THE DINGLEY BILL
Two months after the Wilson Bill became a law, the Democratic majority
in the House of Representatives suffered as thorough a reverse as had
the Republicans in 1892. The House stood, after the election, 246
Republicans, 104 Democrats, and 7 Populists. The South returned 33
Republicans. The painful failure of Congress to make the honest and
thorough revision of the tariff which the country had expected was
certainly one cause of the party’s overthrow. Honorable men could not
sanction the scandal and barter which had attended the making of the new
law. But there were other and powerful causes for the defeat. There was
the silver question. With every month it became more certain that silver
was to be the issue in the next campaign. There was a possibility at
least that the Republicans would continue to make the issue their own.
The group of Western Republican Senators who in 1890 had voted for a
tariff bill of which they did not approve in order to get votes for a
silver bill of which the voters did not approve, were more hotly devoted
to free silver than ever,—more determined to make it a party measure.
Already several Republican State Conventions had declared for it. Among
the New England Congressmen there seems to have been a willingness to
prepare the way for some kind of action, at least to consider free
silver, for in the spring of 1894 Henry Cabot Lodge made a conciliatory
and ambiguous speech on the subject in the Senate and there were others,
who like him seemed to be ready to go either way. On the other hand,
free silver had no hope with the then dominant faction of the Democratic
party. Mr. Cleveland and his supporters were willing to go down to
defeat rather than even seem to encourage the fallacy. Free silver then
carried many voters to the Republicans in the fall of 1894.
The strongest reason for the overthrow was the least sound. It was an
unreasoning revolt against the party because of the panic of 1893 and
the long period of hard times which had followed it. The panic happened
after Mr. Cleveland was nominated, and therefore his election and his
policy caused it! The public overlooked entirely the fact that hard
times, failures, falling prices, and labor troubles had begun soon after
the passing of the McKinley Bill and had steadily become graver with
every month of its life. Between 1890 and 1894, the period the McKinley
Bill was in force, Ohio-scoured wool fell from 71½ cents to 44½ cents, a
drop of 27 cents. In 1896, under the Wilson Bill, wool began to revive.
Bessamer pig-iron fell off from $18.00 to $12.00 per ton between 1890
and 1894. These same tendencies were shown in nearly all prices where
the articles carried prohibitive tariffs. Almost, if not quite as great
a fall in prices occurred in 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893 under the
McKinley Bill, as after the Wilson Bill went into effect and a lower
duty had been added to the general depression. The tariff considered the
fall was greater under the McKinley Bill on many important articles.
Take steel rails; under the McKinley Bill of 1890, they bore a duty of
$13.44 per ton. In 1890 they sold at an average price of $31.77. In 1891
the price fell to $29.91; in 1893 to $28.12½. The Wilson Bill reduced
the duty on rails to $7.84. The average price the first two years after
the bill went into operation was $24.00, and in the third year the price
rose to $28.00. The lowest price at which steel rails have ever been
sold in this country was in the first year of the Dingley Bill, $17.00
per ton. After the duty was put on barley for the farmer by the McKinley
Bill, the price went up for one year, 1891, but in 1892 it fell off 10
cents, and in 1893, 14 cents. Free barley and the continued depression
did little worse.
Hides had no duty under either the McKinley or the Wilson bills. The
price began to fall in 1892, reached its lowest level in 1894, and in
1895 rose higher than it had been in many years. All woollen goods fell
under the McKinley Bill and began to recover in 1896. Measured by
business failures and labor troubles, the period of the McKinley tariff
was as disastrous as that of the Wilson. Indeed, there is quite as much
reason for laying the panic of 1893 to one bill as to the other, but
neither was responsible.
The new Congress, which was elected in the fall of 1894, first met in
December, 1895. Mr. Reed was elected speaker of the House and Nelson
Dingley, also of Maine, was appointed chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee. Mr. Dingley was a man over sixty years old, a hard-working,
conscientious, experienced politician. He had been born and educated in
Maine. He had been one of the state’s best newspaper editors and had
filled, one after another, nearly all her offices, that of governor
included. In 1881 Mr. Dingley was sent to Congress, where he had soon
become invaluable because of his extraordinary fund of information on
all sorts of subjects, particularly on all things relating to American
history and American industry. He held the doctrine of protection in
much the same pious regard as did Mr. McKinley. For him it was a settled
dogma—the only question was the amount of a duty, and to the estimating
of that he brought an amazing patience in calculation and in
investigation. His colleague, Mr. Boutelle, once said that he had for
years lived in the same hotel with Mr. Dingley and that he had never
entered his room that he did not find him surrounded by documents, a pad
on his knee, laboriously digesting them for his purposes. Facts alone
stirred his mind. No man was ever witty enough or wise enough to impress
Nelson Dingley, but no fact was too unimportant to receive his
attention. It is obvious that any tariff bill he directed would be
carefully made.
The first business of the new Congress was to provide revenue. Mr.
Cleveland’s administration had inherited, as already pointed out, a
deficit of nearly $70,000,000. The tariff bill which had been revised to
increase the revenue had failed. The sugar refiners, finding that a duty
was to be put on raw sugar, had brought in enormous quantities, free, to
hold for their needs. Thus, by their foresight, the treasury in Mr.
Cleveland’s first year was despoiled of revenues it had a right to count
on. Again, the income tax on which they depended for a large sum was
declared unconstitutional. Something had to be done to bring in more
money. The Republicans had decided to use their power to put back the
tariff on wool and to increase that on a variety of manufactured
articles, and on December 26, 1895, Mr. Dingley reported a bill
providing for these increases. The bill was passed at once by the House.
Its fate in the Senate shows how thoroughly the tariff had already been
replaced by free silver. The Finance Committee did not report it, but
recommended to the Senate that the needed revenue be raised not by the
House bill, but by the free coinage of silver; and pathetically enough,
poor Mr. Morrill, who for forty years had struggled for sound money, was
obliged, as chairman of the committee, to report the measure.
This putting of the tariff in second place was the more evident as the
time approached for the National Convention of 1896. Silver was the
question in which the real interest lay, not the tariff. Nevertheless,
the wool-growers and woollen manufacturers, the Iron and Steel
Association, the high protectionists everywhere, began, months before
the Convention, a determined campaign to commit the Republicans to
tariff revision as a leading issue, and to name William McKinley for
President. “Bill McKinley and the McKinley Bill” seemed to them a slogan
sufficient in itself to win an election. They had their way. The
platform declared protection to be the “bulwark of American industrial
independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity.”
It also declared with evident reluctance its opposition to the free
coinage of silver except by international agreement with the leading
commercial nations of the world.
The intention of the wool and the iron and steel interests and their
allies to force the tariff to the front in the campaign, was frustrated
at once by the extraordinary sweep to silver in the Democratic
Convention and the revolt to that party of a large body of leading
Republicans. If the election was to be won at all, it had got to be won
by an unequivocal and whole-hearted stand for the gold standard and to
that Mr. McKinley was forced, half-silverite as he was, after a few flat
efforts to arouse enthusiasm for the bill of 1890. It was McKinley and
the gold standard, not Mr. McKinley and prohibitive tariffs, which was
opposed to Bryan and free silver, and in 1896, Mr. McKinley won by the
votes of the Gold Democrats. It is probably true that many of them were
given to understand that the Republicans would let the tariff alone or
at least would not be in a hurry to revise it: at least that claim was
made by men of character and intelligence. It was hardly Mark Hanna who
could have made such a promise. Mr. Hanna knew too well what his backers
in iron and steel and wool expected, and would demand for their
contributions. That these contributions were large, there can be no
doubt. James M. Swank, the general manager of the Iron and Steel
Association, has said that more money was spent to elect Mr. McKinley
than had been spent to elect Mr. Harrison, and certainly Mr. Swank was
in a position to know.
At all events, the work to which Mr. McKinley called Congress in extra
session immediately after his inauguration, on March 4, 1897, was not
establishing sound money; it was raising more revenue by duties “so
levied upon foreign products as to preserve the home market as far as
possible to our producers; to revive and increase manufacturers; to
relieve and encourage agriculture; to increase our domestic and foreign
commerce; to aid and develop mining and building; and to render labor in
every field of useful occupation the liberal wages and adequate rewards
to which skill and industry are justly entitled.” Why Mr. McKinley
expected a new bill to do what his own had not been able to do, he did
not explain.
The new bill was almost ready to report when the extra session was
called, for Mr. Dingley and his committee had been at work all of the
preceding winter preparing it. A sincere effort was made to give a good
bill according to Republican lights. “We expect,” Mr. Dingley wrote
Colonel George C. Tichenor, who was assisting him, “to cut nearly all
our duties considerably below those of the act of 1890.” In not a few
cases, Mr. Dingley accepted the Wilson rates practically as they stood.
This was true of the metal and cotton schedules. He felt safe in doing
this, because, as he said, they were “really made by the manufacturers.”
Throughout the schedules the committee aimed to replace the Wilson
specifics by ad valorems and, of course, this caused more or less
uncertainty as to whether or not by the change those rates had not been
raised more than the committee acknowledged. The Democrats charged that
they had, but the fact seems to be that Mr. Dingley sincerely aimed to
keep duties nearer, if possible, to the Wilson Bill than to the McKinley
Bill. The committee particularly desired to escape the charge of fixing
prohibitive duties. This had been done in 1894, professedly to cut down
the revenue, and the mischief it had worked the party was not yet
forgotten. In spite of the repeated assurances of Mr. Dingley that the
extremes of the bill of 1890 were to be avoided, the committee did
report many rates as high and a few even higher; for instance, the
duties on flax and linen were advanced. A number of the unimportant
articles which the old bill had put on the free list were put back in
the dutiable list, as were nearly all the important articles made free
by the Wilson Bill,—wool, salt, lumber, cotton bagging, cotton-ties, and
burlaps.
Works of art had been made free by the Democrats; the Dingley Bill
restored the duty. One reason given was that “many objects having no
artistic quality or merit whatever, and calculated rather to corrupt
than encourage art or culture” were being imported! Foreign books, that
is, “books in language other than English,” over twenty years old,
engravings, etchings, music, maps, scientific books and periodicals and
supplies of all kinds for colleges, libraries, galleries, and
laboratories had been allowed to come in untaxed by the Wilson Bill; all
these duties were restored by the Dingley Bill. Travellers were again
subjected to the irritation of having their luggage overhauled, and the
amount of purchases allowed them was reduced to $100.00. This
exasperating tax first appeared in the McKinley Bill; here the limit
fixed was $500.00. The Democrats dropped the clause but it was now
restored. But in spite of these mediæval provisions, the Dingley Bill,
when presented to the House on March 19, 1897, was a fairly good
protectionist measure, certainly a real improvement on the McKinley
Bill. There were fewer prohibitive rates, less contradiction, and less
quakery.
In introducing the bill, the Republicans had laid down a program for
rushing it through the House by March 31, and this was carried out,
under protest, of course. The bill did not come to the Senate from the
Finance Committee until May, and it came back with many changes. Mr.
Aldrich, the chairman of the committee, claimed that on the whole these
changes were downward. He was emphatic in his assertions that moderate
duties were expected by the country. It was “thoroughly understood in
the last political campaign,” said Mr. Aldrich, “that if the Republican
party should be again intrusted with power, no extreme tariff
legislation would follow. It was believed, in the changed condition of
the country, a return to the duties imposed by the act of 1890 would not
be necessary even from a protective standpoint.
“Industrial conditions in this country, with very few exceptions, do not
demand a return to the rates imposed by the act of 1890. The bitter
contest which is going on among the leading nations of the world for
industrial supremacy has brought about improvements in methods and
economies in production to an extent which was not thought possible a
few years ago. These new conditions must be taken into account in
considering the rates to be imposed.”
When the Finance Committee had believed the House rates extreme, Mr.
Aldrich said that they had lowered them. A comparison of the bills shows
that this was the fact in the case of the chemical, the earthen ware,
and the glass and metal schedules. There were also reductions on certain
parts of the wool schedule. While the Senate amendments, on the whole,
aimed at lowering rates, they also aimed, like the House bill, to
protect everything which asked protection. The sugar schedule had
undergone material changes and mysterious ones. The rates on all but the
lowest raw sugars were higher than they were in the Dingley Bill, and
there was a gap between sugars of 87° and 88° polariscope test much
wider than between any other two grades. This exceptional differential
was effected by such indirection that there was an immediate cry that
Mr. Aldrich was trying to play into the hands of the sugar trust. The
schedule was twice changed in the Senate, but when the bill came into
conference Mr. Dingley succeeded in having the House rates restored.
The political make-up in the Senate in 1897 was such that it created for
the Republicans a situation not unlike that of the Democrats in 1894.
Their Republican majority was considerable, but there was a group of
this majority interested in free silver and not in the tariff, and it
could not be counted on. If they supported the bill, it would be in
return for concessions which they might ask. Almost at once it developed
that this group was going to use its power to raise the duties on all
grades of wool higher than the House or Senate had proposed to do. Wool
had been free under the Wilson Bill. To cut a duty on an important
product like wool 11 and 12 cents a pound without giving time for
adjustment, of course causes a severe strain on a business even in
prosperous times; to do it at a moment when all business is depressed
and when the particular product, as in the case of wool in 1894, has
been suffering ups and downs for many years, is to increase the strain
dangerously near the breaking point. Free wool did intensify an existing
distress but that the sheep growers would not have rallied from it and
adjusted themselves in a very few years, no disinterested person can for
a moment believe. If they had been willing to do this, there is no doubt
that the business of wool-growing would be on a more solid basis to-day
than it has ever been in this country. It would be conducted according
to those laws of supply and demand which govern trade, and not be
subjected, as it is now, to periodical excitations and depressions as
public opinion forces duties up or down. The wool-growers had no
thought, however, of accepting the situation as long as they had
political power. Judge William Lawrence, the president of the National
Wool-Growers Association, kept up a clamor throughout the campaign, and
when the new bill was under consideration, demanded rates higher than
wool had ever received. He was sternly rebuked by strong protectionists
for his greed. “Any revision of the tariff,” one influential interest
allied to him, said, “which carried such rates of duty on this raw
material, would not only fatally hamper the American wool manufacturer,
but would excite on the part of the people such natural opposition, by
reason of their prohibitory character, that their enactment would
necessarily be followed by agitation for their repeal, an agitation
which would grow and gather and continue until it finally resulted in
still another tariff revision, perhaps at the end of four years. To
insure any degree of permanence to the tariff law about to be enacted it
is necessary that, in so important a schedule as this, it shall commend
itself to the popular judgment as one constructed on fairly conservative
lines. The schedule proposed by Judge Lawrence far exceeds in its
proposed rates of duty any schedule ever before demanded with reference
to any article, either raw or manufactured, in connection with any
revision of the tariff ever undertaken in the United States.
“It is not necessary in this connection to undertake any analysis of
these proposals. Their significance will at once be apparent to every
wool manufacturer. Their enactment would be tantamount to a blanket
provision in the law to the effect that ‘the importation of wools of
foreign growth is prohibited, on and after the passage of this act.’
Such a wool schedule would not only be fatal to the wool manufacturer,
but equally fatal to the wool-grower; for it would enormously restrict
the use of domestic wool, which would be superseded by foreign wool
imported in the manufactured form.”
But Judge Lawrence and his Association, as had been proved in 1883 and
again in 1890, held moderate protection as little better than free
trade. They wished to shut out all foreign wool. They refused to modify
their demands now, and when both House and Senate Committees put the
rates down, they turned on their representatives with a demand that
their wants be satisfied. That they could rally a group strong enough to
defeat the bill was plain. The Western silver Senators were also wool
Senators. They took no interest in the bill as a party measure; they
would gladly defeat it if it did not give them what they wanted.
Moreover, the demand for a duty on wool was supported by a group of
Eastern woollen manufacturers who had always exercised great political
power. This was the group known as the National Association of Wool
Manufacturers. Although they deplored Judge Lawrence’s extreme demands,
they stood for a duty on wool. In the judgment of this Association, they
must either support the wool duty or be prepared to abandon their own
protection; accordingly they now resolved that “an impartial application
of the principle of protection is essential to a complete and uniform
development of the industrial resources of the nation,” and they
“earnestly” seconded the appeal for a duty on wool. This resolution they
sent to the wool-growers, who naturally had always been suspicious of
the support of men willing to work for a law which made their own
materials dearer, with a private note, assuring them that “a spirit of
sympathy and fellowship” towards all wool-growers animated the
Association. That his spirit was far from animating all in the business,
the loud protests against taxing wool which came from many leading but
non-political woollen manufacturers at this time is evidence. So strong
was the vote the wool interest mustered that the Senate finally yielded
in its fight for the lower duty. Eight and 9 cents a pound on clothing
and combing wool were what it had been struggling for; 10 and 11 cents
were granted: but when the bill went into conference these rates were
advanced to 11 and 12 cents, making the duties exactly what they were in
the McKinley Bill. The duty on wool of the third class, that is, on
carpet wool, was raised higher than in the bill of 1890, an entirely
indefensible increase. We did not then and do not now raise carpet wool
in this country. Our land is too valuable. But the Western growers of
coarse wool had been told that carpet wool was being imported free for
use in cloth-making, that it was “deplacing” American wool, and they had
demanded that it should be taxed. It is probable that a small amount of
carpet wool did and still does find its way into certain clothes, but it
is a negligible amount, and to put a tax upon the raw material of an
entire industry, making every yard of domestic carpet dearer for the
sake of protecting the scared wool-growers of the West against a purely
imaginary competition was as silly as it was unjust.
The demand of the wool-growers that the prohibitive duties on all kinds
of wool substitutes be restored, was imperative. By raising the cry of
“shoddy” they could wrest a duty from Congress on any material, no
matter how valuable to the manufacturer. Perhaps no word has been more
unjustly degraded in the history of industry in this country. The world
has never produced enough raw wool to meet the demand for woollens. It
has always been necessary and probably always will be necessary, to use
wool waste and wool rags. Ingenious machines have been devised for
preparing all this material for the manufacturer. It is a legitimate
part of the business, and one that helps to provide warm, cheap clothing
for the poor. “It would be as unreasonable,” says one authority, “to
despise paper makers because they use up linen rags, or to despise dyers
who use colors made from coal tar, as to despise manufacturers who use
up waste woollen rags as shoddy. It is said that 125,000,000 pounds of
shoddy, mungo, etc., are manufactured into wool every year in England
alone. If this immense quantity were wasted, it is difficult to estimate
the increase which would take place in the price of wool and the
consequent dearness of cloth; but the result would be that countless
persons would be unable to afford proper clothing.” The wool-growers cut
off all importations of shoddy in the new schedule. It would displace
American wool. As we shall see, it drove the manufacturers, not to use
more wool, but to find a substitute for wool.
Of course, the McKinley rates on raw wool meant the McKinley rates on
woollen goods, that is, if the National Association could get them. In
principle, they were those of the compact of 1867, between the two wings
of the wool industry, which rates have already been explained. They
provided for compound duties; that is, one set of duties which made up
to the manufacturer for the tax he paid on his raw material—the aim
being, of course, to put him on the same basis as his foreign rival—and
a second set which was purely protective. In estimating the first class
of duties, the National Association demanded that four pounds of wool
should be reckoned to a pound of cloth. It had been shown again and
again that it was only “sometimes” that this amount of wool was required
for a pound of cloth, that the effect of the ratio was to make all of
the heavy-shrinking wools for which four or more pounds were needed too
dear to be imported, and at the same to give an entirely unnecessary
compensation to cloth goods made from wools which shrink but slightly.
When the point was made, the National Association raised a hue and cry,
and Congress was warned to respect its influence as it had been in 1890.
When it came to the duties for protection the Association which had
protested against the greed of the wool-growers in demanding high duties
showed themselves equally greedy and more successful; for the
wool-growers, except in the case of carpet wools, which we do not
produce, had to content themselves with the McKinley rates, while the
woollen manufacturers were able to raise the duty on the goods which are
chiefly imported to the highest point it had ever touched, 55 per cent.
It is interesting to note that in the compact of 1867, to which the
Association constantly appealed in the making of the Dingley Bill as it
had in earlier bills, 25 per cent was considered a proper protection for
the goods on which the Association now asked and received 55 per cent.
When the bill finally passed the Conference it carried the same puzzling
provision for a duty on wool tops as had been put into the McKinley Bill
on the suggestion of the then president of the National Association of
Wool Manufacturers, Mr. William Whitman. As we have seen, this was not a
clearly stated figure: tops were to carry the duty of the basket clause
of the schedule. Figured out, this amounted to a higher duty on tops
than the bill provided for yarn, which is the more advanced stage of
wool on its way to cloth. There was opposition to this duty and
grumblings of manipulation, but it was many years before the truth about
it became public property.
The success of the National Association in getting into the bill exactly
what it wanted was generally believed by those who knew what was going
on in Washington at this time to be due to the confidential relations
with the Finance Committee of the secretary of the Association, S. N. D.
North. During the making of the Wilson Bill, Mr. North was known to have
had a desk in the office of Senator Aldrich, and from that vantage
ground to have made a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to secure for
the industry he represented something of the favor which other lobbyists
were wresting from the Democrats. During the making of the Dingley Bill
he occupied the same inside position. To all appearances he was a
confidential clerk of Mr. Aldrich’s; as a matter of fact, he was a paid
representative of the woollen manufacturers, looking after their
interests while apparently aiding the Finance Committee as he could.
That Mr. Aldrich, himself, did not understand the real nature of the
wool schedule finally adopted, one can hardly doubt, for he told Mr.
North at the time, according to a letter the latter gentleman wrote to
Mr. Whitman: “I don’t suppose this tariff is going to last long, because
the rates are so high; but I am perfectly willing that the wool
manufacturers should have all that there is in it and that the tail
should go with the hide.”
The influence on the bill of this despotic power of the wool interests
was similar to that of sugar on the Wilson Bill, but it did not make
itself clear in the Senate as it had in the earlier bill. It came out in
the conference of the two Houses which followed the passage of the bill
by the Senate on July 7. Some 872 amendments had been tacked to the
measure and the conference spent nearly a fortnight over them. When
finally reported, the rates were generally higher than either the House
or Senate had advised. It was impossible to give to wool all it demanded
on a threat of defeating the bill, unless other interests were favored,
and so it happened that when the Dingley Bill was finally passed, it
was, on the whole, a more oppressive measure than the McKinley Bill.
Moreover, it was made more oppressive by a House and Senate whose
leaders had declared from the beginning of their work that the country
asked and had been promised moderate duties. It was as real a breaking
of promises as the Wilson Bill was a surrender of principles.
And there was a general feeling among those who had made it, and in the
Administration itself, that as Mr. Aldrich told Mr. North, duties were
too high and would have to come down. What would have happened if the
public mind had continued to be occupied with the tariff as it had in
1890 and in 1894, it is difficult to say. It is not probable that there
would have been any such revolt as the McKinley Bill caused. The
disillusion the country had suffered over the ability of the Democrats
to carry out consistent reforms was too keen. Moreover, what industry
wanted and needed more than anything else was to be let alone; even the
most irreconcilable of tariff-for-revenue only men could have hardly
counselled another revision at this juncture. The Dingley Bill, bad as
it was, did not stir the popular mind. Silver occupied it, and silver
was soon displaced by the most absorbing interest which a country can
have—a war—and the war was followed by the question of imperialism, and
imperialism was not settled before the country had entered on a period
of such magnificent and bewildering prosperity as it had never before
dreamed. The heavy decline in prices which had begun in 1891 reached its
lowest point for raw materials at the end of 1896, for manufactured
goods in 1897. It was not until 1904 that the prices which manufacturers
had received in 1890 were reëstablished, but after they were once
reached, they soared rapidly far beyond. As for raw materials, they
regained the ground they had lost much more quickly.
Wealth of all descriptions began to increase in an unheard of way. In
1897 the gold and silver produced in the United States was worth
something over $89,000,000; in 1900 this had risen to $115,000,000, and
in 1905, to over $122,000,000. While in 1897 we produced over 8,500,000
tons of pig-iron, in 1905 it was 16,500,000, and we were consuming about
all we produced. Of bituminous coal in these three years we produced
respectively 131,000,000, 189,000,000, and 281,000,000 tons. Of wheat we
grew in 1897 over 530,000,000 bushels, about the same in 1900, and in
1905 nearly 700,000,000 bushels. The cotton crop in 1897 was valued at
$319,500,000; in 1900 at $511,000,000, and in 1905 at $632,000,000. Our
hay averaged an annual value in this period of over $500,000,000; our
potato crop something like $150,000,000. The value of our farm animals
in 1897 was about $1,655,000,000; in 1900 it was $2,280,000,000; and in
1905 over $3,000,000,000. And so one might go on recording phenominal
growths of almost everything which the earth yields in return for man’s
labor. And never before had there been so rapid an increase in the
number of laborers available. We could bring in labor free and in this
period we used the privileges as never before. Immigration which in 1897
was but 230,000 rose in 1900 to 448,500; and in 1905 to over 1,000,000.
The great bulk of these newcomers were men of a working age, that is,
over fifteen and under forty. These great numbers were added annually to
those who already were at work in the country until in 1900 nearly
30,000,000 people were busy in this country, drawing from the earth the
materials of wealth, moulding them to men’s uses, and transporting them
to the markets where they were wanted, and these markets were not those
of the United States alone. Our home consumption was enormous, but we
bought and sold with all the nations of the earth in constantly
increasing quantities, selling always many millions more than we bought.
How much had the Dingley Bill to do with this great outpouring of
wealth? It certainly did not cause it. A wave of prosperity was sweeping
around the globe, as one of depression had from 1891 to 1897; England,
Germany, France, and the Orient, shared in the blessings. The Dingley
Bill could neither retard nor accelerate this. It could not and did not
grow a potato or produce a gold nugget, but it no doubt did cause more
of the materials we were producing to be manufactured at home than would
have been done under the Wilson Bill. Without it much of the capital and
labor given to manufacturing would have gone to agricultural uses and
commerce. Sheltered from competition, men aimed to make in the country
all that a highly prosperous home market would consume of necessaries,
of novelties, of ingenious conveniences, and of luxuries. The Dingley
Bill relieved the manufacturer of the necessity of considering what was
doing in his trade in other nations. This enormous advantage enticed
more capital proportionally than into other lines of industry. And as
the industry expanded, immigration was excited. Manufacturing as
conducted to-day requires much cheap labor. Save in the skilled work
where comparatively few are needed, American labor—naturalized foreign
labor, will not stay long. Immigration was necessary in order to supply
the cheap labor the textile and the steel and iron industries needed.
That is, the Dingley Bill may be credited with adding two or three
hundred thousand consumers yearly to our domestic market. The value of
this addition is doubtful when we examine the standard of living of the
immigrants, the amount of their earnings sent home, and the large
proportion of those who are transient, that is, who return to their
native land to end their days: just what this proportion is, it is
impossible to say, but something of its size may be judged from the
steerage passengers sailing annually from the ports of the United
States. In 1900, for instance, 448,572 persons came in by steerage, and
293,404 went out. In 1905 1,026,494 came in, and 536,151 went out. The
value of the increase in the size of the domestic market, which may
fairly be credited to the Dingley Bill, is less impressive also when it
is compared with the value of the markets of many millions we might have
been conquering at this time if we had had the shipping on the seas
which we once had, and which, as already has been seen, we have
destroyed by prohibitive tariffs on iron and steel and lumber, and by
hampering navigation laws.
The first uneasiness over the bill which its authors felt was along the
line of foreign markets. We were not conquering them as rapidly as we
ought, or as we must, if our tremendous production was to be disposed
of. That which the thoughtful had been warning against was happening. In
our zeal to produce, we had not intelligently arranged what we were to
do with our products. The Dingley Bill had, it is true, provided a
scheme of reciprocity. The really important provision in the scheme gave
the President power to negotiate trade treaties with any country,
subject to ratifications by the Senate. Mr. McKinley soon after his
inauguration appointed a special plenipotentiary to negotiate these
treaties,—John H. Kasson, who had always been a moderate protectionist,
and who had seen the capitulation of the party to the manufacturers of
the country with disgust and dread. Mr. Kasson undertook the work with
enthusiasm. By 1900 he had several treaties signed and before the
Senate. The most important one was with France. By this treaty we could
import into her territory a very large number of articles at a minimum
duty, and we in return were to give her a reduced duty on many of her
products. Not only Mr. Kasson, but Mr. McKinley himself urged the
ratification of these treaties. There was no doubt but that the public
generally favored them. But there had appeared in opposition the same
forces which had made the McKinley Bill, the Wilson Bill, and Dingley
Bill what they were,—political measures, trading contracts, by which for
so much influence, so much duty was given. These nervous, superstitious,
and greedy forces decided against reciprocity. The nature of their
opposition was very well summarized in one of the hearings on the
subject by a manufacturer who was himself in favor of the French treaty.
“We have striven to know, both before coming to Washington and since
our arrival here, what are the objections to the treaty. We have
been informed that the knit-goods manufacturers have been opposed to
the ratification of the treaty. We are now informed that of the
$100,000,000 worth of knit-goods consumed in the country last year,
only $240,000 came from France. We have been informed that the
manufacturers of pottery and silks were opposed to the ratification
of the treaty. We are now told that both industries have admitted
that no injury would be suffered by them. We have learned that the
manufacturers of spectacles have believed that they would suffer
injury, but they were shown that there would still remain to them
eighty-eight per cent of the present tariff; they have been
satisfied to believe that no injury would come to them. We have been
informed that the manufacturers of imitation jewellery object to the
ratification of the treaty. We understand that the treaty proposed
to reduce the duty from 60 to 57 per cent. We are further informed
that the probabilities are that the result of the treaty will
increase far more largely the exports of this class of manufacturers
from the United States to France than they import from France to the
United States.
“We have heard that opposition to the ratification of the treaty has
been based upon the proposed reduction in our tariff on prunes. We
find that our exports of prunes to France amount to $260,000, while
the imports of prunes from France to the United States amount to
$14,000. We have understood that manufacturers of chemicals, gloves,
and braids have stated that they will be injured by the ratification
of the treaty. After an honest effort to learn the facts in the
case, we are reduced to the conclusion that in actual working of
this treaty the injuries suffered by them would be problematical in
every case, and imaginary in most cases.”
Treaty after treaty was negotiated, but in spite of urgency from the
most respectable sources, Congress refused to act on them, and finally
in March, 1901, Mr. Kasson resigned. His chief did not give up the
cause, however, for in the memorable Buffalo speech of September 5,
1901, Mr. McKinley said:
“The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and
commerce is the pressing problem. Reciprocity treaties are in
harmony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are
not. If, perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for
revenue, or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why
should they not be employed to expand and promote our markets
abroad?”
The very essence of all this opposition to free or freer exchange on the
part of the manufacturers was the fear of lower prices and cheaper
goods. They held as a part of their narrow economic philosophy, the
theory that the cheap coat makes a cheap man, that prosperity means
limited production and high prices. At bottom, the manufacturer
eliminates from his calculations all consideration of the consumer. But
the consumer exists, and finally, in spite of the enormous prosperity of
the country, the consumer was heard from. The Dingley Bill about 1900
began to hit the rocks for which it had from the start been headed.