THE MONGREL BILL OF 1883
In a message sent to Congress in December, 1882, President Arthur said:
“_The present tariff system is in many ways unjust. It makes unequal
distributions both of its burdens and benefits.... I recommend an
enlargement of the free list so as to include within it the numerous
articles which yield inconsiderable revenue, a simplification of the
complex and inconsistent schedule of duties upon certain manufactures,
particularly those of cotton, iron, and steel and a substantial
reduction of the duties upon those articles and upon sugar, molasses,
silk, wool, and woollen goods._”
The words had unusual weight, for Arthur was the only President we have
had who could speak from a practical experience in administering the
customs. For seven years (1871 to 1878) he had been Collector of the
Port of New York. It was at a time when the Custom House was undergoing
a series of rude shocks, the combined results of the ambiguities of the
tariff laws, the greed of importers, the dishonesty of some of its
officials, and the “pernicious activity” in politics of others. Arthur
had been obliged to fight for the honor of his own administration, and
he had finally been suspended by President Hayes. That is, President
Arthur knew much from close contact of the ambiguities, the frauds, the
injustice of the duties then in force, so that any expression of his had
the merit of being “practical.” It had additional force, because nobody
could doubt Arthur’s devotion to protection. He had been from boyhood a
“Henry Clay Whig.” Everybody recognized that nothing but a profound
conviction that the country demanded lower duties would have driven him
to ask for them. The country indeed had not long before this given the
Republicans a stern rebuke on its tariff policy by electing a good-sized
Democratic majority to the House in the next Congress—the forty-eighth,
meeting in December, 1883.
Spurred to action by Arthur’s message, the report of the Tariff
Commission, and by their own defeat, the Republicans lost no time in
getting to work. The report of the Tariff Commission was sent at once to
the Committee of Ways and Means in the House and to the Finance
Committee in the Senate, and both bodies began to frame bills. Under
ordinary circumstances, the Senate would have been obliged to wait for a
bill from the House before expressing itself,—the House alone having the
right to originate revenue bills,—but the circumstances were not
“ordinary.” The Senate at this moment had before it a bill for reducing
the internal revenue. This bill had come from the House in the preceding
session and had only been kept from becoming a law by the filibustering
of certain Democratic Senators. It was somebody’s bright idea now to
tack to this internal revenue bill, as an amendment, a tariff bill of
the Senate’s own making. It was, of course, an adventure of uncertain
issue. The House was notoriously jealous of its constitutional rights.
Would it recognize a measure proposed by the Senate? The Senate thought
it worth the trial at least, and fell to work.
The two committees which at opposite ends of the Capitol now began to
sit daily over the tariff were remarkable bodies. At the head of the
Senate committee was Mr. Morrill, who twenty-three years before had
introduced into the House of Representatives the bill with which this
narrative opened. Since 1867 he had been a member of the Senate, giving
the bulk of his time to revenue questions. He was seventy-two years old
now, and in spite of over twenty years’ labor on tariff schedules was
still dignified and courteous!
John Sherman was next to Morrill on the Committee—a place he held with
bad grace. Sherman had lost his rank on the Committee of Finance, of
which he had formerly been chairman, by his appointment to Mr. Hayes’s
cabinet in 1876, it being an invariable rule that a member returning to
the Senate after an interregnum should go to the foot of his party
colleagues on committee. When Sherman returned in 1881 he thought he
should be an exception to the rule. He had up to this time outranked Mr.
Morrill in both House and Senate. His services as Secretary of the
Treasury had given him special skill in dealing with revenue questions.
But Mr. Morrill declined to yield. It looked as if Mr. Sherman would sit
at the foot of the table, when Mr. Allison, who was a member of the
Committee, appreciating the strain, quietly suggested to his Republican
colleagues that Mr. Sherman be moved up next to Morrill. This was done,
but from the beginning of the work on the bill the effect of his defeat
was most noticeable on Sherman’s temper and attitude. He was arrogant in
committee and out. He says in his “Recollections” that he was “piqued”
by Morrill’s failure to yield to him. The word is mild.
It began to be noticed soon after the Committee went to work that Mr.
Sherman was getting much help from the member at the foot—a new Senator,
the Senator from Rhode Island—Nelson W. Aldrich. People who watched the
hearings said he seemed to have at his tongue’s end all the facts which
bore on the high tariff side. It was said on the inside, too, that he
was the man who had written the cotton schedule for the report of the
Tariff Commission. He had certainly done well for his constituents. He
had secured an increase on that class of cotton goods which was chiefly
imported, and a decrease on those of which little or nothing could be
imported.
The leading Democrat on the Committee was James B. Beck of Lexington,
Kentucky. Beck was a Scotchman by birth and a Democrat of eighteen
years’ Congressional experience. Powerful in body and mind, brave,
honest, and combative, he led his party in the Senate with great
effectiveness. It was on the tariff that Beck was at his best. Let him
get after a rate he regarded as iniquitous and he was like an avalanche.
“His mighty arms swing like hammers,” wrote an English correspondent who
heard him once on that theme. “His Scotch tongue, which some call harsh
and rasping, thunders out the shortest and simplest Anglo-Saxon words
that can be found to compose his terse sentences. Now and then the
clinched fist comes down on his desk with telling force. The whole
speech is made up of facts and statistics. If a flower of rhetoric
should spring up in his path he would crush it with his ponderous foot.
If a trope should get into his throat, he would swallow it. Adjectives,
metaphors, and similes find no place in his oratory. Like Joseph Hume,
he is a man of figures, and like him he speaks like a problem in
mathematics.”
The House Committee was strong on both sides. The chairman was “Pig
Iron” Kelley, who, in spite of twenty-five years’ experience with
protection, still found it an “exquisite harmony.” He had as supporters
the experienced Mr. Kasson of Iowa and the devoted young Mr. McKinley of
Ohio, but it was on neither of them he was depending chiefly. There had
been put on the Committee in the previous session a man from Kansas,
Dudley C. Haskell, who was now to take about the same relation to Kelley
as Kelley had taken to Thaddeus Stevens in the tariff debate of 1866 and
1867. The Democrats of the Committee were four of the strongest that
Congress has seen since the war—Carlisle of Kentucky, Randall of
Pennyslvania, Morrison of Illinois, and Tucker of Virginia.
Here, then, were two able committees giving their entire time to tariff
bills. They were under instructions from a Republican country and a
Republican President to lower the duties, and they had as a guide a
report of a Republican commission of their own creation advising its
reduction. They had Republican majorities to back them. Their duty
seemed plain. It seemed clear, too, that they should be free from
outside pressure. All of those individuals whose interests were affected
had had ample opportunities to lay their cases before a commission
constituted for the purpose. To keep away from Washington would seem to
be their obvious business. But they saw it differently. Indeed, the two
committees had scarcely gone to work before a “third house” was in
session—a house of lobbyists come to Washington for the express purpose
of preventing the recommendations of the Tariff Commission from becoming
law. The wool-growers, disgusted that Mr. Garland, representing them on
the commission, had consented to nearly 20 per cent reduction, held
public meetings in Ohio denouncing him, and sent down what scoffers
called the “wool trinity”—Columbus Delano, one-time Secretary of the
Interior under Grant, William Lawrence, afterward a Comptroller of the
Treasury, and David Harpster—all wool-growers and all from Ohio.
Mr. John L. Hayes, chairman of the Tariff Commission, whose duties
naturally would be supposed to be over, took rooms in Washington and as
agent of the woollen manufacturers began a campaign to get more for them
than as commissioner he had consented to. The makers of chemicals and
drugs—and quinine particularly—instituted a siege. Agents of iron and
steel, sugar, mineral water, wood pulp, of everything which had suffered
a reduction, appeared in the corridors of the Capitol at Washington. “No
such lobby has been seen here for years,” the correspondents began to
write to their newspapers. These agents, attorneys, manufacturers, did
not hesitate to say loudly that no bill should pass unsatisfactory to
them. They were far from standing together, however, in their demands.
Indeed, they were in incessant conflict, for they all wanted what they
purchased—that is, their raw material—free; while what they sold—their
product—they wanted protected! In every industry came this clash, though
it was more acute between the wool and woollen men than elsewhere.
The first bill to come out of committee was that of the Senate. It was
at once seen that the duties proposed were in many cases _lower_ than
those proposed by the Tariff Commission. For instance: the Tariff
Commission had laid $6.72 duty on pig iron, a reduction of only 4 per
cent. The Senate Committee, after going over the whole ground, had cut
the rate to $6.00. Mr. Sherman had fought the decrease in the committee;
he continued to fight it on the floor. He tried for $6.72 and was voted
down overwhelmingly. He tried for $6.50 and again was beaten. He argued,
threatened, cajoled. He read telegrams from the iron men of his state,
brought in letters and testimony, worked day and night, but it took him
over a month to succeed, and then it was only, as Beck said, after “he
had threatened the Senate with the defeat of the whole bill if they did
not give him at least $6.50 on pig iron, and after he had drawn the
party whip over the heads of his followers with an audacity I have never
seen equalled in any public assembly, by threats and every other means
that a great bold parliamentary leader can assert over the men who look
up to him.” Beck was none too hard on Sherman. He beat his party into
submission, but it should not be forgotten that the lash was on his own
shoulder—the lash of Henry B. Payne of Cleveland, of the ironmasters of
the Mahoning Valley, of all the highly organized iron interests of his
state. He knew only too well what failure to accede to their demand
meant for the party in Ohio, for they did not hesitate to tell him
privately and publicly.
Sherman fought for an increased rate on wool as he did for one on pig
iron. He was as hard pressed in one case as the other. The fight caused
more than one hard and open tilt between him and his Republican
colleagues, particularly with Allison, who disapproved a higher tariff
on wool. Sherman was determined, however, and again and again returned
to the attack with threats of defeating the entire bill if he could not
have his way.
But Mr. Sherman was not the only Senator who openly held up the party
for duties higher than the majority of his colleagues approved of. The
Senators of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin fought for duty on lumber in
the same way. The Tariff Commission had not changed the duties on
lumber. It left them as they were without a word of explanation. Better
so; for a more indefensible tax than that on lumber could not be
conceived. It had already helped work a destruction which a hundred
years could not repair, and its continuance seemed little less than
crime. The duty on sawed boards was $1.00 and $2.00 per one thousand
feet, according to variety. Under this protection, combined with the
enormous demand which the growth of the country had created, the cutting
of timber had been carried on recklessly and lawlessly, particularly in
Wisconsin and Michigan. Ten years before, in 1873, the danger of
exhausting the forests beyond repair had been shown and Congress had
passed the Timber Culture Act to encourage planting; but while it gave a
bonus for planting on one hand, it continued the bonus for cutting on
the other. Pine in particular was being stripped off. A Federal
Commission had just issued a report showing that there was only about
81,000,000,000 feet of white pine standing in the three principal
states—enough for ten years only. The duty, combined with the knowledge
that the supply was limited, kept prices so high that in the “treeless
states,” like Nebraska and Kansas, new settlers were in great distress.
From all over the West, indeed, came the cry for relief. People were
living in dugouts, because of this tax, the Western Senators and
Representatives told Congress. Their cattle had no shelter, their fodder
was covered only with a thatch. What made the tax more vicious was the
well known fact that the forests were largely in the hands of the
“lumber barons,” men who had in one way or another secured vast tracts
of land at from $1.25 to $2.50 an acre and who now were gathering in
$8.00 or more an acre by unrestricted cutting of the timber. The Senate
of the United States numbered one of the greatest of these
barons—Philetus Sawyer, Esq., of Wisconsin.
Naturally it was not the interests of Mr. Sawyer which the timber
Senators pleaded! It was the cause of the lumbermen and of the millmen.
The tariff must be kept up in order to give them their higher wage. They
must not be put into competition with the pauper wages of Canada! As a
large percentage of the laborers who received this higher wage were
Canadians who came over for the season only, the argument had little
effect. It was not argument indeed that saved the lumber duty. It was
saved because the Southern Representatives who threatened to defeat it
were told they could not have a duty on sugar unless they consented to
one on lumber, and they made the trade.
Such barter went on openly in many other items. One of the most
determined efforts to force a duty was made by Senator Mahone of
Virginia, who wanted $2.00 a ton on iron ore. The Tariff Commission had
allowed 50 cents—the Senate Committee had allowed 50 cents, but Mahone
made a fierce fight for more. He tried for $2.00, for $1.00, for 85
cents, for 75 cents, for 60 cents. He brought up the point at every
opportunity, but again and again was voted down overwhelmingly. “I’ll
defeat the bill if this duty is not raised,” he is reported as saying,
and Sherman backed him in his threat.
His attitude was the attitude of the representatives of various other
interests, big and little; that is, it developed almost as soon as the
debate began that leading Republican Senators were determined to keep up
duties in which certain of their constituents were interested and that
to do this they were ready to trade and dicker with fellow Senators.
That this determination of Sherman, Mahone, and others was clearly
demonstrated was due largely to the quick wit and the daring of Mr.
Beck. He filibustered so adroitly from the beginning of the contest over
the schedules that again and again he forced Republicans committed to
tariff reform to go on record against a proposed reduction or for a
proposed increase. In Sherman’s struggle for the increased duty on pig
iron, Senators like Morrill, Allison, Dawes, Frye, Hoar, Hale, Hawley,
all voted against an increase at first, but finally were whipped into
line, Allison being the last to yield. Mr. Beck gloated over them,
loudly pointing out how different ones had solemnly declared on the
floor they would not support the increase, yet had yielded at last.
Nothing could stop him. An effort was made to limit the debate to ten
days. “Never!” shouted Beck, “not to ten weeks.” Not even the effort of
his party to put an end to his obstruction availed. He gloried in his
insubordination.
It was the 20th of February before the Senate Bill was passed. Two weeks
before this the bill had taken on an importance quite unexpected. This
change was due to the growing certainty that the House was not going to
be able to finish its bill and that if a tariff bill was passed this
session, it would be the measure on which the Senate was working. No
sooner did this rumor go out than the whole body of lobbyists, whose
work up to this time had been concentrated on the House, rushed
pell-mell to the corridors of the Senate to see what they could do to
make the measure “satisfactory” before it was reported. Some of the
things they helped to do have already been alluded to.
The House Bill was having a hard time. The Committee, instead of
following the Tariff Commission report and reducing duties 20 per cent,
had reduced them less than 10 per cent. Now there was no doubt but that
a majority of the Republicans in the House were in favor of real reform.
Most of them declared they dared not go home without a reduction of
taxes. But there was a powerful Republican minority who believed with
Senator Sherman that it was more essential to satisfy the combined
industrial organizations besieging the Capitol than it was to satisfy
public opinion. This minority was determined no bill which gave anything
like a 20 per cent reduction should pass. It is not unfair to say that
it wanted a bill, but _a bill which gave the appearance of reduction,
not actual reduction_.
The Democrats, too, were divided. John G. Carlisle, who led the
majority, was what may be called a constructive free trader; that is, he
believed in scaling down duties as rapidly as industries enjoying them
could support it, until a ‘tariff-for-revenue only’ basis was reached.
He declared now that if the Republicans had presented a bill which
sincerely attempted to embody the reduction of 20 per cent suggested by
their commission and demanded by public opinion, he would favor its
passage, but Kelley’s bill he would not support. Randall, who led the
Democratic minority, was a high protectionist, but Randall was really
willing to support any bill which promised to get the tariff out of the
way. He expected to be a candidate for Speaker at the opening of the
next Congress and did not want to divide his party by supporting
protection in opposition to the Democratic majority.
From the very beginning of the debate on the bill it became evident that
each faction was ready to fight strenuously to carry out its program.
The Carlisle Democrats began by bringing to issue almost every item as
it was read. They made amendments, debated them, forced them to vote by
voice, by rising divisions, and by tellers, and they openly declared
that they would keep this up until the Fourth of March rather than allow
Mr. Kelley’s bill to come to vote. Their tactics indeed were very like
those Mr. Beck was using in the Senate and their effect was identical;
that is, they constantly forced the Republicans to put themselves on
record against lowering duties. Not infrequently they were aided in
their work of obstruction by revenue reform Republicans, particularly
from the West, where the tariff on lumber and an increased duty on
barbed wire were causing indignation.
So strong a program of opposition was developed that in ten days after
the discussion opened it became evident that if any bill was passed it
would be because the high protection faction yielded to the demands of
the majority of the party for a reduction or that they carried their
program by superior parliamentary tactics. That they were in strong
position for the latter everybody saw. As a fact they held all the
strategic positions: the speakership, the chairmanship, and a majority
of the Ways and Means Committee, and of the Committee on Rules. For the
moment, however, the work was all in the hands of Chairman Kelley and
his lieutenants. Mr. Kelley had been ill from the beginning of the
session and he had asked Mr. Haskell to take charge of the bill on the
floor. A more sympathetic and vigorous understudy than Haskell, Kelley
could not have had. He was a man only forty years old, a powerful
individual, over six feet high, with a voice as big as his body, and
with the face and eyes of an evangelist. His earnestness for a cause he
had espoused was almost tragic in its intensity, and forced him to work
and fight for it passionately and untiringly. Two subjects had occupied
him so far in the six years he had been in Congress, polygamy and
protection. He hated the first as he revered the second. Indeed, for
Haskell protection was as complete a solution of all economic
difficulties as it was for Kelley, and he had the same fanatical
devotion to the doctrine. The only question he asked himself in making a
tariff bill was whether an article could or could not be raised in this
country. If it could not, he would put it on the free list. If it could,
he would protect it beyond the possibility of foreign competition. Of
course, this reduced his labor to finding out how much each article
needed to be put beyond competition. This was a matter of fact. As soon
as he was put on the Committee of Ways and Means, which was at the
opening of the 47th Congress, he went to work with unparalleled industry
to master the conditions of each article. He became a veritable
encyclopædia of information on the “needs” of industries. When the work
on the bill of 1883 began, he doubled his efforts. His days he spent in
committee and in the House, his nights receiving representatives of all
sorts of industries. The facts and figures they gave him he attached in
long festoons to copies of the bills which he was making ready for the
debate.
Convinced as Kelley and Haskell were of the perfection of their
doctrine, it was not to be wondered at that they looked on the
Democratic opposition to the duties they were trying to carry through as
outright filibustering or that they were willing to lend themselves to
almost any manœuvres which would thwart it. Their first move was to try
to stop debate. The attempt threw the Democrats into violent excitement,
for so far only two out of sixteen schedules had been considered. It was
an effort to gag the House, they declared. “Such a proposition,” said
Mr. Carlisle, “has never been heard of in the parliamentary history of
this country, a proposition to destroy the freedom of debate on a bill
to raise revenue.” “Stop your filibustering then,” was the gist of Mr.
Haskell’s retort. “Never under gag rule,” retorted Mr. Carlisle.
The failure of this attempt to get his bill to vote discouraged Kelley,
and it began to be rumored that he and his colleagues were going to drop
it and go to the country with the charge that the Democrats had killed
it by obstruction. The rumor reached the White House and Arthur let it
be known that if Congress failed to pass a bill he should call them in
extra session.
The dilemma was a serious one for Mr. Kelley. It was evident that the
Democrats would never allow his bill to come to vote unless its duties
were materially reduced. He could never consent to that. But the
President demanded a bill of some kind, would call an extra session to
get it if necessary. The only hope seemed in the Senate bill, which was
already fairly advanced and which Kelley knew would soon be reported.
But this Senate bill did not suit him at all. Its duties he saw were
bound to be considerably lower than those recommended by the Tariff
Commission. Supposing that he waived the constitutional objection to a
revenue bill originating in the Senate and let it come before the House,
was there any method by which he could make it suit his notion before it
came to vote? The question was a difficult one, and for the moment there
seemed no answer.
As day by day passed and nothing was done, irritation and uncertainty
grew on both sides. Only the lobby rejoiced. There would be no reduction
after all! But they did not reduce their pressure. Indeed it increased
rather. The iron and steel men called down Commissioner Oliver. The
mineral water men stirred up their attorney, Roscoe Conkling. Every
interest engaged the highest-sounding names it could secure for a final
day and night attack.
The effect of all this on the two chambers was deplorable. Particularly
in the House did the debate lose all semblance of sincerity and order.
Again and again it was broken up by charges and counter-charges—by
contradictions, appeals to the Speaker, cries of “Hear, hear!” “Order,
order!” “Rule, rule!” The Democrats, gloating over the apparent
predicament of the Republicans, taunted them repeatedly with not
intending to pass a bill—charges which maddened Mr. Haskell especially.
One day when these taunts were unusually sharp, Haskell lost control of
himself. Towering like a giant, his face white as a sheet, he shouted,
“We will see who wants reduction! We will see who are the
obstructionists. I move that the committee rise”—a motion intended to
close debate on the bill. The Democrats almost as a body were on their
feet at once, rushing down the aisles, dragging in members from
committee rooms, haranguing on gag rule. A long and acrimonious debate
followed, but as before, the attempt to close debate failed.
Another day, when both sides were heated and bitter, Townshend of
Illinois declared that the bill of the Ways and Means Committee did not
originate in Congress at all, but was “sired by a lobby of hired agents
of monopoly and was brought forth in a secret conclave unknown to the
rules of the House.” Mr. Haskell’s wrath was terrible. “Every word of
his declaration is a scandalous falsehood,” he thundered. There was
confusion on both sides for a moment but the friends of the two calmed
them down. The next morning, however, Mr. Morrison waited on Mr. Haskell
at his boarding house on Eighth Street with a peremptory demand that Mr.
Haskell make public retraction of his offensive utterance or he, Mr.
Morrison, would feel obliged to request Mr. Haskell to name some
gentleman to confer concerning further remedies for his friend’s wounded
honor. Mr. Haskell laughed at the idea of a duel, but he assured Mr.
Morrison that so long as Mr. Townshend’s statement stood on record, his
assertion of its falsehood would stand against it. And there the matter
remained.
Such was the temper of the House when the Senate bill reached it on
February 20—a poor temper indeed for candid legislation. Nevertheless,
the bill could probably have been passed promptly if Mr. Kelley had been
willing. The Carlisle Democrats criticised it, but they declared it too
good to obstruct. As for the majority of Republicans, they were in favor
of it. But Mr. Kelley was not willing. His first business then was to
block any attempt to get the bill off the Speaker’s table and pass it by
a regular procedure; a thing not difficult to do, for Speaker Keifer was
playing perfectly into his hands and could be depended upon not to
recognize anybody whom Kelley and Haskell were unwilling should get a
hearing. Indeed, the Democrats had been saying for days that nobody
could catch the Speaker’s eye unless Kelley first gave the wink. In this
matter of keeping back the bill so small a matter as a misplaced
semicolon aided Kelley materially. In looking over the engrossed copy
sent to the House from the Senate, Mr. Haskell had discovered one which
considerably changed duties on iron. He would not consider a bill so
“ragged, ill-considered, and half made,” he declared. The poor little
semicolon held up the House and gave half the papers in the country a
subject for editorials. The Senate clerk hastened over to correct the
error. It was only a slip. He could easily remedy it, he urged. “No,”
said Speaker Keifer sternly. He was not going to allow a Senate clerk to
make a tariff bill for them. The bill had to be taken back to the Senate
and corrected by proper procedure.
While the semicolon and other small matters were taking up time the
Republican leaders were closeted with the Committee on Rules, which they
controlled, in an effort to find a way out of their dilemma. If they
could get the bill into a conference of their own kind and revise it and
then pass it, they would be satisfied. It all amounted, as a matter of
fact, to finding a way to defeat a bill which the majority would accept
and to make and pass one which the minority wanted.
Now in anticipation of the difficulty in which they expected to be when
the Senate bill reached them, Mr. Kasson had some days before this
proposed a revision of the House rules which would allow a majority to
take the Senate bill from the table to concur in, or to non-concur in,
and send to a conference. If Mr. Kelley could have been sure of a
majority for nonconcurrence he would have risked this procedure, but he
found he could not. In caucus and out he canvassed the Republicans and
always with the result that he feared a vote would result in
concurrence. He was afraid of the Kasson rule.
It was certainly not an easy problem, but it was solved, and the man to
solve it was a member of the Committee on Rules, Thomas B. Reed of
Maine. Reed had been six years in the House and in this time had shown
himself an excellent debater and parliamentarian. On the tariff he was
sound enough to suit Mr. Kelley and “practical” enough to suit Mr.
Sherman. From his point of view it was idle to discuss the matter.
Protection, he said, was the accepted doctrine of the country—a closed
question. His business was to get what his constituents wanted. His
remarks on the lumber tariff and its relation to forest preservation
show his general attitude. “I want to know why this country should
preserve my forest for the benefit of some other gentleman? I should
like to know why the principal industry of the State of Maine should be
destroyed because the gentleman from Illinois thinks that his state
needs a more humid atmosphere? Why, sir, the very purpose of forests in
the course of nature is to be cut down and have houses built of them....
I tell you each generation can take care of itself, each generation is
sufficient unto itself.”
The rule Mr. Reed now proposed for extracting the high protectionists
was an admirable introduction to his later career as a parliamentarian.
It ran as follows:
“That during the remainder of this session it shall be in order at
any time to move to suspend the rules, which motion shall be decided
by a majority vote, to take from the Speaker’s table House Bill No.
5538, with the Senate amendment thereto, entitled a bill to Reduce
Internal Revenue Taxation, and to declare a disagreement with the
Senate amendment to the same, and to ask for a committee of
conference thereon, to be composed of five members on the part of
the House. If such motion shall fail, the bill shall remain on the
Speaker’s table unaffected by the decision of the House on said
motion.”
It was a rule which allowed the House to declare a disagreement but not
an agreement. It allowed a majority to non-concur, but forbade it to
concur! A New York _Herald_ correspondent characterized Mr. Reed’s rule
perfectly when he declared that it realized the Irishman’s dream of a
gun which should fire so as to hit the object if it was a deer and miss
it if it was a cow! It was on Saturday, the 24th of February, that Mr.
Reed reported his rule, and on Monday it was taken up. Only seven days
then remained of the session. The storm which burst over the rule when
it was read on Monday was quite worthy of its audacity. It was a
“monstrous proposition,” said Mr. Carlisle. “It is a fraud on
parliamentary law; a fraud on all that is just and fair in our politics;
it is revolutionary,” said Mr. Cox. Mr. Reed listened placidly to it all
and finally closed the discussion by declaring coolly that he himself
considered the procedure he was introducing as “forcible,” that he
should never be in favor of such a rule save in a “great emergency,” but
that such an emergency he considered to be at hand. The country demanded
a revision. The Democrats had defeated the House bill by a systematic
course of obstruction. The Senate bill was not satisfactory to business
men; it was unconstitutional to adopt it, but something must be done to
relieve distress. There was nothing to do but revise the Senate bill “in
the quiet of a conference committee.” The rule was adopted after nearly
a day’s debate by a vote of 129 to 22.
But the Democrats were not through yet. They raised the constitutional
question—was the House of Representatives to waive its right to
originate revenue measures? Never. The discussion precipitated lacked
sincerity, for leading Democrats had already testified to their
willingness to let the Senate bill go through as it stood. Mr. Haskell
finally stopped debates by a resolution which was carried. It turned the
constitutional question over to the Tariff Conference for decision. The
manœuvre was adroit. It simply meant that if the Tariff Conference did
not result satisfactorily to the high protectionist members, they had
the plea of unconstitutionality to fall back on, or as somebody put it,
“If pig-iron goes up, the amendment of the Senate will be
constitutional; if pig-iron goes down, it will be unconstitutional.”
It was late on Tuesday, the 28th day of February, before finally things
were adjusted, and the conferees appointed by both House and Senate. The
appointments precipitated another tangle. As was to have been expected,
Speaker Keifer appointed a high protectionist committee—packed it,
moderate Republicans, who were not represented at all, said. Mr.
Randall, who was one of the two Democratic appointments, felt so badly
about the make-up that he refused to serve. This tangle was straightened
out, and finally on the evening of the 28th the conferees had their
first meeting. Among those from the Senate were Beck and Bayard. They
were disturbed by the idea that the conference might not be “full and
free,”—that is, that the constitutional question might be raised,—and
when they found they could get no assurance to the contrary they
withdrew. Ten different Senators were appointed before two could be
found to accept! These were Mahone and McDill, both Republicans!
When the Committee was finally under way it made quick work of
revision—as indeed it could do, having a powerful high protection
majority. There were sharp contests—more than once rumors ran up and
down the Capitol, where for the last few days all Washington had
congregated, watching developments, that the conference would fail
because Sherman was not getting his desired increase on wool or because
Morrill was failing in his efforts to keep down the rate on pig-iron.
The tension the uncertainty caused was broken at noon on March 2, when
Mr. Morrill entered the Senate and said: “I desire to ask unanimous
consent for the printing of the report of the Conference Committee.” It
was granted and at nine o’clock that evening the printed report was
before the Senate. Of course everybody turned at once to the items over
which the great struggles had come. Had Sherman secured his rate on
pig-iron and wool, Mahone on iron ore, Kelley on steel and quinine and
nickel, the Louisiana planters on sugar?
The most cursory examination showed that the high protectionists had got
much that they asked. Iron ore had been raised to 75 cents a ton after
having been given 50 by tariff commission, by House, and by Senate.
Pig-iron was restored to $6.72; steel rails, after having been given
$15.68 in the Senate and $15.00 in House, were raised to $17.00. Mr.
Beck attacked the bill violently, making a most imposing array of duties
raised, but of course saying nothing of those lowered! At the same time
he attacked Sherman for his part in raising duties. Sherman was not
jubilant, however, over what he had done. Indeed, he was almost in
despair. For if he had succeeded in the metal schedule, he had failed in
the wool. The wool bill of 1867 had put compound duties on wool—10 cents
a pound and 11 per cent ad valorem on all wools costing 32 or less cents
a pound; 12 cents a pound and 10 per cent ad valorem on all costing over
32 cents. The ad valorems were dropped in the bill of ’83. The rate on
carpet wool was also lowered. The duties on manufactured goods were
lowered less on the whole than those on raw wool. In the bill of ’67 the
manufacturer had been allowed a specific duty of 50 cents to compensate
him for the duty on wool and dyestuffs; this was dropped to 35 cents in
the bill of ’83; but on several grades of woollens the ad valorem duty
was raised. It was raised indeed in every case where importations were
large. On cheap goods the duties were so high there could be no
competition; indeed they could have been lowered considerably and the
situation remained unchanged. But wool-growers and wool manufacturers
were both incensed at the bill. Senator Sherman took his failure much to
heart and he refused to sign the conference report. It was a question if
he would vote for the bill. But when the matter came to a test, as it
did about midnight of Saturday, March 3, he voted yea.
“I have always regretted,” Mr. Sherman wrote twelve years later, “that I
did not defeat the bill, which I could have readily done by voting with
the Democrats against the adoption of the conference report, which
passed the Senate by the vote of yeas 32, nays 30. However, the
propriety and necessity of a reduction of internal taxes proposed by the
bill were so urgent that I did not feel justified in denying relief from
burdensome and unnecessary taxes on account of provisions in the bill
that I did not approve. With great reluctance I voted for it.”
It was not until about noon of Saturday that Mr. Kelley, pale from
fatigue and suffering, presented the report. The House was in a state of
the greatest confusion at the time, the galleries crowded with visitors,
many of whom were women, the corridors alive with excited lobbyists, the
floor in disorder from the running to and fro of Democrats, still bent
on obstruction, and of moderate Republicans anxious but hardly daring to
defeat the report. Such was the din that Mr. Kelley could not be heard
when he tried to read a statement showing the changes the conference had
made. The Democrats would have none of his statements—they wanted the
whole report, schedules and all, and so the worn-out clerk was called to
read the entire document.
Two hours were then allowed for debate. Mr. Carlisle criticised the bill
in sober and dignified language, his chief point being that the bill did
not, could not produce the decrease Mr. Kelley claimed for it—that it
was for that reason a deception. Others of his side were violent over
the increases; many sarcastic over the acceptance of a Senate measure.
“They have swapped the Constitution for a high tariff,” declared Mr.
Tucker. But the criticism of Mr. Carlisle and his friends was not so
severe as that of those high protectionists who had failed to get the
increase they asked, particularly of the supporters of higher duties on
wool. “I have voted with the protectionists of Pennsylvania and with the
protectionists of New England,” complained Mr. Robison of Ohio, “with
the assurance—the most positive assurance—that this great interest I
represent should be taken care of, ... and you have stricken us down.”
There is no doubt but that on the morning of the 3d there was very real
doubt about the report being adopted. The moderate protectionists on the
Republican side were against it, and all conservative Republicans were
disgusted with the jugglery which had brought it through. A strong high
protectionist element, too, including Speaker Keifer, was against it—but
before four in the afternoon, when the debate was to close, the tide
turned. It was the pressure of the country which did it. From one ocean
to the other business men commanded and implored over the wires that the
bill pass—good or bad. So many telegrams, it was said, had never before
been received in Washington. And so the bill passed. And a few minutes
before Congress adjourned it was signed by President Arthur.
At the time of its passage nobody knew what was in the bill of 1883,
such had been the juggling. But this was certain, everybody but the
persons who had saved their duties was disgusted with it. Mr. Sherman
went home to meet a political storm such as he had never met before—a
storm which forced him to explain and defend himself. It was raised by
the dissatisfied wool-growers. The Democrats went out with the story of
the barter and trickery which had attended the measure. The Republicans
everywhere were obliged to defend themselves for doing or not doing.
Dissatisfaction was increased with the testing of the bill. It did not
produce the reduction promised either in internal revenue or in customs.
The bill went into operation July 1, 1883. In the first year of its
operation it reduced duties only about $20,000,000 (from $210,637,293 to
$190,282,836). The average reduction on iron and steel proved to be only
4.54 per cent; on clothing wool 10.73 per cent; on woollen goods 1.01
per cent. On many articles there was an increase: 13.11 per cent on
earthenware; 1.48 per cent on glassware; 2.54 per cent on cotton goods.
But there were more serious features still. Mr. Sherman says in his
“Recollections” that the “Tariff law of 1883 laid the foundation of all
the Tariff complications since that time.” The lack of “harmony” in
duties, the failure to protect all interests equally—wool and woollens,
iron ore and pig-iron, and their products—was what disturbed Mr.
Sherman. If we are to have protection, his view was, all must be
protected. “The dogma of free raw material is more dangerous to the
protective policy than the opposition of free-traders.”
There was something more serious than the failure to admit the claims of
all to protection. It was the semi-official recognition of the organized
business man in the making of tariff schedules. True, they had been more
or less active in every bill since the war, but never before had their
right to stand day and night at the doors of Senate and House, to sit in
committee, to be closeted in every leisure hour with their
representatives in Congress, been conceded. It was recognition they were
not likely to forget. Moreover it was demonstrated clearly in 1883 that
the size of the duty is according to the size of the organization. The
quinine-makers, even with Mr. Kelley’s help, were unable to get their
product off the free list where it had been put in 1879, but they were a
feeble folk—only four of them in the country! The pottery people, on the
contrary, received an advance of some 13 per cent on their wares, for
they were strong in Ohio and New Jersey. Mr. Joseph Wharton, standing
alone, had to submit to a reduction of 50 per cent on his nickel;
standing with iron men he suffered a reduction of only 4 per cent on his
pig-iron. It was a great lesson in the value of organization and
numbers.