GROVER CLEVELAND AND THE TARIFF
The most conspicuous political figures in the United States in the fall
of 1883 were two Democrats—John G. Carlisle of Kentucky and Samuel J.
Randall of Pennsylvania, rival candidates for the Speakership of the
House of Representatives. Their contest was something more than a
struggle for leadership. A grave question was at stake. Should or should
not the Democrats open the tariff question? The Republicans had passed a
bill violating their own promises. It was the second time in twenty-two
years that they had broken faith on the question. Mr. Carlisle claimed
that the Democrats should now make it their duty to effect the reforms
so long promised and every day more needed. Mr. Randall claimed that the
tariff should be left to the Republicans.
Two men could scarcely have offered a greater contrast in training, in
methods, and in ideals than the two thus thrown into prominence. Sam
Randall was the older and by far the more experienced in national
affairs. For several years he had been the leader of his party. He had
accomplished this mainly by the coolness and the skill with which he led
a weak minority so that it frequently was able to frustrate the plans of
a big majority. To play the parliamentarian game successfully against
such odds as Randall faced had aroused enthusiasm and devotion and given
him supreme power. The first serious shock to Randall’s leadership came
in the early ’80’s. Then the issue of tariff-for-revenue only became
acute with his party and he could not follow, for Randall was a
protectionist of the Kelley brand. In youth he had been a Whig, but in
1856 he and his family went over to Buchanan, largely on the ground of
personal liking, it seems. In Congress he had always supported the high
tariff arguments and bills, without ever bringing much light to the
question, for he was not at all well equipped for tariff discussion.
Indeed, as late as the bill of 1883 he went about the House studying a
little handbook on the tariff—for the first time posting himself on the
vocabulary and the schedules. As it became more evident that the
Democratic issue was to be tariff revision, Randall’s place became more
difficult, for it was a Republican district which was sending him to
Congress and it was no secret that they sent him on condition that he
support protection. To an outsider it seems now as if the natural thing
would have been for Randall to have gone over to the Republicans at this
juncture, but he believed, honestly enough no doubt, that he could force
the Democrats back from the position they had taken, that he could in
fact _protectionize_ the _Democratic Party_.
But Randall was dealing with a bigger force and a bigger man in 1883
than he realized. John G. Carlisle, his opponent, was probably the
nearest approach to a statesman then in the United States Congress. Born
on a Kentucky farm, he had spent the days of his early youth at farm
work, the nights over books. He had become a school teacher and in his
leisure had read law. Admitted to the bar, he had continued to study
until he was called the ablest lawyer in the state. Admitted to the
state legislature, he had become a leader of his party by force of
knowledge and intellectual vigor. Carlisle had first entered the House
in 1877, fourteen years after Randall, and he immediately made a deep
impression on the country by his thorough mastery of subjects, his
clearness of statement, his gravity and candor in argument, and his
freedom from the trickery and deceits of partisan politics. In the
spring of 1882 he made a speech against a Tariff Commission which, as an
argument for thorough tariff reform, was one of the ablest of the
period. It really framed a strong logical position for the Democrats.
His speech in 1883 when the Kelley Bill was under consideration gave his
position in the tariff:
“In the broad and sweeping sense which the term usually implies I am
not a free-trader,” he said. “I will add that in my judgment it will
be years yet before anything in the nature of free trade would be
wise or practicable in the United States. When we speak of this
subject we refer to approximate free trade which has no idea of
cutting the growth of home industries, but simply of scaling down
the inequalities of the tariff schedules where they are utterly out
of proportion to the demands of that growth. After we have calmly
stood up and allowed monopolists to grow fat we should not be asked
to make them bloated. Our enormous surplus revenues are illogical
and oppressive. It is entirely undemocratic to continue these
burdens on the people for years and years after the requirements of
protection have been met and the representatives of these industries
have become incrusted with wealth.”
That is, Carlisle saw clearly that certain evils inherent in high
protection, evils against which Garfield and all the Republican tariff
reformers had so often warned, were becoming realities. The word
monopoly was already in everybody’s mouth, for at this time the
impossibility of preventing the over-production and consequent
depressions which are the logical results of an artificial stimulus like
a high tariff, except by some artificial check like a combination to
limit output and hold up prices, had been completely demonstrated.
Mr. Randall, however, saw no danger in the building up of monopolies and
combinations to limit production which counterbalanced the advantage
there was in shutting out foreign competition and keeping the home
market inviolate. The danger he claimed to see was unsettling capital.
“There is nothing in life so sensitive to adverse criticism and which
takes alarm so quickly,” he said, “as capital invested in large
industrial enterprises.... Shall we unsettle business interests by
constant tinkering with the tariff? Shall no law last longer than the
meeting of the next Congress?”
The contest between the two men had begun in the summer and had been
followed with keen interest in political circles. Early in November the
candidates opened headquarters in Washington and soon the town was full
of “Randall men” and “Carlisle men,” each ready to prove his candidate a
sure winner! All of the big newspapers had correspondents on hand,
foretelling confidently the success of the candidate favored by their
readers. But there was little to indicate the result. It all depended,
it was seen, upon how deep and how general a belief there was in the
Democratic party that high tariffs were dangerous.
The only really significant feature of the fall contest in Washington
was the activity of the protected interests in Randall’s behalf. The
iron men and steel men, the wool men, the New Jersey potters, the
Standard Oil Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, were all said to be on
hand. There were many hints of the use of money. Mr. Barnum of
Connecticut, former United States Senator and now chairman of the
National Democratic Committee, was said to be in town “buying mules” for
Randall, as the slang of the day went. How much truth there was in the
charges of bribery the writer does not know; but this is certain, an
alliance of business interests in support of Mr. Randall was plainly
evident in the fall of 1883. The protectionists were most active, but
they had with them the railroads and the Standard Oil crowd, who at that
moment were fighting hard to prevent threatened regulation of interstate
commerce; that is, all of the interests which were thriving on special
privileges were combined into a league for the continuation of those
privileges.
Up to this time these allied interests had supported the Republican
party. It was in power and it had granted the privileges they enjoyed,
but they were quite willing to support a man of any political faith who
agreed with them. Naturally their great desire was that both parties
should agree to protection as the American system, that the question
should practically be taken out of politics. This would result if Mr.
Randall’s effort to protectionize the Democrats succeeded. Naturally,
then, they were eager to do their utmost to support him in his contest
with Mr. Carlisle. But to their surprise and unquestionably to the
surprise of Mr. Randall, Mr. Carlisle was elected speaker by a large
majority. The tariff question was to be opened again. The man whom Mr.
Carlisle selected to open it was William R. Morrison of Illinois, who
had worked shoulder to shoulder with him the winter before in
obstructing the Kelley Bill.
Mr. Morrison was an experienced man at tariff reform; indeed, the first
Democratic tariff bill presented after the war originated with him. That
was in 1875 and 1876, when the Democrats first obtained possession of
the House. The speaker, Michael C. Kerr, had asked Colonel Morrison to
take the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Morrison had
brought in a good and reasonable measure, one nearer in accord with
sound tariff principles than those which he presented later, but even
then the Randall faction of Protectionist-Democrats were too strong for
him, and his bill had been speedily dropped. A little later Mr. Randall
had succeeded Kerr as speaker and he had dropped Morrison from the
Committee. He was not restored until 1879. But Mr. Morrison was too
aggressively honest and outspoken ever to keep silence on a question
which interested him. He had fought for reform in Congress, in caucus,
in national conventions, everywhere he could get a hearing, and now that
he had a chance to make a bill he went at it with great zest, and in
March he had it ready—“a bill to reduce import duties and war-tariff
taxes”—he called it. The bill was clever, for it really asked nothing
more than what the Republicans themselves were already committed to.
Thus he proposed a general 20 per cent reduction. The Republican Tariff
Commission had advised from 20 to 25 per cent in 1882—Congress in 1883
had granted only a little over 4 per cent. So, declared Mr. Morrison, I
am only asking what your own experts have advised. This 20 per cent
reduction was to be applied horizontally to all duties on manufactured
articles. Here again Mr. Morrison was following Republican precedent:
their reduction in 1872 being a 10 per cent horizontal, and their
increase in 1875 a restoration of the same. In order to forestall the
objection that this reduction might bring certain duties back to the
detested rates of 1857, Mr. Morrison put in the proviso that no duty
should be lower than that provided by the Morrill tariff of 1861. That
is, he was willing to give the Republicans the protection they
themselves had devised before the war and which they had increased with
a distinct understanding that as soon as the war was over the old rates
should be restored. Even in putting salt and coal on the free list, Mr.
Morrison followed a not very old Republican precedent, Mr. Hale backed
by Mr. Blaine having introduced bills to that effect into the House in
1871.
From the day of the introduction of Mr. Morrison’s bill into the House,
it was certain that Mr. Randall would oppose it. Randall indeed was
working day and night to rally a strong Democratic opposition. His
success was apparent when, after three weeks of general debate, Mr.
Converse, an Ohio Democrat, suddenly moved that the enacting clause of
the bill be struck out and the motion was carried by a vote of 159 to
155. That is, in a House having a majority of 80 Democrats a bill which
was a moderate expression of a policy to which the party had always been
committed could not be passed. Forty-one Democrats voted against the
bill; twelve of them from Pennsylvania, ten from Ohio, six from New
York, four from California, three from New Jersey, and four from the
South. It was a powerful vote, for when boiled down it represented iron
and steel, wool and sugar, and the hold they had on the Democrats.
The defeat of the Morrison Bill only aggravated the feeling between the
two factions and made it certain that there would be a great fight over
the tariff plank of the platform in Chicago in July, when the National
Convention met to nominate a presidential candidate, and there was—one
of the most stubborn and prolonged in the history of conventions. Henry
Watterson was first on the ground with the plank “tariff-for-revenue
only,” which he had placed in the platforms of 1876 and of 1880, and
which he was determined should go in again. Ben Butler, a candidate for
the presidency, followed him with a compromise plank, and after him came
Abram S. Hewitt and Manton Marble, also with compromise expressions. Mr.
Randall’s friends talked free whiskey and free tobacco for the plank.
When the Committee on Resolutions finally was formed it included all
these gentlemen. The session began with a deadlock over the chairman—18
being for Morrison, 18 for Converse of Ohio, Randall’s man. From that
time until the end nothing but rumors of dead-locks came behind the
closed door. The sub-committee to which the framing of the tariff plank
was finally confided sat for _fifty-one_ consecutive hours, and the
session ended in what the disgusted Mr. Watterson called a “straddle,”—a
plank calling for revision in “a spirit of fairness to all
interests”—one which would “injure no domestic industry and would not
deprive American labor of the ability to compete successfully with
foreign labor.” It was an expression carefully arranged to back all
shades of opinion between Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Randall—a platform which
gave standing room to both factions, and it really compared very well
with the Republican pledge to “correct the irregularities of the tariff
and to reduce the surplus—so as to relieve the taxpayers without
injuring the laborers or the great productive interests of the country.”
If anybody was ahead in the platform contest it was Mr. Carlisle, and
this from the fact that Mr. Morrison was selected to present the report
to the Convention.
At the time of the National Convention it looked as if the tariff would
be the chief issue of the campaign, but as it turned out the Republican
candidate, Mr. Blaine, was the issue, and he had not the vitality for
the strain. His opponent, Grover Cleveland—a man unheard of in public
affairs until three years before, but whose short record as mayor of the
city of Buffalo and governor of the State of New York had been of such
courage and patriotism that it had made him available for the nomination
to the presidency, was elected in November by an electoral vote of 219
to 182. The tariff issue was in Mr. Cleveland’s hands.
It has been frequently said that when Grover Cleveland became the
President of the United States he knew nothing of the tariff. At least
one tariff expert of that day has recorded a very different opinion. In
an interesting unpublished manuscript of reminiscences by the late
Professor Perry of Williams College there is an account of a talk the
professor had with Mr. Cleveland in the fall of 1883 in Albany.
Professor Perry had gone to Albany at the request of Thomas G. Shearman,
of Brooklyn, to speak in behalf of free trade at a public meeting the
Democratic leaders had organized, and the afternoon before the lecture
he had been taken to the Capitol to meet the governor. “He and I stood
in the corridor for half an hour talking on the subject which had
brought me to Albany,” Professor Perry writes. “The governor, as was
proper, did most of the talking, and his interlocutor was surprised and
gratified at the clearness and strength of his views on the whole tariff
question and began to think he had this time brought coals to New
Castle, since the first official in the state apparently knew as much
about tariffs as he did, and could express himself even better. The
governor said he was glad I came to Albany, thought he had better not
attend the meeting himself, but hoped everybody else would go, and on
parting gave me his best wishes for the efforts made and making in
behalf of the good cause, with which efforts he seemed to be familiar.
He impressed me as few other men ever did on first acquaintance, as a
strong man, a frank man, and a man every way to be trusted.”
But in any case Mr. Cleveland was too wise a man to take radical action
on a subject at the outset of a first presidential term, particularly
when that subject was sharply dividing his followers. The election had
by no means healed the breach between the Carlisle and Randall factions.
If anything, indeed, it was widened, for Randall had by a clever
manœuvre apparently strengthened his side from the South. He had done
this by campaigning in aid of Southern Democratic candidates for
Congress who favored protection. Together with his first lieutenant,
William McAdoo of New Jersey, Randall went in the fall of ’84 to
Louisville, Kentucky, and spoke under the very nose of his enemy,
Watterson. From Kentucky he continued his work into Tennessee and
Alabama. He did not meet with a cold reception. Everywhere he had large
audiences and proofs of sympathy, everywhere he found newspapers to
support him. To those on the inside it was apparent that Pennsylvania
had been busy in the Southern manufacturing centres, and that its money
and influence accounted largely for the candidates and the interest. But
it was not a sign to be lightly regarded, and Mr. Randall took care that
its full strength be known to Mr. Cleveland.
But however cautious Mr. Cleveland meant to be, his first message showed
that he stood with Mr. Carlisle and not with Mr. Randall. He was for
revision at once. “The fact that our revenues are in excess of the
actual needs of an economical administration of the government justifies
a reduction in the amount exacted from the people for its support,” he
wrote. “The proposition with which we have to deal is the reduction of
the revenue received by the government and indirectly paid by the people
from the customs duties. The amount of such reduction having been
determined, the inquiry follows, where can it best be remitted and what
articles can best be released from duty in the interests of our
citizens? I think the reduction should be made in the revenue derived
from a tax upon the imported necessaries of life.” “The question of free
trade,” Mr. Cleveland said, “is not involved, nor is there any occasion
for the general discussion of the wisdom or experience of a protective
system.” He also interpolated a paragraph assuring the protected
industries and their working-men that there was no intention in his mind
of any ruthless changes which would hurt their interests.
As was to be expected, Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Morrison returned to the
charge as soon as Congress opened. Four months were spent in preparing a
new bill and on it the very best brains of the party were engaged. Abram
Hewitt, who had in the previous session presented a bill embodying his
ideas, now went to work with Morrison. David Wells and J. S. Moore, the
“Parsee Merchant,” came to Washington to give their help. The greatest
care was taken to meet the just objections to the previous measure, and
when the bill was reported in April, 1886, it was found to be more
moderate than its predecessor. The objectionable horizontal levelling
had been given up. Duties had been studied in relation to labor cost.
The free list was larger, including coal, salt, and iron, copper and
lead ores. It was a bill for which both Republicans and Democrats might
have voted without violating party platforms, but there was no hope for
it. The Randall faction again joined the Republicans when Mr. Morrison
asked the House to go into a Committee of the Whole to consider his
bill, and voted him down by a vote of 157 to 140. Four Republicans voted
with Morrison, 35 Democrats against him.
Mr. Morrison might be defeated, but tariff revision could not be.
Indeed, the situation was becoming more complicated every day. For four
years a serious business depression had harassed the country. Mr.
Carroll D. Wright, who, as commissioner of labor, investigated the
condition and reported a little later, found that in the year ending
July, 1885, there had been fully 1,000,000 persons out of employment. He
estimated that year of idleness meant a loss of $300,000,000 to the
country. Strikes were incessant, and in 1884 and 1885 over 20,000
failures had occurred, many of them being in highly protected
industries. Indeed, some of the chief advocates of the system had gone
down in the general distress, among them John Roach, whose panegyric on
protection as the source of prosperity was one of the choice pieces
collected by the Tariff Commission of 1882, and Henry Oliver, the
representative on the Commission of the iron and steel industries. The
piling up of the surplus, too, was causing more and more uneasiness. In
the year ending just after Mr. Morrison’s second bill was denied
consideration, the surplus was found to be nearly ninety-four million
dollars, with no profitable provision for spending. Even Mr. Randall was
willing to admit that this was serious, and to remedy it he now prepared
a bill. The gist of it was the reduction of the surplus by _increasing_
the duties; that is, making them prohibitory. If nothing was imported,
nothing would be collected. Of course, there was no hope for Mr.
Randall’s proposition, though the Ways and Means Committee gave
prominence to it by an adverse report and it was discussed fully in the
public press, particularly in the New York _Times_, where the “Parsee
Merchant” dissected it mercilessly.
This, in substance, was the condition of things when it came time for
Mr. Cleveland to send in his second message. His first year in office
had certainly given him large opportunity to study the tariff question.
It had not been wasted. His notions had evidently been enlarged and
intensified and in his message he urged at length upon Congress the
“pressing importance” of revision. He made a strong argument against the
system which had produced the surplus he was laboring with and at the
same time caused “abnormal and exceptional business profits,” “without
corresponding benefit to the people at large,” and it ended with a plain
warning to Congress that nothing could be accomplished “unless the
subject was approached in a patriotic spirit of devotion to the
interests of the entire country and with a willingness to yield
something to the public good.” This message is particularly interesting
in comparison with the famous one of a year later. Indeed, it contains
nearly all the points elaborated there. But it fell on deaf ears. Mr.
Morrison proved this when, a few days later, he tried again to get his
second bill reported, and was defeated. Not only did Congress refuse to
consider Mr. Morrison’s bill, it adjourned in March, 1887, without any
action of any kind in regard to revenue.
And while the members of Congress sullenly refused to consider the needs
of the country lest in so doing they might sacrifice party advantage,
Mr. Cleveland and his cabinet were spending anxious days trying to find
means to unclog the treasury and avert panic. In the first six months
after the message of December, 1886, nearly $80,000,000 were applied to
taking up 3 per cent bonds. Financial uneasiness continuing, some
eighteen to nineteen millions more were spent on the same bonds, and
twenty-seven and one-half millions in taking up bonds not yet due and in
anticipating interest. Even after this Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Fairchild,
his Secretary of the Treasury, did not feel at all certain that trouble
would not return, and as the hot weather came on and the cabinet members
prepared to leave for their summer homes, the President arranged that
they keep him informed of all their movements. He wanted to be able to
reach them, he told them, for he had made up his mind that if there was
a recurrence of trouble he would call an extra session of Congress and
lay matters before the members in such a way that they would be forced
to act.
But the summer passed and business grew better rather than worse. In
September Mr. Cleveland went to Philadelphia to the centenary of the
Constitution and there he met Mr. Fairchild. The two talked matters over
and agreed that no extra session would be needed. “I was almost sorry,”
Mr. Cleveland once told the writer “—not sorry that the trouble was
over, but that my opportunity was lost.” But the _cause_ of the trouble
remained and continued to worry the President. It continued, too, to
worry the country. Ugly evidences of this were continually coming from
press and people. Mr. Cleveland was accused of not realizing the
situation, of fearing the Randall faction of his party, of doing nothing
because he was playing for a second term,—the old-time charges against
the man who in a difficult situation with a divided party behind him,
studies his case and waits for a favorable moment to act. Later in
September, something happened which set everybody agog. Secretary
Fairchild and Speaker Carlisle were reported to be at Oak View in
consultation with the President and Mr. Randall was not present. It was
taken as a sign that the President had concluded to ignore the Randall
faction. But Mr. Cleveland did nothing more at the September council
than to get the opinion of his colleagues on the situation; he did not
reveal his plan of campaign, though at that moment he had it in mind,
indeed had practically decided upon it, and a bold, original plan it
was.
Mr. Cleveland had come to the conclusion that the country must be forced
to think about the tariff and its relation to the business disorders,
and that the only way open to him to force this attention was to devote
his entire forthcoming message to Congress to that subject. No such
thing had ever been done by a President of the United States. But there
was no constitutional objection to the idea. Nothing but precedent was
against it and Mr. Cleveland concluded that here was a case where the
breaking of a precedent was more useful than the observance. For weeks
he turned the matter over in his mind, taking nobody into his
confidence, until finally early in November he told his cabinet what he
had determined upon. He regretted, he said, not to use their several
reports as was the custom, particularly when everybody had made so good
a showing, but in his judgment the situation justified the action. There
was not an objector to the suggestion; on the contrary, there was hearty
and unanimous approval. Every member of the cabinet seems to have
realized that the President had hit on a move of undoubted wisdom.
The writing of the message was a serious task for Mr. Cleveland. He
realized that its effect depended upon the completeness of his argument
and his making himself clear and convincing to plain people. It was
really a literary task, and Mr. Cleveland was not a literary man. He was
a lawyer, accustomed to presenting what he had to say in the forcible
and exact but more or less technical and ponderous terms of the law. He
had a taste, too, for sonorous and unusual words and phrases, but now he
wanted to be simple,—as simple as he could be, and still be dignified.
For weeks he kept his message within reach in the drawer of his White
House work-table, whenever he had a moment, taking it out to add to and
to correct. Finally he had the structure worked out to his satisfaction.
He would begin at the end of the story with what the high tariff had
done, the dangers and hardships it had brought on the country, and he
would tell Congress plainly, this is your work and you alone can remedy
it. With dignity and clearness he worked out the situation:
“You are confronted at the threshold of your legislative duties,” he
wrote Congress, “with a condition of the national finances which
imperatively demands immediate and careful consideration. The amount of
money annually exacted through the operation of present laws, from the
industries and necessities of the people, largely exceeds the sum
necessary to meet the expenses of the Government.... This condition of
our Treasury is not altogether new; and it has more than once of late
been submitted to the people’s representatives in the Congress, who
alone can apply a remedy. And yet the situation still continues with
aggravated incidents, more than ever presaging financial convulsion and
widespread disaster.... If disaster results from the continued inaction
of Congress, the responsibility must rest where it belongs.”
He set down the income, the expenses, the unusual efforts made to
dispose of the surplus, and after all was done, he told them another
June would probably see $140,000,000 more in the Treasury than was
needed, “with no clear and undoubted executive power of relief.” All of
the suggestions before him for getting rid of the surplus: that is,
purchasing at a premium bonds not yet due; refunding the public debt;
depositing the money in banks throughout the country for use, he
believed to be unwise and extravagant. What was needed was something
deeper than expedients for spending money, it was stopping the inflow by
removing the cause. What was the cause? Why, unnecessary taxation, of
course. “Our scheme of taxation by means of which this needless surplus
is taken from the people and put into the public treasury,” Mr.
Cleveland wrote, “consists of a tariff or duty levied upon importations
from abroad, and internal-revenue taxes levied upon the consumption of
tobacco and spirituous and malt liquors. It must be conceded that none
of the things subjected to internal-revenue taxation are, strictly
speaking, necessaries. There appears to be no just complaint of this
taxation by the consumers of these articles, and there seems to be
nothing so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion
of the people. But our present tariff laws, the vicious, inequitable,
and illogical source of unnecessary taxation ought to be at once revised
and amended.”
And Mr. Cleveland set out to explain clearly to the people why, in his
opinion, the adjectives he applied to the tariff were not too strong.
The argument is important. It was the reason of an honest and candid man
for the faith within him and it was destined to convince masses of
people and to be the accepted argument of a majority of his party in
years of future struggling on the question. The gist of it was that the
tariff is really a tax,—that is, the price of the imported article one
buys is higher by the amount of the duty, and this duty makes it
possible for people who are manufacturers of the same kind of articles
as those imported to sell them for a price approximately equal to that
demanded for the imported goods. In the first case the tax or duty goes
to the government, in the other case to the domestic manufacturer. “It
is said that the increase in the price of domestic manufactures
resulting from the present tariff is necessary in order that higher
wages may be paid to our working-men employed in manufactories, than are
paid for what is called the pauper labor of Europe.” Now out of a
population of 50,155,783, 2,623,089 persons are employed in such
manufacturing industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high
tariff. “To these the appeal is made to save their employment and
maintain their wages by resisting a change.... Yet with slight
reflection they will not overlook the fact that they are consumers with
the rest.... Nor can the worker in manufactures fail to understand that
while a high tariff is claimed to be necessary to allow the payment of
remunerative wages it certainly results in a very large increase in the
price of nearly all sorts of manufactures, which in almost countless
forms he needs for the use of himself and his family. He receives at the
desk of his employer his wages, and perhaps before he reaches his home
is obliged, in a purchase for family use of an article which embraces
his own labor, to return in the payment of the increase in price which
the tariff permits, the hard-earned compensation of many days of toil.”
Mr. Cleveland felt strongly that it was to the 7,670,493 farmers in the
country that the tariff worked particular injustice. Seeking an
illustration of his idea he went back to his boyhood in New York State,
when every farmer he knew had a few sheep; when he himself wore a suit
of homespun wool—the very odor of which he said he remembered! What good
were these farmers getting from the wool tariff?
“I think it may be fairly assumed,” he wrote, “that a large
proportion of the sheep owned by the farmers throughout the country
are found in small flocks numbering from twenty-five to fifty. The
duty on the grade of imported wool which these sheep yield is ten
cents each pound if of the value of thirty cents or less, and twelve
cents if of the value of more than thirty cents. If the liberal
estimate of six pounds be allowed for each fleece, the duty thereon
would be sixty or seventy-two cents, and this may be taken as the
utmost enhancement of its price to the farmer by reason of this
duty. Eighteen dollars would thus represent the increased price of
the wool from twenty-five sheep, and thirty-six dollars that from
the wool of fifty sheep; and at present values this addition would
amount to about one-third of its price. If upon its sale the farmer
receives this or a less tariff profit, the wool leaves his hands
charged with precisely that sum, which in all its changes will
adhere to it, until it reaches the consumer. When manufactured into
cloth and other goods and material for use, its cost is not only
increased to the extent of the farmer’s tariff profit, but a further
sum has been added for the benefit of the manufacturer under the
operation of other tariff laws. In the meantime the day arrives when
the farmer finds it necessary to purchase woollen goods and material
to clothe himself and family for the winter. When he faces the
tradesman for that purpose he discovers that he is obliged not only
to return, in the way of increased prices, his tariff profit on the
wool he sold, and which then perhaps lies before him in manufactured
form, but that he must add a considerable sum thereto to meet a
further increase in cost caused by a tariff duty on the manufacture.
Thus in the end he is roused to the fact that he has paid upon a
moderate purchase, as a result of the tariff scheme which when he
sold his wool seemed so profitable, an increase in price more than
sufficient to sweep away all the tariff profit he received upon the
wool he produced and sold.
“When the number of farmers engaged in wool-raising is compared with
all the farmers in the country, and the small proportion they bear
to our population is considered; when it is made apparent that, in
the case of a large part of those who own sheep, the benefit of the
present tariff on wool is illusory; and, above all, when it must be
conceded that the increase of the cost of living caused by such
tariff becomes a burden upon those with moderate means and the poor,
the employed and unemployed, the sick and well, and the young and
old, and that it constitutes a tax which, with relentless grasp, is
fastened upon the clothing of every man, woman, and child in the
land, reasons are suggested why the removal or reduction of this
duty should be included in a revision of our tariff laws.”
One of the most significant parts of Mr. Cleveland’s message from the
point of view of present-day developments is that in which he pointed
out the relation of the tariff to the trusts. By this time (1887) the
movement to prevent any lowering of domestic prices of the protected
articles by natural-competition was already strong and alarming. The
sugar trust, the National Lead Trust Company, the National Linseed Oil
Trust, the Copper Syndicate, the association of steel men, the
combinations in wax, rubber goods, oil cloth, and dozens of other highly
protected articles, were worrying the whole country. “It is notorious,”
Mr. Cleveland wrote, “that competition is too often strangled by
combinations quite prevalent at this time, and frequently called trusts,
which have for their object the regulation of the supply and price of
commodities made and sold by members of the combination. The people can
hardly hope for any consideration in the operation of these selfish
schemes.... _The necessity of combination to maintain the price of any
commodity to the tariff point, furnishes proof that some one is willing
to accept lower prices for such commodity, and that such prices are
remunerative._”
Mr. Cleveland did not neglect either to touch upon another feature of
the protective trust which was causing uneasiness and of which he was
soon to learn much more than he knew then, that was, the measures being
taken to prevent any revision at all. “So stubbornly have all efforts to
reform the present condition been resisted by those of our
fellow-citizens thus engaged (in protected industries) that they can
hardly complain of the suspicion entertained to a certain extent that
there exists an organized combination all along the line to maintain
their advantage.”
Little by little with care and pains the message was beaten out. The
greatest caution was taken to have it exact. For example, after the
illustration on the farmer and his wool was written, Mr. Cleveland
became concerned for his figures. He knew twenty-five to fifty was the
right average for a farmer’s sheep in New York State, but how about
Ohio? He called in a member of the bureau of statistics, and was told
the average Ohio flock was between twenty and forty. And as he verified
figures he qualified statements, reiterating his assurance that no
revision which would destroy any business was contemplated—none which
would throw labor out of work or lower its wages, that no doctrinal
discussion was sought. “_It is a condition which confronts us—not a
theory_,” was his famous phrase. And most solemnly did he beg Congress
to approach the question “in a spirit higher than partisanship, to
consider it in the light of that regard for patriotic duty which should
characterize the action of those intrusted with the weal of a confiding
people.”
Throughout the whole period of composition of the message Mr. Cleveland
took no one into his confidence. Finally, one day after it was complete,
Mr. Carlisle called on some business. When he had finished Mr. Cleveland
said: “Carlisle, I want to read you something.” It was his message. He
had decided to present it practically as it was, he said, but he was
afraid he had made it too simple. He wanted it perfectly dignified.
Would Mr. Carlisle listen to it and make any suggestions he might have?
Walking up and down, Mr. Carlisle listened attentively. Once or twice he
broke in, correcting what he believed to be a too general statement.
Thus Mr. Cleveland had written, “The majority of our citizens who buy
domestic articles of the same class (as imported articles) pay a sum
_equal_ to the duty to the home manufacturer.” Mr. Carlisle did not
think they paid the full amount of the duty. He believed usually it was
a little less. Mr. Cleveland had better say “substantially equal.” Mr.
Cleveland wrote finally, “at least approximately equal.” Beyond a few
suggestions of this kind Mr. Carlisle had nothing but hearty approval
for the message.
On the 6th of December it went to Congress. The effect was
instantaneous. All over the country thinking people cried out that not
since the Emancipation Proclamation had a President of the United States
shown equal courage and wisdom. The patience with which Mr. Cleveland
had waited for Congress to take the action needed and to which he had in
both his previous messages urged it, the deliberation and caution with
which he had worked out _his_ duty when Congress failed to do _its_
duty; the courage with which he acted when he felt the time had come for
his interference, the high patriotism with which he had swept away all
thought of the result to himself and the party for what he believed to
be the general good—all these features appealed to the thoughtful and
led many to draw a parallel between Abraham Lincoln in 1862 and Grover
Cleveland in 1887.
The immediate important political result of the message was that it
crystallized tariff sentiment in both parties. The Democrats who had
been trying to mix enough protection with their “ultimate free-trade” or
“tariff-for-revenue only” principles to ease the fears of protected
industries, and win over Mr. Randall, turned exclusive attention to
revision without compromise. As for Mr. Randall, it was plain his day
was over—if his fight was not.
At first the message caused something like a panic among Republicans.
The _Tribune_ appealed to Mr. Blaine for help and he sent from Paris a
famous interview. If anything was needed to emphasize the worth of Mr.
Cleveland’s message, it was supplied by Mr. Blaine’s interview. The
combination of the two documents caused something like a split in
Republican ranks. The Chicago _Tribune_ and a number of other Western
papers came out with as strong a commendation of Mr. Cleveland as the
New York _Nation_, and in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa particularly,
many leading Republicans publicly approved it. Nevertheless, the final
effect on the party was to solidify the varying degrees of
protectionists into one body. Cost what it might the Democrats must not
be allowed to reform the tariff. Nothing was better campaign capital for
Republicans than the charge of “free-trade.” If Mr. Cleveland’s will
prevailed, the value of the epithet might be materially lessened.
Protection must be preserved. If its operations were to be corrected,
this must be done by its friends, not its enemies. Whatever their
differences about the degree and extent of duties, all good Republicans
must now stand together.