages it improves; not from
the consumer, for he is fully satisfied, because under it he buys a
cheaper and better product than he did under the other system; not from
the farmer, for he finds among the employes of the protected industries
his best and most reliable customers; not from the merchant or the
tradesman, for every hive of industry increases the number of his
customers and enlarges the volume of his trade. Few, indeed, have been
the petitions presented to this House asking for any reduction of duties
upon imports. None, that I have ever seen or heard of, and I have
watched with the deepest interest the number and character of these
petitions, that I might gather from them the drift of public sentiment.
I say I have seen none asking for the passage of this bill, or for any
such departure from the fiscal policy of the Government so long
recognized and followed, while against this legislation there has been
no limit to petitions, memorials, prayers and protests, from the
producer and consumer alike. This measure is not called for by the
people; it is not an American measure; it is inspired by importers and
foreign producers, most of them aliens, who want to diminish our trade
and increase their own; who want to decrease our prosperity and augment
theirs, and who have no interest in this country except what they can
make out of it. To this is added the influence of the professors in some
of our institutions of learning, who teach the science contained in
books, and not that of practical business. I would rather have my
political economy founded upon the everyday experiences of the puddler
or the potter, than the learning of the professor, or the farmer and
factory hand than the college faculty. Then there is another class who
want protective tariffs overthrown. They are the men of independent
wealth, with settled and steady incomes, who want everything cheap but
currency; the value of everything clipped but coin—cheap labor but dear
money. These are the elements which are arrayed against us.
“Men whose capital is invested in productive enterprises, who take the
risks of business, men who expend their capital and energy in the
development of our resources, are in favor of the maintenance of the
protective system. The farmer, the rice-grower, the miner, the vast army
of wage-earners from one end of the country to the other, the chief
producers of wealth, men whose capital is their brain and muscle, who
aspire to better their condition and elevate themselves and their
fellows; the young man whose future is yet before him, and which he must
carve out with his hand and head, who is without the aid of fortune or
of a long ancestral line—these are our steadfast allies in this great
contest for the preservation of the American system. Experience and
results in our own country are the best advisers, and they vindicate
beyond the possibilities of dispute the worth and wisdom of the system.”
But the bill passed the House.
There were members enough on the Democratic side of carry it through,
though by a perilously small majority.
The senate, however, could not be brought to an approval, and the Mills
bill failed there.
That, however, was but the beginning of William McKinley’s victory. So
strong a case had he made for protection that in 1888 his party leaders
had been roused to appreciate the stupendous interests involved in the
issue. They ceased to temporize, to avoid, to “trim.” They had been on
the defensive for twenty years. They took in 1888 the aggressive, made
protection the issue, named General Harrison as their candidate, and
echoing William McKinley’s arguments in every school district of the
nation, achieved a splendid victory.
But it was wholly due to the wisdom and foresight, the ability and
eloquence of Major William McKinley, of Ohio.
Then came his crowning work. That was the measure which has taken its
place in the history of the nation as “the McKinley Tariff Law.” It was
adopted in May, 1890, and took effect October 6 of the same year.
There is no royal road to success, no short cut-off to eminence.
Whatever is of great worth must cost great labor. William McKinley had
put into his preparation for that work all the years of his adult life.
He knew the subject as no other man in the nation knew it. And when, as
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee at last he was commissioned to
write a tariff bill, he gave himself wholly and utterly to the task. No
laborer in the mills which his policy safeguarded put in so many hours
daily as did William McKinley in the preparation of that great measure.
He worked all day in Committee or on the floor of the House, consuming
nervous force in a manner which would have utterly broken down a less
magnificent physique than his own. And then every night he received
representatives of various industries from all over the nation—from the
farms, from the mines, from the mills, from the stores, from the offices
of transportation companies. And they testified a thousand times that he
knew their case far better than did they. Yet he heard them patiently,
respectfully, discussed the schedules with them, and out of all the
information he could gather produced that bill which stands for the
highest expression of statesmanship any republic has ever known.
It was characteristic of the man that he should in the very van of his
argument place a statement that would challenge the general attention of
the public, regardless of party. No reader who recognizes the
significance of effective work in debate can fail to catch the value of
these calm, deliberate sentences:
“If any one thing was settled by the election of 1888, it was that the
protective policy, as promulgated in the Republican platform, and
heretofore inaugurated and maintained by the Republican party, should be
secured in any fiscal legislation to be had by the Congress chosen in
that great contest and upon that mastering issue. I have interpreted
that victory to mean, and the majority in this House and in the Senate
to mean, that a revision of the tariff is 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 purpose of protection. The people have
spoken; they want their will registered and their decree embodied in
public legislation. The bill which the Committee on Ways and Means have
presented is their answer and interpretation of that victory, and in
accordance with its spirit and letter and purpose. We have not been
compelled to abolish the internal-revenue system that we might preserve
the protective system, which we were pledged to do in the event that the
abolition of the one was essential to the preservation of the other.
That was unnecessary.
“The bill does not amend or modify any part of the internal-revenue
taxes applicable to spirits or fermented liquors. It abolishes all the
special taxes and licenses, so called, imposed upon the manufacture of
tobacco, cigars and snuff, and dealers thereof, reduces the tax upon
manufactured tobacco from eight to four cents per pound, and removes all
restrictions now imposed upon the growers of tobacco. With these
exceptions, the internal-revenue laws are left undisturbed. From this
source we reduce taxation over $70,000,000, and leave with the people
this direct tax which has been paid by them upon their own products
through a long series of years.
“The tariff part of the bill contemplates and proposes a complete
revision. It not only changes the rates of duty, but modifies the
general provisions of the law relating to the collection of duties.
These modifications have received the approval of the Treasury
Department, and are set forth in detail in the report of the committee,
and I will not weary you by restating them.
“We propose this advanced duty to protect our manufacturers and
consumers against the British monopoly, in the belief that it will
defend our capital and labor in the production of tin plate until they
shall establish an industry which the English shall recognize has come
to stay, and then competition will insure regular and reasonable prices
to consumers. It may add a little, temporarily, to the cost of tin plate
to the consumer, but will eventuate in steadier and more satisfactory
prices. At the present prices for foreign tin plate, the proposed duty
would not add any thing to the cost of the heavier grades of tin to the
consumer. If the entire duty was added to the cost of the can, it would
not advance it more than one-third, or one-half of one cent, for on a
dozen fruit cans the addition would properly only be about three cents.
“We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years continuously of protective tariff
laws—the longest uninterrupted period in which that policy has prevailed
since the formation of the Federal government—and we find ourselves at
the end of that period in a condition of independence and prosperity the
like of which has never been witnessed at any other period in the
history of our country, and the like of which had no parallel in the
recorded history of the world. In all that goes to make a nation great
and strong and independent, we have made extraordinary strides. In arts,
in science, in literature, in manufactures, in invention, in scientific
principles applied to manufacture and agriculture, in wealth and credit
and National honor we are at the very front, abreast with the best, and
behind none.
“In 1860, after fourteen years of a revenue tariff, just the kind of a
tariff that our political adversaries are advocating to-day, the
business of the country was prostrated, agriculture was deplorably
depressed, manufacturing was on the decline, and the poverty of the
government, itself, made this Nation a by-word in the financial centers
of the world. We neither had money nor credit. Both are essential; a
nation can get on if it has abundant revenues, but if it has none it
must have credit. We had neither as the legacy of the Democratic revenue
tariff. We have both now. We have a surplus revenue and a spotless
credit. I need not state what is so fresh in our minds, so recent in our
history, as to be known to every gentleman who hears me, that from the
inauguration of the protective tariff laws of 1861, the old Morrill
tariff—which has brought to that veteran statesman the highest honor and
will give to him his proudest monument—this condition changed.
Confidence was restored, courage was inspired, the government started
upon a progressive era under a system thoroughly American.
“With a great war on our hands, with an army to enlist and prepare for
service, with untold millions of money to supply, the protective tariff
never failed us in a single emergency, and while money was flowing into
our treasury to save the government, industries were springing up all
over the land—the foundation and corner-stone of our prosperity and
glory. With a debt of over $2,750,000,000 when the war terminated,
holding on to our protective laws, against Democratic opposition, we
have reduced that debt at an average rate of more than $62,000,000 each
year, $174,000 every twenty-four hours for the last twenty-five years,
and what looked like a burden almost impossible to bear has been removed
under the Republican fiscal system, until now it is less than
$1,000,000,000, and with the payment of this vast sum of money the
Nation has not been impoverished, the individual citizen has not been
burdened or bankrupted, National and individual prosperity have gone
steadily on, until our wealth is so great as to be almost
incomprehensible when put into figures.
“The accumulations of the laborers of the country have increased, and
the working classes of no nation in the world have such splendid
deposits in savings banks as the working classes of the United States.
Listen to their story: The deposits of all the savings banks of New
England in 1886 equaled $554,532,434. The deposits in the savings banks
of New York in 1886 were $482,686,730. The deposits in the savings banks
of Massachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, and the number of
depositors was 944,778, or $320.67 for each depositor. The savings banks
of nine States have in nineteen years increased their deposits
$628,000,000. The English savings banks have in thirty-four years
increased theirs $350,000,000. Our operative deposits $7 to the English
operative’s $1. These vast sums represent the savings of the men whose
labor has been employed under the protective policy which gives, as
experience has shown, the largest possible reward to labor.
[Illustration:
PRESIDENT McKINLEY WITH HIS G.A.R. POST.]
[Illustration:
From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of Chicago Inter
Ocean.]
“Free trade, or as you are pleased to call it, ‘revenue tariff,’ means
the opening up of this market, which is admitted to be the best in the
world, to the free entry of the products of the world. It means more—it
means that the labor of this country is to be remitted to its earlier
condition, and that the condition of our people is to be leveled down to
the condition of rival countries, because under it every element of
cost, every item of production, including wages, must be brought down to
the level of the lowest paid labor of the world. No other result can
follow, and no other result is anticipated or expected by those who
intelligently advocate a revenue tariff. We cannot maintain ourselves
against unequal conditions without the tariff, and no man of affairs
believes we can. Under the system of unrestricted trade which you
gentlemen recommend, we will have to reduce every element of cost down
to or below that of our commercial rivals, or surrender to them our own
market. No one will dispute that statement; and to go into the domestic
market of our rivals would mean that production here must be so reduced
that with transportation added we could undersell them in their own
market; and to meet them in neutral markets and divide the trade with
them would mean that we could profitably sell side by side with them at
their minimum price.
“First, then, to retain our own market under the Democratic system of
raising revenue, by removing all protection, would require our producers
to sell at as low a price and upon as favorable terms as our foreign
competitors. How could that be done? In one way only—by producing as
cheaply as those who would seek our markets. What would that entail? An
entire revolution in the methods and conduct of business here, a
leveling down through every channel to the lowest line of our
competitors, our habits of living would have to be changed, our wages
cut down fifty per cent. or more, our comfortable homes exchanged for
hovels, our independence yielded up, our citizenship demoralized. These
are conditions inseparable to free trade; these would be necessary, if
we would command our own market among our own people; and if we would
invade the world’s markets, harsher conditions and greater sacrifices
would be demanded of the masses. Talk about depression—we would then
have it in its fulness. We would revel in unrestrained trade. Everything
would indeed be cheap, but how costly when measured by the degradation
which would ensue! When merchandise is the cheapest, men are the
poorest; and the most distressing experiences in the history of our
country—aye, in all human history—have been when everything was the
lowest and cheapest measured by gold, for everything was the highest and
the dearest measured by labor. We have no wish to adopt the conditions
of other nations. Experience has demonstrated that for us and ours, and
for the present and the future, the protective system meets our wants,
our conditions, promotes the national design, and will work out our
destiny better than any other.
“With me, this position is a deep conviction, not a theory. I believe in
it and thus warmly advocate it, because enveloped in it are my country’s
highest development and greatest prosperity; out of it come the greatest
gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, the widest
encouragement for manly aspirations, with the largest rewards,
dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety and
purity and permanency of our political system depend.”
But the year of his supreme success was also the year of his enemies’
seeming triumph. His congressional district in Ohio, three times vainly
gerrymandered with the aim of throwing him out, had finally been so
arranged as to make his re-election impossible. It was the end of his
career in the House. Yet it was only the vestibule of a greater
eminence. The people of Ohio made him their Governor. And when the
lighter duties of four years in the state executive mansion had
recuperated his powers, the nation made him its candidate for President,
and elected him on an issue that meant bravery, progress and wise
statesmanship.
This closes the chapter of his life which was concerned in legislation.
It is the end of his congressional career. If any man shall ask what was
the greatest achievement of those fourteen years, the answer must be:
“William McKinley’s triumph for Protection!” He was the champion of that
doctrine, the first man to advocate it as a principle to be preserved
until the need should pass, the first to put a conscience in the
discussions of a tariff. And he was, without exception, the ablest man
that ever defended it, the bravest man that ever advocated it, the most
successful man that ever supported it. Protection was by no means his
one accomplishment. He was active in all legislation, neglectful of
none. But his position on the Ways and Means Committee, so long held,
made this master issue his chief concern.