CHAPTER XIII

SOME INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL ASPECTS OF OUR TARIFF-MAKING

Difficult as it would be for one to realize it who took up for the first

time the present tariffs of the United States, they rest on a formula

which as it always has been understood by the majority of the people of

the country is not especially intricate or confusing. Put yourself back

a hundred years or so, when the country was busy with agriculture and

commerce and mining. We had an enormous advantage in these pursuits. We

were at a disadvantage in manufacturing. To be sure, from the start we

did a little. In the nature of things we would gradually do more, and

what we did would be on a solid basis. But, obviously, only the born

iron-master, potter, weaver, was going to practise his trade in the new

country with the foreigner importing goods cheaper than he as a rule

could make them. And so we decided to encourage manufacturing by taxing

ourselves.

The amount of the tax decided on was to be only enough to put our

would-be manufacturers on an even basis with the foreigner. This meant

what? By general consent, it meant giving our people enough to cover the

difference in the cost of labor. Plainly, Americans were not going to

work for the same wages that Europeans did. There were too many ways in

which they could earn more. The country was new, and men could have land

of their own on easy terms. Commerce called them; for, having land, we

were raising foods, and Europe and the Orient, worn and old and

privilege-ridden, were crying for food. They could make everything we

wanted, cheap as dirt. They were eager to exchange. If we were to do our

own manufacturing, we were obliged to devise a scheme which would make

the wages of operatives approximately equal to those which could be

earned in our natural occupations. _Thus protection was not adopted for

the sake of producing generous wages for labor. It was adopted because

the rewards to labor in the new country were already generous and

promised to be more so._

There is another equally important point to remember, and that is that

it was expressly understood that the duty was never to be prohibitive.

It was to be one that would permit the man at home to compete with the

man from abroad; no more. Sensible people have always agreed that we

would injure ourselves if we allowed prohibitive duties, since they

would _cut us off from the stimulus of competition and also from

models_.

The old countries had been for centuries making the goods we wanted.

_They knew how to do it. We needed constantly before us in our markets

the educational effect of their work._

There were few, if any, at the start to deny that this taxing of

ourselves to establish industries was dangerous business, undemocratic,

of course—probably unconstitutional—and an obvious bait to the greedy;

but they comforted themselves with the gains which they believed would

speedily result. The list was tempting:

1. We were to build up industries which would supply our own needs.

2. The laborers attracted into these industries were to make a larger

home market.

3. We were soon to out-rival the foreigner in cost of production, giving

the people in return for the tax they had borne cheaper goods than ever

the Old World could give.

4. We were to outstrip the Old World in quality and variety—another

reward for taxation patiently borne.

5. We were to over-produce and with our surplus enter the markets of the

world.

Nobody pretended to deny that if it was found on fair experiment that

these results were impossible in a particular industry the protection

must be withdrawn. Otherwise it amounted to supporting an industry at

public expense—an unbusinesslike, unfair, and certainly undemocratic

performance.

But what has happened when the formula has not worked? Take the failure

after decades of costly experiments to grow all the wool we use, to make

woollens of as high a quality and at a price equal to those of the

English. Fully sixty per cent of the raw wool used in the United States

is brought from other lands, and a tax of 11 or 12 cents is collected on

every pound of it. Our high grade woollens cost on an average twice what

they do in Europe. The fact is, the protective dogma has not, and

probably never can, make good in wools and woollens. It is one of those

cases where we can use land, time, labor, and money to better advantage.

The doctrine of protection as well as common humanity and common-sense

orders the gradual but steady wiping out of all duties on everything

necessary to the health and comfort of the people unless in a reasonable

time these duties can supply us better and cheaper goods than we can buy

in the world market. That time was passed at least twenty years ago in

wool, but Schedule K still stands. It is supported by an interpretation

of the formula of protection, which, as one picks it out to-day, from

the explanations and practices of the wool-growers and wool

manufacturers, is only a battered wreck of its old self. It ignores

utterly the time limit, the “reasonable” period in which an industry was

to make good. It ignores the condition that the duty should not destroy

fair competition. Moreover, it stretches the function of the duty from

that of temporarily protecting the cost of production to one of

permanently insuring profits. The chief appeal of those who employ this

distorted notion is not to reason at all, but to sympathy—sympathy for

the American working-man. Call their attention to the inequalities of

the duties on raw wool, and they will tell you of the difference in the

labor cost of dress goods here and in England. Tell them the quality of

our goods is deteriorating, and they will draw you a picture of the

blessings of the American working-man. Tell them that the wool schedule

has taken blankets and woollen garments from the sufferers from

tuberculosis, who certainly need them, and they will tell you that “the

American people are better clothed than any other people in the world

and their clothes are better made.” The chief capital of the stand-pat

protectionist is some variation of this appeal. The hearings preparatory

to the Payne-Aldrich Bill were stuffed with them, and they were used in

reply to every conceivable argument. For instance, the head of what is

called the “file trust” was on the stand. It had been shown that the

gentleman was selling files abroad much cheaper than at home, that he

had a practically prohibitive duty, one which had reduced imports to

about one per cent of the file consumption in the United States. It was

also certain from his testimony that his laborers could not be getting a

very large share of the duty. “Do you not think,” the chairman asked

him, “that if the tariff is laid in the name of labor, labor ought to

get the tariff?” Here is the answer he received:

“_If you will pardon me for expressing one little thought, I will say

that I walked down this morning from the Willard, and saw a pair of

horses, a beautiful cart all equipped with fruit, vegetables, and one

thing and another. I can close my eyes and see that condition over on

the continent of Europe, with barefooted women in rags, with a few

Newfoundland dogs, or some other kind of dogs, hitched up with a string

harness to the cart, and a few vegetables, that they are pulling

around._”

There is no reason to doubt that the gentleman saw on Pennsylvania

Avenue the prosperous cart he described. There is no doubt he might have

found on the continent of Europe his “barefooted woman in rags.” But if

he had crossed over to the Washington market, he would have found on its

outskirts numbers of men and women, some of them white-haired, who have

brought in that morning from great distances out of Washington on their

backs or behind tottering mules, pitiful handfuls of field flowers, wild

roots, and perhaps a bunch or two of garden stuff, quite as pathetic a

spectacle as the pathetic one with which he was trying to befuddle the

Ways and Means Committee. All over Europe he will find as prosperous

vegetable carts as those he saw in Washington—all over the United States

on the outskirts of the cities he will find, if he will look, women

picking up coal and bits of wood along the tracks of railroads and in

the yards of factories, and see them carrying their pickings home on

their backs. The gentleman indeed will rarely enter or leave an American

city on a railroad that he will not see something of this kind.

Any one who has observed the life of the working-man on both sides of

the Atlantic knows that wages, conditions, opportunities, are vastly

superior as a whole in the United States. It is a New World, with a New

World’s hopes. But it is only the blind and deaf who do not realize that

the same forces of allied greed and privilege which have made life so

hard for so many in the Old World are at work, seeking to repeat here

what they have done there. The favorite device of those who are engaged

in this attempt is picturing the contrast between the most favored labor

of the United States, and the least favored of Europe. It is a device

which “Pig Iron” Kelley used throughout his career with utter disregard

of facts. Mr. McKinley followed him. In the course of his defence of the

tin plate duty he read, with that incredible satisfaction which the

prohibitive protectionist takes in the thought that his policy may

cripple the industry of another nation, an English view of the effect

the proposed duty would have in Wales. “The great obstacle to tin plate

making on a large scale in the states,” said the article, “is the entire

absence of cheap female labor.” Mr. McKinley paused and said

impressively, “We do not have cheap female labor here under the

protective system, I thank God for that.” And yet at that moment in the

textile mills of New England, of New York, and of Pennsylvania, not only

were thousands of women working ten, eleven, and more hours a day,

because their labor was cheap, but thousands of children under twelve

years of age were doing the same.

The “American working-man” has long been the final argument in every

tariff defence, the last word which routed both statistics and

common-sense. This was Mr. Aldrich’s clincher when he worked so hard in

1909 to continue or to increase the duties of the Dingley Bill.

“_Protective duties are levied for the benefit of giving employment to

the industries of Americans, to our people in the United States and not

to foreigners_,” he said, and reiterated in a variety of ways. But take

Mr. Aldrich’s own tariff-made state and examine in detail the

experiences of its laborers. Rhode Island is one of the most perfect

object lessons in the effects of high tariffs in this or any land. An

object-lesson should not be overlarge. It should be something you can

see, can walk over if you will. Rhode Island satisfies this condition

perfectly. In the matter of the protective tariff Rhode Island is the

more useful as an object-lesson because she was a well-developed state

when the system was applied to her. She had at the beginning of the

nineteenth century flourishing farms and some 40,000 sheep. She was

exporting annually between two and three millions of agricultural

products. She was building many ships, and from her fine ports carrying

on a varied and lively trade with other lands. She was well advanced for

the time in manufacturing. Long before the Revolution, Rhode Island’s

iron foundries turned out cannon and firearms, anchors and bells and all

sorts of small wares. When the cotton factory came—and she had the first

in the country, the Slater factory of Pawtucket, she was able to make

her own cotton machinery. In the manufacture of woollen cloth, she took

a prominent place from the start.

It was then to an all-around development that our policy of high

protection was applied in this particular state. Under its stimulus her

manufactories have multiplied and enlarged in a truly magnificent

fashion. The story of this development cannot be told here, but like all

stories of rapid growth it excites and dazzles. The results are

sufficient for the present purpose. In 1909 the manufacturing plants of

Rhode Island turned out goods worth $279,438,000—about $375 for each

man, woman, and child in the state. But while she has been making things

to sell at this prodigious rate, she has ceased entirely to build ships

and send men to sea to trade. That is, while high duties were

stimulating mightily the making of all that went into ships, they were

making the ships so costly to buy that nobody could afford them. Rhode

Island had her factories, and part of the price paid was her ships—her

ships and her farms, for her farms steadily and surely went to pieces.

To-day she has not over 4000 sheep, one-tenth of what she raised fifty

years ago. Between 1880 and 1900 the improved land decreased by 17 per

cent. She is practically dependent on the world outside for food. She

buys her apples on the Pacific coast, her flour in the Mississippi

Valley, and her meat from the Beef Trust.

But what has the tariff to do with the neglect of the Rhode Island farm?

Everything. A farm is a family affair as no other industry is. It yields

its best only when it passes down from generation to generation.

Tenants, however faithful, are not sufficient. It demands its own, and

in Rhode Island its own has deserted the farm for the factory. Quick

fortunes seemed to lie that way. It seemed to demand neither the

patience nor the drudgery; it was ready money at least, and the young

men and women left the farms to the old people, and the old people died.

Those who followed them were but dregs of the old communities—the

shiftless, the weak, the ignorant, and the unambitious. The farm yearly

dropped back and it lies to-day a forlorn and unkempt relic of its old

self.

All Rhode Island then flocked to manufacturing, until to-day the one

thing in the state which sticks out above everything else is the

factory. It is the factory in which capital is invested and from which

dividends are drawn. It is the factory which employs the population. It

has been estimated that three-fourths of the people are dependent upon

the textile mills alone. The great body of breadwinners in Rhode Island

not directly connected with the textile trades is busy administering to

the wants of the textile workers. Further, that portion of the

population which does not belong to these industries is dependent upon

other highly protected industries: on rubber, with its duty of 35 per

cent, on machinery (45 per cent), on cheap jewellery (87 per cent), on

silver and gold wares (60 per cent). That is, Rhode Island to-day is a

tariff-made state, and as such should offer us ample material for an

easy analysis of what the American system of protection, given full

encouragement, does for a community.

As we have seen, it concentrates effort on one line, putting an end to

agriculture and commerce. But this may not be a bad thing. If a state

grows richer by specialization, is it not wiser to specialize? That of

course depends upon how generally the fruits of the process are

distributed, how greatly the condition of the mass is elevated, how much

its happiness and health are improved. In a tariff-made state as in

another the success of the system depends upon what the people at large

are getting out of it; that is, what does it do for the American

working-man? The first feature of the textile industry in Rhode Island

which strikes even a casual observer is that the operatives are not

Americans; they are distinctly foreigners—new-come foreigners. Less than

16 per cent of them, as a matter of fact, are born of what the

industrial authority of the state calls “United States fathers,” the

other 85 per cent are in percentages decreasing in order of their naming

here: French Canadians, Irish, English, Italians, Germans, Scotch,

Portuguese, Poles, and Russians, besides a considerable number classed

under “other countries.” We have the surprising fact then that, as far

as the benefits of the textile tariffs are concerned in Rhode Island, if

the laborer gets them, it is a foreign laborer.

A second surprise awaits the student of these Rhode Island laborers

blessed by protection. They are an unstable quantity. They must be

constantly replaced. The “benefits” do not hold them. The success of the

overseer in the textile factory has come to be judged largely by his

ability to “hold labor.” One of the interesting proofs of the

restlessness of the operatives is the small percentage of people in the

state who own their own homes. A recent careful investigation into the

housing conditions of the state shows that farm-houses aside, 75 per

cent of Rhode Island’s population live in rented houses. That is, in one

of the first settled states of the Union, one of the most advantageously

situated, one offering the best opportunities for diversified

occupations, one of the richest in its per capita product and bank

deposits, only a fourth of the people live in houses which they own.

But why should the laborers in an industry which the people of the

United States pay so handsomely to support be restless? Why in these

seventy years and more of continued and constantly increasing protection

have they not become a stable, settled, home-owning body of American

workmen? Surely that is what we have been taught to believe the tariff

would do. The answer to a question of this nature is always complicated.

Nevertheless, in this case it is answered fairly well by a review of the

conditions under which the textile operative works, the wages he

receives, and the money he must expend to live.

Under the most perfect conditions yet devised the making of cotton and

woollen cloth is hard and wearing labor. Under the conditions too

general in Rhode Island it is exhausting and dangerous. The very

atmosphere in which the work goes on is against the operative. The

temperature throughout the factory runs high—80°, 90°, 100°, even, is

not unusual. The work does not require this; the factory laws of England

forbid the excessive temperature in which much of Rhode Island’s

spinning and weaving is done. Worse than the high temperature is the

degree of humidity which prevails. Without a certain moisture in the air

the “work does not go well.” The result is a good deal of the time an

atmosphere as oppressive as that which Washington and Philadelphia

suffer in summer time. The ventilation in most of the factories is

insufficient, and as any draft is bad for the work the windows are

usually closed from end to end of the great barracks. A half hour in the

atmosphere of a factory is sufficient to throw one unaccustomed to it

into a steaming perspiration. The operative usually ends the day’s work

in wet clothes.

Then there is the cotton lint, or “fly,” as it is called, which

literally fills the air. It is no unusual thing to find the air around

the factory for a hundred or more feet literally alive with cotton

shreds. There are contrivances for carrying off a certain amount of this

dust, but there are few Rhode Island factories which have installed

them, and there is no one in which, so far as I know, any energetic and

scientific efforts are making to solve the terrible problem. For

terrible it is. Breathe a cotton-saturated air, a damp, hot air at that,

for ten hours a day and consider the condition in which lungs and throat

will be.

Now these are conditions natural to the making of cotton and woollen

cloths, conditions which can never be entirely corrected. They are hard

and wearing, but they become dangerous in the extreme when combined with

certain other conditions not incident to the industry, due entirely to

the ignorance or the greed or the indifference of factory owners.

It is hard to believe that men who ask other men and women and children

to labor ten hours a day in a dripping heat and an atmosphere alive with

cotton and wool particles will be slow to furnish them abundant supplies

of pure flowing drinking water; but a bucket or barrel filled from some

outside source is frequently all that is furnished a floor of workers.

It is difficult to believe that factory owners would not be eager to see

that these workers of theirs were furnished with comfortably heated

toilet rooms, with every sanitary appliance; but all up and down the

Pawtucket River one finds factories with toilets that cannot by any

stretch of words be called respectable.

When the day’s work is done the textile operative rarely has a

comfortable cloak or dressing room in which to prepare for the street.

If it were merely the matter of putting on a hat and coat, this would

not be serious. But part at least of the clothes ought to be changed

before going out. The heat, moisture, and dust under which he has worked

for ten hours make it unsafe to go suddenly into the open air without

dry garments. In cold weather a chill or shock is almost inevitable. But

it is rare that the factory provides a dressing room. The result is that

bronchitis and pneumonia are always attacking textile operatives,

weakening lungs and throat and fitting the system for the white plague,

which hangs like a perpetual shadow over a textile community.

Now for fifty-eight hours of labor a week under these conditions what do

they earn? How well equipped are their pockets to fight the exhaustion,

the threatening diseases which are incident to their labor? To avoid

exaggeration accept the figures for 1907, one of the occasional boom

years which cotton and woollen manufacturers have enjoyed in this

country. The average weekly earnings for 58 hours in cotton factories in

that year were: For the carding room $7.80, for mule spinners $12.92,

for speeders $10.62, for weavers $10.38. In the woollen industry the

picker received $8.00, the woman spinner $7.25, the man spinner $12.91,

the weavers $15.34.

If a man could make these wages for fifty-two weeks a year throughout

his working life, if he had a thrifty wife and healthy children, his

lot, if not altogether rosy, would be far from hopeless; he might even

be able to realize the dream of a little home and garden of his own

which lurks in the mind of every normal man, and which in the case of

the textile operative is almost imperative if he is to have a decent and

independent old age. For this man, however husky he may be at the start,

however skilful a laborer, has always a short working life. There are

few old men and women in textile factories. By 55 they are unfit for the

labor. The terrible strain on brain and nerve and muscle has so

destroyed the agility and power of attention necessary that they must

give up the factory, where, indeed, for several years their output has

probably been gradually decreasing. As almost all textile operatives are

paid by the piece the wage will gradually fall off as dexterity

declines. By 55, then, if not earlier, he drops out, picking up

thereafter any odd job he may.

It is this short working life of the father, with the declining wage for

years before it actually ends, that makes child labor an essential

factor in the solving of the problem of the textile family. Without the

help of the child the father cannot support the family and lay aside

enough to insure his own and his wife’s future. His wage, and the wear

and tear he suffers, make it impossible. The child must help.

If the children prove healthy, if they “turn out well,” if work is

continuous, the little home may be secured and the modest little dream

may come true. But suppose that a weaver, rushing into the cold air at

the end of his ten-hour day, is chilled and has pneumonia—it happens

often enough. Suppose an uncovered gear or belt catches him in an

incautious moment and crushes a limb or takes his scalp, or a carelessly

handled machine nips off a finger—it happens all the time. Carelessness?

More often it is that the limit of human endurance has been passed.

Fatigue has ceased to be normal and has become abnormal—his mind is

dulled—his nerve deadened—his muscles do not respond. The wonder is that

in the shrieking, devilish uproar of the factory, a tired man can keep

up his habit of caution as steadily as most of them do. Suppose that,

standing through the hot summer in the poisoned air of a dry closet, he

falls ill of a fever. Or, if he escapes all these things, suppose that

the factory goes on short time—thousands of operatives all over New

England have had their weekly wages cut in half in the last three years

by short time. Or, suppose that, which has happened repeatedly in Rhode

Island, he is obliged by some intolerable condition to strike and have

no wage—what happens then? That happens which is more disastrous to the

family than even child labor—the wife must go into the factory. So

narrow is the margin in the best of times that an illness, a shut down,

disturbs the budget so that only the combined exertion of all the

members of the family can save it. The mothers go into the factory, and

the homes gradually go to pieces. After her ten hours at spindle or loom

the woman hurries to a cold, unkempt house, which she must make

comfortable and cheerful if it is to be so. Is it strange that the homes

of the factory mothers are generally untidy, the food poor, the children

neglected? How can it be otherwise? Her limit of endurance, of ambition,

of joy, even of desire of life, has been passed. More appalling, she

sees her ability to work falling off. Almost universally, women who have

worked ten years in a factory have the patent-medicine habit—they are

“so tired” they “take something.” Is it surprising that a few of them

finally discover that they can get from beer or whiskey the same

temporary strength at less cost? The surprise is not that many drink,

but that more do not.

Now the hope of this factory mother lies in her child, since she, like

her husband, is bound to wear out at a comparatively early age. And what

chance has she to bear a healthy child? They give you heartbreaking

figures of infant mortality in Rhode Island, and everywhere one goes

what one sees and hears confirms their truthfulness. The district nurses

talk to you of “bottle babies,” the factory mother being, as a rule, so

poorly nourished and so overworked that she cannot nurse her child.

Moreover, she cannot care for it. She must return as soon as possible to

the factory. The doctor’s bill is heavy. “He” is having a hard time, the

mill is running short. The baby is left to an older child if there be

one, or, if there is none, it perhaps goes to one of the human

institutions of the factory town—the “old woman.” The old woman may not

be over 50, but the factory has got all it can out of her and the

factory community utilizes her by giving her its young children to care

for, paying perhaps $2.00 a week. The old woman may have borne children,

but she has never had an opportunity to learn to care for them properly.

She is often so deaf she cannot hear them cry and she is too poor to buy

them proper food, and to boot, she may be a tippler. Unless husky beyond

all probability, or saved by some lucky chance—a district nurse or a

sister or some other good angel—the baby dies. One should go to the

cemetery to see how many die. There is nothing more pitiful in all this

beautiful world than the interminable rows of little graves in the

cemeteries of the factory towns.

In recent years the problems of the operative have been complicated by

the soaring cost of living. Almost everything he buys is higher in

price, or if he insists on a standard price, the article is poorer in

quality. Take the very protected articles from which Rhode Island draws

her wealth. All these 68,000 textile workers must have clothes. The

price of women’s all-wool dress goods increased in Providence, the

centre of the industry between 1891 and 1907, over 33 per cent. There

was an increase in practically all the cotton-warp goods varying from 4

to 40 per cent. Underwear in which there was any mixture of wool cost a

fourth more in 1907 than sixteen years before. Cotton underwear was

reported as stationary in price, though since 1907 it has risen.

Bleached muslin used for shirtings was 34 per cent dearer in 1907 than

in 1891. Cotton thread was 10 per cent dearer. All linens were higher,

though of course the textile operatives cannot buy much linen. That is,

their own industries are taking out of them the increase in wages which

this same period has seen!

Are not the conditions so hastily sketched a fairly satisfactory answer

to the question with which we started out: Why should not Rhode Island

have a stable, settled, home-owning body of American workmen? The

hazards are so great, the wage so low, the work so uncertain, that the

American workman or the foreigner, after a few years of experience here,

will not remain if he can get out. He realizes that the chances are

against the operative getting on in the world. What this means is that

_it is not he who is getting the benefits of the protective duties which

Mr. Aldrich says are laid for “our people in the United States.”_ He is

barely getting a living, and getting it under conditions which make life

to himself, his wife, and children a constant menace. The tax we pay on

textiles never gets beyond the stockholders, who in Rhode Island are

usually a family that for generations have run their mills and absorbed

the profits—absorbed them so quietly, too, that one knows nothing of

what they are save by the deceiving outward signs.

Not only has the average factory owner absorbed the lion’s share of the

profits, but he set his face like a flint against spending a cent of the

protection he enjoys in humane efforts to make the industry more

tolerable. This man, who periodically appears as a suppliant before

Congress, praying for a continuation of benefits which cost this whole

people dearly, will not, unless driven to it by law and outraged public

opinion, protect even the children who work in his mills. It took the

hard-fought labor wars of the ’80’s to force from the legislature of the

state (then as now held in the hollow of the hands of men who live by

the beneficence of this people) a ten-hour law for children, a

twelve-year age limit, and proper truant laws. But, the laws passed, no

authorities were ever found to enforce them, for the very sufficient

reason that all authorities in Rhode Island lived by permission of the

mill owners. A Bureau of Industrial Statistics for gathering information

and a factory inspector to report on the observance of the laws which

labor unions and social agencies had forced from the legislature were

finally secured. The first set of inquiries sent out by the Industrial

Bureau was treated with contempt by the manufacturers, the Slater Club

deciding what questions it would and would not answer!

According to the first of the reports issued only one corporation in the

state had its sinks properly trapped, and fever was epidemic. The

factories almost invariably were fire-traps, wooden structures with low

ceilings, no escapes, and often with heavy wire screens _nailed_ over

the windows. The laws governing child labor were generally ignored. And

all this was only about twenty years ago. Many improvements have been

made since then, but they have been made too often in the face of the

open or badly concealed opposition of the average manufacturer, rarely

with his sympathetic coöperation. When men refuse coöperation with laws

which concern the health and happiness of those whose labor makes their

wealth possible, it is because of a stunted social sense. There are

other shocking proofs of this defective development in the average Rhode

Island textile manufacturer than his attitude toward humane legislation.

One of them is the housing of operatives.

Stories of foul, neglected tenements in Rhode Island factory towns,

drawn from recent investigation, could be multiplied. They are another

of the many good reasons why the textile manufacturer finds it hard to

hold labor together. They are another of the many proofs of their

unwillingness to pass on to their working-men the protection granted in

the name of labor. Take them to task for housing conditions and the

general attitude is one of indignation at what they call an invasion of

their individual freedom. Why should they build houses for their

operatives unless it pays to do so? Why should they protect their

operatives from grasping landlords? And if the landlord can make more

from a poor tenement than a well kept one, whose business is it? It is

_his_ property.

Again these mill owners practically take no responsibility for

accidents. They are insured against the claims the injured may make.

_All that they do is to render first aid._ After that the man or woman

must look after himself unless fortunate enough to get free hospital

treatment. If he gets an indemnity, he must either settle with the

insurance company or go to court, where he is almost certain to fair

badly. For instance, here are cases taken at random from the records for

the September, 1905, session of the Providence County Courts. One is of

a girl, “incapable of speaking the language,” who in 1901 lost a hand

from unprotected gears and cog wheels, five years later nonsuited with

_costs to plaintiff_!

Here is a boy _under_ fourteen who after two weeks in a mill was ordered

to clean the iron cylinder of a carding machine and lost his hand. Four

years later he was awarded $1100 and $12.58 costs.

Here is a case of a young Polish girl new to the mills who in cleaning a

loom while it was in operation lost parts of two fingers. She did not

know it was unsafe or forbidden. She saw others doing it. The court

promptly gave the company costs! One might go on for pages with these

cruel wrongs.

The heartbreaking part of it is that it takes but a little imagination,

but a little knowledge, of what can and is being done to ease hard

industrial conditions in the world, and in a scattered way in this very

state, to show one how easily unselfishness could redeem Rhode Island.

If the textile manufacturers were, as a body, men of enlightened minds,

if they had caught even a glimpse of that vision of a new and nobler

industrial society which has convinced so many men and women in this

country not only of the brutality and wastefulness of our present

system, but of the entire practicability of something better, they might

easily make of their state as perfect an example of what an industrial

society should be as it now is of what it should not be.

This, then, is high protection’s most perfect work—a state of a half

million people turning out an annual product worth $279,438,000, the

laborers in the chief industry underpaid, unstable, and bent with

disease, the average employers rich, self-satisfied, and as indifferent

to social obligation as so many robber barons. It is an industrial

oligarchy made by a nation’s beneficence under the mistaken notion that

it was working out a labor’s paradise. Not only is it a travesty of the

principles of protection, it is a mockery of that very individualism

behind which it takes refuge. Individualism does not thrive at the

expense of its fellows: it appreciates that the very kernel of its own

existence lies in respecting and defending the rights of others. As for

democracy, what vestige of it is left in either the political or

industrial machine which controls the state of Rhode Island?

Certainly the time has come when the pretence that high duties “protect”

the American working-man can deceive nobody. The American working-man is

not getting the duty. He pays for his higher wages by his higher

productivity. It is an old and established law of industry drawn from

the experience of all nations that low wages mean high cost. “The

highest paid labor,” says Francis A. Walker, “is that which costs the

employer the least.” The cotton spinner in India gets 20 pence a

week—the cotton spinner in England 20 shillings, but English cottons

flood India. The iron worker in Russia gets 3 roubles a week, in England

four or five times as much, but it is the Englishman who supplies the

markets of Europe. The cotton labor of Egypt and India receives not over

one-tenth of what the Southern labor does, but it is our cotton which

supplies the world. The wheat hands of the Eastern world are paid from a

twentieth to a fifth of what the laborers in the United States receive,

but we export vast quantities in competition with the world.

The protectionist who answers every criticism of his rates by conjuring

a picture of “pauper labor” is equally conscienceless in his attitude

towards the relation of protection to the two most disquieting

industrial phenomena of our day, the increase in the cost of living and

the multiplicity of corporations which aim to become and often are

monopolies. For instance, Mr. Whitman, whose forty years of garrulous

and successful defence of the present wool schedule has made him the

perfect type of the lay stand-patter, does not admit that there is such

a problem as the increased cost of living. He speaks of it as “alleged.”

According to Mr. Whitman, the newspapers have talked so much about the

subject that people have been deluded into believing that the condition

is actual. If there is an increased cost in living, however, the tariff

has nothing to do with it. It is due to the cost of the second-class

mail! “I believe it to be absolutely true,” says Mr. Whitman, “that the

entire cost of publishing and distributing the newspapers of the United

States and the magazines is one of the great contributory causes to the

cost of merchandise, and is borne by the consumer.”

Senator Lodge who, in his way, is as typical as Mr. Whitman, denies that

the tariff is materially related to this problem. In 1910 Mr. Lodge was

chairman of a Senate committee investigating the cost of living. He did

not go quite as far as Mr. Whitman—that is, he did not dismiss the

subject by declaring it merely a newspaper yarn. But he did find that

“the tariff was no material factor.” His chief reason for this

conclusion amounted to this: The increased cost of living is world-wide.

There are several causes, therefore the tariff is not a material factor.

It is much like saying that because a log jam is made up of several logs

no one log has anything to do with the jam.

Another curious bit of reasoning in Mr. Lodge’s report was this: He had

offered a list of 257 articles—almost all of them protected to some

extent—the prices of which he had shown to have increased between 1900

and 1909 by 14.5 per cent. Out of this list Mr. Lodge selected fourteen

articles on which the duty was highest. He found that the average

increase on these fourteen articles was only 13.1 per cent. Therefore,

he concluded, the tariff is no material factor in the increased cost of

living!

Still another reason for exonerating the tariff from any guilt in the

matter was this: The increase of cost in all kinds of farm products

between 1900 and 1909 has been much greater than the increase of

manufactured products. Now, says Mr. Lodge, there has been practically

no change in the tariffs on farm products in this period, therefore the

tariff has nothing to do with increased prices.

This same quality of argument is used in regard to the trust. There are

several causes, therefore the tariff is not a cause. The tariff

contributed nothing to the foundation of the Standard Oil Company,

therefore it has had nothing to do with the foundation of any other

trust. Frequently the stand-patter is so unfamiliar with his own

formula, or so indifferent to it that he will insist that the trust is

an industrial surprise—a species of highwaymen of whose presence on the

road he had no warning and for whose ravages he consequently cannot be

held accountable. If he knew his own formula, or, knowing, was willing

to regard it, he would be ashamed of this sort of pleading. No evil

concealed in the doctrine of protection was ever more thoroughly

advertised than monopoly. At every stage, since Hamilton’s time, we have

been warned that it waited us just around the turn. For the last

twenty-five years, especially, we have seen it pour down upon us,—an

army whose ranks yearly grew thicker, stronger, and more cruel. This is

the very army which we have been cautioned for decades to be waiting in

ambush. There was a counter force provided, of course, for this waiting

enemy—domestic competition. Now, we know what has happened to domestic

competition in the last thirty years in this country. Freed from foreign

competition—something which the doctrine never intended should

happen—the home manufacturers have by a succession of guerilla

campaigns, often as ruthless and lawless as those of wild Indians or

Spanish freebooters, coralled industry after industry so completely that

they could control its output, and at once cheapen the quality and

increase the price.

Any one who wants to know more than he already does of the power and

extent of industrial monopolies in this country should read the vigorous

report of Attorney-General Wickersham presented to Congress in December,

1910. Consider the relations to the vicious combinations Mr. Wickersham

enumerates, of the protection so many of them enjoy. Take away the

protection of the window-glass trust, and does any one believe its

high-handedness would not be gradually checked? If the tobacco trust and

sugar trust and paper trust and powder trust and beef trust, all of

which Mr. Wickersham attacks for extortions and brigandage, had to meet

world competition, does anybody doubt that they would not find many of

their present methods impractical? Protection is so obvious an aid to

them that it seems like insisting that two and two make four even to

refer to it. But put this up to a stand-patter who knows his formula,

and what do you get? Why, the answer that protection was never intended

to foster trusts, and therefore it cannot be that it is doing so!

Protection, he will tell you, provides for domestic competition, and,

since it provides for it, his idea seems to be we must have it! Whatever

is in the formula is in practice! It is no backwoods member from a

remote Pennsylvania iron-and-steel district who asserts this. It is the

ablest man of them all—Senator Aldrich himself. “I cannot conceive of

such a thing as a monopoly under protection” was the substance of

Senator Aldrich’s argument on the point in the last tariff debate, as it

had been for twenty-five years.

Curiously enough, the same intellect which declares that monopoly cannot

exist under protection will under stress argue: Take the duty from those

who have formed trusts, but give it to us who have not. “In order that

you may?” one feels like asking. This was a link in the argument of the

gentlemen who pleaded in 1909 that Schedules I and K (cotton and wool)

should remain undisturbed. There is no “cotton trust”; therefore

continue duties long unnecessary and wink at those which trickery forces

through! True, there is no cotton trust—as yet. But how are trusts bred?

Does our experience show us a more fruitful father of them than cutting

off foreign competition, as the new duties on the higher grade of

cottons seem to have done?

How are trusts bred? Is there any one left who does not know that when

such privileges as prohibitive tariffs are dangled before men’s eyes

they rush to seize them, build and build again, regardless of all laws

of trade? Is there any one left who does not know that over-stimulated

production pays a penalty in half-time and shut-downs as truly as a

man’s intemperance pays one in physical and mental exhaustion? And in

the period of depression the new and weak fall into the hands of the

rich and long-established. This has been the history of many a cotton

factory. Why should it not all end as it has in scores of other

industries?

But there are other breeders of trusts. What else are the supposed

agreements as to output and prices of which rumors come from the great

cotton organization, the Arkwright Club? What else was the attempt of

that club in 1909 to unite with European cotton manufacturers to

restrict the consumption of cotton in order to lower its price?

But should we expect that in an industry which boasts so many men of

great ability, daring, and ambition as cotton manufacturing, and in

which the rewards are so tremendous, no man will ever be found strong

enough to take advantage of the tendencies to combination which already

show themselves and to work out a trust? Why should there not be a

Rockefeller or a Carnegie in cotton as well as in oil or steel?

The woollen industry, like cotton, pleads to be allowed to retain its

high protection because it is still unshackled by combination. That is

partially but not entirely true. As a matter of fact, there does exist a

strong combination in this industry—the American Woollen Company, which

has earned the popular title of “woollen trust” largely because of its

trust-like methods. The woollen trust is far from being a monopoly,

though it is certainly a good nucleus for one. It already controls about

one-third of our domestic production of woollens and worsteds for men’s

wear. Its annual product is about $48,000,000. Its capital is

$69,000,000. All things considered, there seems to be no reason why

eventually the American Woollen Company, if it finds a Rockefeller or a

Carnegie, should not follow in the steps of steel and sugar and oil and

turpentine and bath tubs.

Juggling the formula under which he pretends to work, denying facts or

shying from them, this is your typical stand-patter. Press your attack

on his position, however, and you will find something more than

negation. You will find an angry, alert opponent, threatening in fact,

if not in so many words, to attack your position if you do not let him

alone. Threats have been the very essence of the power the unholy wool

alliance has had for so many decades, as Mr. Aldrich more than once

admitted in the making of the tariff of 1909.

“_I say to the Senator_ (Mr. Aldrich was addressing Senator Dolliver)

_that this wool and woollen schedule is the crucial schedule in this

bill ... if by insidious or any other means he can induce the Senate to

break down this schedule, that is the end of protection, for the present

anyway, in this country._”

Mr. Aldrich was not defending the wool duties because they were fair. He

was defending them because they have back of them the solidest vote in

the Senate. Those to whom he talked knew it, and they knew that he was

warning them that if they did not support these duties they could not

expect to get what they wanted, however just from the protectionist

standpoint that might be.

There has always been a fraction of Mr. Aldrich’s party in the Senate

that could not be moved by threats—who if they had known enough about

the tariff on which they were voting to realize that a threat was being

held over them would have resented it. It is that fraction which openly

confesses that they have “always voted as they were told.” The

_Congressional Record_ is full of such admissions. Mr. Aldrich could not

sway them by appeals to their cupidity. He could, however, by an appeal

to their loyalty to the doctrine, to their hatred of their political

opponents. For years he has silenced those who had qualms about a duty

by a sneering allusion to “Democratic talk.” “We heard all of that from

Mr. Vest in 1890,” was his answer to Senator Dolliver’s criticism of the

wool schedule. When it came to revising the duties on tin plate the

stand-patters tried the same argument—“false to protection.” The shame

of it finally drew from Senator Dolliver this outraged protest:

“_Is it possible_,” he said, “_that a man, because he voted for the

Allison tin-plate rate of 1889 and heard poor McKinley dedicate the

first tin-plate mill in America, can be convicted in this Chamber of

treachery to the protective tariff system, if he desires that schedule

reëxamined, after seeing the feeble enterprise of 1890 grown within a

single decade to the full measure of this market-place, organized into

great corporations, overcapitalized into a speculative trust, and at

length unloaded on the United States Steel Company, with a rake-off to

the promoters sufficient to buy the Rock Island system? If a transaction

like that has made no impression upon the mind of Congress, I expose no

secret in saying that it has made a very profound impression on the

thought and purpose of the American people._”

In this outburst of Senator Dolliver we have the heart of the insurgent

revolt against stand-patism. In essence it is a revolt against years of

betrayal of the principles the stand-patters were pretending to uphold,

of solemn-faced defence of things which are not so, of silencing critics

by sneers and threats. And for what? That those who support them by

votes and campaign donations may monopolize the great industries of this

land and pile increasing burdens on the backs of its humble toilers.

Is it any wonder that as men understand the real meaning of the system

they declare, as did Senator Dolliver:

“_So far as I am concerned, I am through with it. I intend to fight

it.... I intend to fight without fear—I do not care what may be my

political fate. I have had a burdensome and toilsome experience in

public life now these twenty-five years. I am beginning to feel the

pressure of that burden. I do not propose that the remaining years of my

life, whether they be in public affairs or in my private business, shall

be given up to a dull consent to the success of all these conspiracies,

which do not hesitate before our very eyes to use the law-making power

of the United States to multiply their own profits and to fill the

market-places with witnesses of their avarice and of their greed._”

But there is more than what Senator Dolliver, even, saw wrapped up in

the question of protection as we are applying it. Deeper than the wrongs

it is doing the poor, deeper than its warping of the intellect, is the

question of the morals which underlie its operations. Simmered down to

its final essence the tariff question as it stands in this country

to-day is a question of national morals, a question of the kind of men

it is making.

The happiness and stability of the peoples of this earth have always

been in strict accord with their morality—not a morality made up of

rules and traditions, of do’s and don’t’s, but that living force which

pervades the world of men like an ether, the only atmosphere in which

self-respect can flourish, and in which the rights and happiness of the

other man are as sacred as your own. Emerson saw this force everywhere,

“like children, like grass”; yet, sadly enough, “like children, like

grass,” its essentiality is often ignored. Men try to construct systems

and work out plans in defiance of it, only to see them destroyed; they

try to live without it, only to die. Activities that ask toll of our

inner honor and crowd our fellow-men, that do not contribute to the

general goodness and soundness of life and things, cannot endure. Every

practice, law, system of religion, government or society must be finally

sifted down to this: Are men better or worse for it? What does it make

for, in the main, callousness or gentleness, greed or unselfishness? Are

men because of it more eager for freedom of mind and joy of heart, or

are they more eager for gain and material comfort?

The troubled face of to-day is chiefly due to the realization that so

much of our achievement does not stand the morality test—does not make

the right kind of men. Here is where the trust fails. A Standard Oil

Company violates a man’s self-respect and outrages the rights of the

other man. The harsh judgment of the world is due to that. The gathering

into a few hands of what nature made for all, weakens equally the sense

of justice in the individual and limits the natural freedom of his

fellow, and doing so must cease. Here, too, is the final case against

the doctrine of protection. As we know it, it operates in defiance, and

often in contempt, of the imperative moral demand that all human

activities improve, not injure, those concerned, that men be better, not

worse, for them. The history of protection in this country is one long

story of injured manhood. Tap it at any point, and you find it

encouraging the base human traits—greed, self-deception, indifference to

the claims of others. Take the class chiefly involved in making a tariff

bill—the suppliants for protection. We have seen in previous chapters

the ends they seek, the methods they employ. What kind of men does this

make? It makes men deficient in self-respect, indifferent to the dignity

and inviolability of Congress, weak in self-reliance, willing to bribe,

barter, and juggle to secure their ends. All this is on the face of the

activities of men who run their business through Congress.

There is another moral angle of this matter which must be faced. These

men who tremble at the idea of unprotected business, what kind of

producers does it make of them? _Quality is a moral issue._ A man’s

handicraft is the final test of his integrity: let it be slovenly and

unfinished, let it be showy but unsound, let it never get beyond a first

stage of value, let it be turned to quantity, not value, and you have a

measure of the man’s character. Moreover, you have a contaminating

thing. People forced by conditions to use dishonest goods, who find

their shoes quickly falling to pieces, their coats quickly threadbare,

their food adulterated, their rented rooms out of repair, who are forced

to pay for things without virtue, quickly lose all sense of quality.

They never give it because they never see it. Can an employee who knows

that his employer adulterates his fabrics and covers up imperfections

regardless of the interests of the consumers, be expected to continue to

care for the quality of his own work? There is a universal outcry

against the poor workmanship the day laborer gives—the lack of interest

in the work—but can he be expected to care if his employer does not? At

the very basis of the laborer’s general indifference as to whether he

gives a full day of honest work or not lies a widespread indifference

among business men as to the quality of the output of their factories

and shops.

If there were no other case to-day against protection, as we apply it,

it ought to fall in more than one industry, on the deterioration of

quality it has encouraged, in the ambition it excites to turn out

quantity, not give value. Moreover, this vicious result hits the poor

man. We can make as good woollen textiles in the United States as are

made anywhere in the world; we do make many of them—at double the price

that they cost abroad; but cutting off all competition in cheap goods as

our tariff does, enables the domestic manufacturer to ignore the quality

of these goods as he could not do if he were subjected to proper foreign

competition. He knows he can sell what he turns out. There are no other

goods for the poor man to buy; the cheaper he can make them the better;

they will have to be replenished the oftener, and so trade will be

encouraged! So flagrant has this offence against sound morals become in

cloth manufacturing that in the last two years there has developed an

organized revolt against it among manufacturers of clothing. And this

attack has been based by certain of them on the sound ground that it is

unethical.

It is but a step from indifference to the quality of goods, to

indifference to the lot of those who make the goods. The tariff is laid

to help and protect the working-man. According to the protectionist

argument a tariff-made state like Rhode Island, a tariff-made city like

Pittsburg, should produce the happiest, most prosperous, best

conditioned working-men and women in the country. We have seen something

of what the tariff has done in Rhode Island. In Pittsburg it has worked

contrasts between labor and capital still more violent. It has produced

on one hand an absentee landlord, the “Pittsburg Millionnaire,” and on

the other a laborer, whose life as pictured by one of the most careful

investigations into living conditions ever made in this or any country,

the Pittsburg Survey, is made intolerable by a twelve-hour day, Sunday

work, cruel speeding, and cheerless and unsanitary homes. This Pittsburg

Survey is the most awful arraignment of an American institution and its

resulting class pronounced since the days of slavery. It puts upon the

Pittsburg millionnaire the stamp of greed, stupidity, and heartless

pride. But what should we expect of him? He is the creature of a special

privilege which for years he has not needed. He has fought for it

because he fattened on it. He must have it for labor. But look at him

and look at his laborer and believe him if you can.

This, then, is the kind of man the protective system as we practise it

encourages: a man unwilling to take his chances in a free

world-struggle; a man whose sense of propriety and loyalty has been so

perverted that he is willing to treat the Congress of the United States

as an adjunct to his business; one who regards freedom of speech as a

menace and the quality of his product of less importance than the

quantity; one whose whole duty toward his working-man is covered by a

pay envelope. This man at every point is a contradiction to the

democratic ideal of manhood. The sturdy self-reliance, the quick

response to the ideals of free self-government, the unwillingness to

restrain the other man, to hamper his opportunity or sap his resources,

all of these fine things have gone out of him. He is an unsound

democratic product, a very good type of the creature that privilege has

always produced.

_But this man would be impossible were it not that he has the backing of

politicians and law-makers._ Behind and allied with every successful

high tariff group is a political group. That is, under our operation of

the protective doctrine we have developed a politician who encourages

the most dangerous kind of citizenship a democracy can know—the panicky,

grasping, idealless kind. This is the most serious charge that can be

made against the man who holds or seeks office, that he injures the

quality of the citizen.

The man who is a candidate for Congress in any district, city or

country, has two courses open to him: He can appeal to greed or to the

ideal. He has the opportunity to discuss with his constituents the

questions and measures of his day and to win them by the enthusiasm he

awakens for ideals. He has equally the opportunity to win them by the

promises he makes—the promises of individual local benefits, like

pensions and public buildings, or the promise of securing protection for

local industries. Take the case of “Pig Iron,” Kelley—a man who clung to

protection with the passionate faith of a fanatic, who saw in it the

great panacea for the country’s poverty, who believed himself an

incorruptible man, and yet who allowed the protectionists of both

parties in his own Philadelphia district to return him without effort on

his part, because they knew he would get for them what they wanted. Mr.

Kelley, honest man as he thought himself to be, educated his

constituents in the pernicious notion that a Congressman’s first

business is to look after their business. The hopelessly sordid mental

and moral attitude of Pennsylvania toward politics is due chiefly to the

training in selfishness which for sixty years her Congressmen have given

her. Throughout this period those who sought her suffrage have held up

the promise of protecting taxes. Vote for us and we will take care of

you. One of the most immoral of the many immoral trades which belong to

the period of our Civil War was the bargain the state made with the

Republican party to support the Union in return for the duties they

wanted on their manufactures. For years almost the sole appeal made by

candidates to the people of the state has been selfish. They have had a

steady education in the notion that government is something from which

to get a personal advantage. Is it strange that the Pennsylvanian should

come to regard all public undertakings, even the building of a state

capitol, as legitimate prey? It is a logical enough chain from the

instructions of Thaddeus Stevens and “Pig Iron” Kelley to a tariff-made

Pittsburg, blind to the appalling inhumanity of her mills, or to the

shameless looting of a great state building. Once the appeal to men’s

greed is the established rule of a state’s politics, the inevitable

outcome is every degree and species of baseness. On the other hand, a

people trained by its leaders to think of the general good, to consider

principles and ideals as of first importance to national life, to feel

that our fundamentals must be preserved before everything else—such a

people will rise to any height of enthusiasm and sacrifice.

The legislator who is so indifferent to the moral effect of his appeal

on the country’s citizenship, who refuses to see the connection between

the appeal to selfishness and corruption such as that which in 1884,

1892, and partially in 1910 swept the Republican party from power, can

hardly be expected to be nice about the methods he employs to get the

things he has promised. Indeed, there is political necessity for just

such methods as have been discussed in the previous chapters of this

book. They are a part of the whole, perfectly consistent with the

appeal, not a whit more immoral. If Mr. Aldrich promises the cotton

manufacturers of New England to support their demands, allowing them to

raise the money and do the work to reëlect him, can you expect him to do

less than he did in the Payne-Aldrich Bill—allow a tricky revision of

the cotton schedule to go through?

Let us admit that reasonable people must not expect in a popular

government to arrive at results save by a series of compromises. As long

as men disagree as to what is desirable to accomplish, as well as on the

methods which are to be employed in getting what they all agree to be

desirable, each successive step comes by one side agreeing to take less

than it believes should be given, and the other yielding more than it

believes wise. No reasonable person can expect the protective system to

be handled without compromises, backsets, and errors of judgment, but

_he can expect it to be handled as a principle and not as a commodity_.

The shock and disgust come in the discovery that our tariffs are not

good and bad applications of the principles of protection, but that they

are good or bad bargains. Dip into the story of the tariff at any point

since the Civil War and you will find wholesale proofs of this

bargaining in duties; rates fixed with no more relation to the doctrine

of protection than they have to the law of precession of the equinoxes.

The actual work of carrying out these bargains is of a nature that would

revolt any legislator whose sensitiveness to the moral quality of his

acts has not been blunted—who had not entirely eliminated ethical

considerations from the business of fixing duties. And this is what the

high protectionist lawgiver has come to—a complete repudiation of the

idea that right and wrong are involved in tariff bills. There is no man

more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as

a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness

and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral. But

this is the man the doctrine of protection, as we know it, produces, and

therein lies the final case against it,—men are worse, not better, for

its practice.

INDEX

Agriculture, 203.

Aldrich, Nelson W.:

ability of, 111, 112.

influence of, 168, 169.

protection policy of, 170.

position of, with regard to McKinley Bill, 199.

leadership of, 207.

and the “Interests,” 208.

as leader for McKinley Bill measure, 208.

and sugar stock speculation, 227.

on Dingley Bill, 244.

and sugar trust, 245.

and wood interests, 251.

report on wool schedule of, 308.

and cotton manufacturers, 319, 320.

relation of, with Lippitt, 320, 321, 322.

loyalty of, to wool schedule, 325.

traffic in duties of, 326.

threats of, 355.

political methods of, 363.

Alliance of wool and cotton, 325, 326.

Allison, Wm. B., 36, 51, 53, 63.

debate of, on Schenck Bill, 67, 68.

and wool tariff, 115.

chairman of sub-committee, 165.

position on tariff of, 166.

preparation of bill of, 166.

report of bill to Senate, 168.

and tin plate, 192.

Allison Bill:

discussion of, 168–172.

passed by Senate, 181.

goes to Ways and Means Committee, 184.

Ambler, Judge Jacob A., 102.

American Cotton and Wool Reporter, 303.

American industries in Canada, 294.

American Ironmaster, 96.

American Thread Trust Co., 263.

American Tin Plate Association:

questionable methods of, 192.

American Woollen Co., 354.

product of, 354.

capital of, 354.

“American working-man,” 336.

Amnesty, 75.

Anti-trust Bill, 200, 201.

Arkwright Club, 316.

attempts union with European manufacturers, 356.

Arthur, President:

appoints commission, 101.

message to Congress, of, 109.

as protectionist, 110.

and Dorsey, 176.

Attack on Whitman, 303, 304, 305.

Attorney-General, 44.

Average earnings, 259.

Baird, Henry C., 106.

Barbour, Wm., 268.

Basket willows, 298.

Bayard, 127.

Beck, James B.:

character of, 112.

filibustering of, 117.

insubordination of, 118.

as member of tariff conference, 127.

Beef Trust:

benefited by duty on hides, 267.

strength of, 275.

effect of Dingley Bill on, 276.

“Belshazzar’s Feast,” 176, 177.

Bennett, Frank P., 13.

and Whitman, 303, 304, 305, 306.

Bingham, Judge, 40, 44.

Blaine, James G., 11, 19.

speaker of Congress, 54.

and tariff reformers, 70.

slipperiness of, 96.

republican candidate, 140.

and Industrial League, 174.

and “monopoly” dinner, 177.

suggestions of, regarding surplus, 188.

and the trusts, 200.

and foreign trade, 203, 204.

and “Hell Gate,” 210.

Bleakie, Robert:

personal experience of, 286.

Bombay, 91.

Book-making, 30.

Boteler, Alexander R., 102.

Brandeis:

appears for consumers, 258.

Brice, 221, 222, 223.

Brinkerhoff, Gen. R.:

resolution of, in Republican platform, 54.

and Greeley and Carey, 55.

lecture campaign of, 70.

recollections of, 71, 72.

and Democrats, 83.

Bristow, 309.

Brooklyn Gas Light Co., 23.

Bryan, Wm. J., 241.

Budget:

of one family of four, 265.

of one woman, 265, 266.

Business depression, 143.

Business embarrassments, 32.

Butler, Ben:

compromise plank of, 139.

Cameron, Senior, 65.

Campaign of 1884:

scandal of, 177.

Campaign of 1888, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179.

Canada, 2, 24.

American industries in, 294.

Cannon, Joseph, 197.

Carlisle, John G.:

on House Committee, 113.

principles of, 118, 119.

candidate for speakership, 133.

ability of, 134, 135.

early life of, 134.

elected speaker, 137.

Carlisle and Randall factions, 141, 142.

Carnegie:

as illustration, 172.

testimony of, 298, 299.

Cary, Henry C., II.

as high tariff champion, 56.

as author, 56.

intolerance of, 56, 57.

Census of 1880, 98, 99.

Chandler, Zach, 22.

fights for copper bill, 46.

Chase:

attitude on tariff, 6.

as free-trader, 9.

Secretary of Treasury, 10.

arranges amendments to Morrill Bill, 10.

Chicago _Tribune_, 55.

Child labor, 343.

Cincinnati _Gazette_, 55.

Civil War:

changes wrought by, 28.

Clarke Mile End Spool Cotton Co., 263.

Clay, Henry, 2, 17.

Cleveland, Grover:

record of, 140.

reminiscences regarding, 141.

caution of, 141.

and tariff revision, 142.

second message of, 144.

message of 1887, 147–153.

effect of message on Republicans, 154.

popular vote for, 179.

warning of, 200.

position of, on tariff, 213.

inauguration of, 216.

letter of, on Wilson Bill, 231–233.

and Gorman, 234.

and Gorman Bill, 236.

and panic of 1893, 238.

Cloth analyses, 289, 290.

Coal duties, 34, 35.

Coats, Archibald, 264.

Coats, J. & P., 263, 264.

Cobden, Richard:

death of, 56.

Compact of 1867, 249, 250, 303.

Congress, 145, 299.

Congressional investigation, 41.

Conkling, Roscoe, 122.

Conscience Whigs, 3.

Cooper, Peter, 86.

Copper Bill of 1868:

reasons for, 44, 45.

and Chandler, 43, 46.

and President Johnson, 47–50.

passed over veto, 50.

lesson from, 50, 51.

Corn Products Co., 277.

Corn Products and Standard Oil:

associated, 277, 278.

Cost of living, 22.

Cotton:

as substitute, 283, 288.

exportation of woven cotton, 315.

importations of woven cotton, 314, 315, 322, 333.

investments in manufactories, 314.

strength of manufacturers, 324, 325.

conditions in making of cloth, 341–344.

Cotton schedule, 313, 314, 316, 317, 318.

Cox, S. S.:

as free-trader, 63.

as debater, 65.

sobriquet of, 66.

and Wood Bill, 88.

on exaggeration, 73.

on tariff, 77, 78.

Crisp, Charles F., 212.

Curiosibhoy, Adhersey, public letters to Greeley of, 91, 92.

Custom houses, 25.

Customs Administrative Bill, 187.

Dale, Samuel S., 289, 291.

Dawes:

appointed Chairman of Ways and Means, 73.

Dawes Bill:

debate on, 76, 77, 78.

reasonableness of, 76.

signed by Grant, 78.

features of, 78, 79.

Delano, Columbus, 113.

Democrats:

position on tariff, 83.

1880 tariff plank of, 94.

get majority in Congress, 110.

division among, 118.

tactics of, 119.

raise Constitutional question, 126.

gloating of, 122.

cry of excessive taxation, 178.

disadvantages of, 179.

split among, 180.

continue tariff agitation, 212, 213.

reverses of, 237.

inspiration of, 210.

Deterioration in clothing, 283, 284, 285.

Difference in home and foreign prices, 292, 293.

Dingley, Nelson:

Chairman of Ways and Means Committee, 239.

ability of, 239, 240.

Dingley Bill:

House passes, 240.

fate of, in Senate, 244.

compared with Wilson and McKinley Bills, 242, 243, 244.

changes made by Senate in, 244, 245.

influence of wool interests on, 251.

amendments to, 251.

passage of, 252.

effect of, 254, 255, 265, 267, 276, 277, 278.

practice developed by, 292.

makes burdens heavier yearly, 295.

Direct tax, 26.

Doctrine of protection:

final case against, 358, 359, 360.

kind of man encouraged by, 360, 361.

Dolliver:

Schedule K falls to, 309.

McKinley follows, 309.

member of Dingley Ways and Means, 310.

masters wool schedule, 311.

shows schedule K a law without morals, 311.

analyzes cotton schedule, 320, 324.

expresses revolt, 356, 357.

Dorsey, Stephen W., 176.

Douglas, W. L., 267.

Dunbar Co., 268.

Eaton, Senator, 100.

Elder, Cyrus, 86.

Elliot, E. B., 159.

England, 7.

anger over increased duties, 13.

feeling against, 22.

English Serving Cotton Trust, 263.

Evils of Tariff, 327.

“Experts,” 321, 322.

Factory employers:

life of, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346.

Factory owners:

greed of, 346, 347, 348.

Farmers:

relation of, to import duties, 201, 202.

protest of, 312.

Federal Commission report, 116.

Fessenden, Wm. Pitt:

description of, 20, 21.

and tariff on spices, 24, 25.

favors moderate protection, 39.

absent when wool bill is voted upon, 43.

File trust, 334.

Financial uneasiness, 145, 146.

Finkelnburg, 69.

speaks for tariff bill, 76.

Finlaysons, 268.

Flax, 267, 268.

Ford, Worthington, 159.

Forward, Walter, 17.

Foster, James P., 177

France, 7.

Fraud, 24, 25.

Free Poker and taxed Gospel, 156.

Free Trade, 6, 7.

Free Trade League, 55.

Garfield, James A., 53.

Blaine’s treatment of, 70, 71, 72, 73.

position on tariff, of, 94, 95, 96.

caution of, 97.

Garland, Austin M., 101, 113.

Glucose Trust, 277.

Gold Democrats, 241.

Golden Rule, 300, 301.

Gorman, 221.

Gorman Bill, 235, 236.

Grant, President:

hope of people, 52, 53.

advises postponement of tariff question, 53.

against Reciprocity treaty, 53.

dissatisfaction with, 73, 79.

Great Debate, 159–164.

Greeley, Horace, 13.

as protectionist, 16, 17.

extremist, 55.

heads movement in favor of general amnesty, 73.

nomination of, 74.

character of, 75.

Grosvenor, Col. Wm. M., 69.

Hale, Eugene, 71.

Halstead, Murat, 83.

Hamilton, Alexander, 1.

Hancock, Gen. W. S., 97, 98.

Hanna, Mark, 241.

_Harper’s Weekly_, 17.

Harpster, David, 113.

Harrison, recommendations of, 184, 185.

Haskell, Dudley C.:

and Kelley, 112.

description of, 120, 121.

trouble with Townshend, 123.

resolution of, 127.

death of, 185.

Hayes, John L., 41, 42.

as chairman of tariff commission, 101.

campaign of, for wool interests, 113.

“Hearings,” 297–299.

Hewitt, Abram S.:

before tariff commission, 105.

compromise plank of, 139.

Hides:

proposed duty on, 204.

High protection, result of, 349.

High protectionists, 120.

High tariff, 62, 135, 136.

Hill, David J., 222.

Hill, James J., 293.

Holt, Byron W., 293.

Immigration, 254, 255.

Immorality of tariff system, 357, 358, 359, 360, 363, 364.

Imperialism, 252.

Income tax, 220, 221.

declared unconstitutional, 240.

Increased cost of living, 350, 351.

Industrial commission, 292.

Industrial League of Pa.:

object of, 86.

first president of, 86.

methods of, 86, 87.

power of, 86, 87.

recognized by Blaine, 87.

opposes Parsee, 92.

campaign of, 100.

demands tariff commission, 100.

incensed, 92.

Infant industries, 298.

Insurgents, 308.

reasons for revolt of, 309.

determinations of, 309.

“Interests,” 7.

leaders alarmed, 75.

fight reasonable bill, 76, 77.

barter of, 117.

continue pressure, 122.

unite own schedules, 193.

campaign, 241.

frustrated, 241.

oppose reciprocity, 256, 257.

narrowness of, 257.

Internal Revenue:

inequalities of, 12.

remonstrance against, 13.

Internal revenue bill, 110.

International Harvester Co., 294, 295.

Investigations in budgets of poor, 260.

Iron and Steel Association:

as dictator, 173, 174.

recognized by Blaine, 174.

energy and efficiency of, 174.

defeats Morrison, 174.

demands Quay head of Republican Committee, 175.

Jarrett, John, 174.

Jobbery, 7.

Johnson, Tom L., 213.

Johnson, President:

opposes Stevens, 44.

unhappiness of, 46, 47.

message regarding copper bill, 47, 48, 49, 50.

Jones, B. F., 174.

Kansas, 21.

Kasson, John A.:

service of, 36, 37, 38.

a supporter of Kelley, 112.

proposes revision of House Rules, 124.

appointed special plenipotentiary, 255.

resigns, 257.

Keifer, Speaker, 127.

Kelley, Wm. D. (“Pig Iron”):

favors highest protection, 35.

as protectionist leader, 63, 64.

dislike of Wells and Sumner, 64.

defends high tariff, 65.

accused of iron interests, 65.

and Cox, 66.

and Wood Bill, 88, 89, 90.

as chairman of House Committee, 112.

and Haskell, 120.

and Kasson rule, 124.

last illness of, 185.

pernicious teaching of, 362.

Kenner, Duncan F., 101.

Labor troubles, 216, 217.

Lawrence, Wm., 113, 246, 247.

Lea, Henry C., 86.

Legislation by violence, 228, 229.

Liberal Party, 69.

Lincoln, Abraham:

attitude on tariff, 6, 7.

calls extra session, 9.

asks for more men and more money, 18.

tariff views of, 18, 19, 20.

Lippitt, Henry F., 315, 316, 321.

Lobbyists, 113, 114, 118, 122.

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 237, 323, 350, 351.

Logan, Senator, 78.

London _Times_, 8.

Longworth, Nicholas, 283.

Louisville _Courier-Journal_, 81.

Lumber, duties on, 115.

danger of exhausting, 115, 116.

arguments for duty, 116.

Lumber barons, 116.

McAdoo, Col., 141.

MacColl, J. R., 316.

McDill, 127.

McKay sewing machine, 271.

McKenzie, James, 93.

McKinley, Wm.:

protection speech of, 88.

supports Kelley, 112.

argues with suit of clothes, 162.

succeeds Haskell, 185.

amiability of, 186.

introduces Customs Administrative Bill, 187.

as presidential candidate, 241.

McKinley Bill:

foundation for, 188.

points of, 191, 193, 198, 199, 208, 209.

effect of, 210, 211.

failure of, 216.

as compared with Wilson Bill, 238, 239.

McMahon, Wm. H., 102.

McMillan, 184.

McPherson, 227.

Mahone, 117, 127.

Mallary, Rollin C., 17.

Manhattan Gas Co., 23.

Manufacturers, unreasonableness of, 32, 33.

Marble, Manton, 137.

Marshals, 268.

Meriden Britannia Co., 293.

Mills, Roger Q., 83, 85.

chairman of Ways and Means, 155.

principles of, 156, 157.

chief hobby of, 158.

prepares bill, 158, 159.

argues from Wright’s report, 160, 161.

analyzes cost of suit, 162, 163.

opposes conference, 183, 184.

opposes bounty for sugar-growers, 197.

on McKinley Bill, 209.

candidate for House Speakership, 211.

refuses to serve on Ways and Means, 212.

position of, 213.

advises duty on sugar, 224.

Mills Bill, 158, 159, 164, 170.

Minnesota, 21.

Missouri Compromise, 4.

Missouri Liberal Republicans, 73, 74.

Moderate protectionists, 36, 37, 38, 39.

Moir, Edward, 301.

Monopolies, 352.

Montgomery, 8.

Moore, Joseph S., 90, 91, 92.

Morrell, Hon. Daniel J., 86.

Morrill, Justin S.:

character of, 3.

theory of, 4.

apologizes for bill of 1866, 34.

advises acceptance of Wells’s amendment, 39.

absent when wool bill is voted upon, 43.

votes for copper bill, 46.

debates on tariff, 68.

opposes quinine bill, 93.

head of the Senate committee, 110, 111.

reports on free silver, 240.

Bill of 1860, 5–11.

Bill of 1866, 34, 37, 38.

Morrison, Col. W. R., 83.

on House Committee, 113.

selected to prepare tariff bill, 137.

cleverness of bill, 138.

provisions of bill of, 138.

defeated for Congress, 155.

Mountain ivy root, 298.

Mugwumps:

return of, 180.

National Association of Clothiers, 283.

National Association of Wool Manufacturers, 41.

political strength of, 193.

claims of, 194.

pleads against reduction, 229.

supports wool duty, 247.

demands of, 249.

greed of, 250.

success of, 251.

makes compact, 301.

agreement with wool-growers of, 41.

National Treasury, 6, 10.

Newcomb, Simon, 159.

N. E. Shoe and Leather Association, 273, 275.

Newspapers:

Taxes on, 13, 14.

oppose copper legislation, 51.

New York Custom House, 91.

N. Y. _Evening Post_, 13.

New York Gas Light, 23.

N. Y. _Herald_, 13.

N. Y. _Tribune_, 13, 16, 17.

Niedringhaus, F. G., 192, 193.

Niles, Hezekiah, 17.

North, S. D. N.:

position of, 251.

accused, 304.

denials of, 304, 305.

summoned by Finance Committee, 306.

corresponds with Whitman, 306.

Oliver, Henry W., Jr., 101, 122.

Organization, value of, 132.

Overproduction, 31.

Panics, 3, 79, 217.

Parsee, 137.

Payne:

reports wool schedule, 307.

tricked, 318, 319.

Payne-Aldrich Bill:

criminality of methods in, 299.

removes duty on hides, 277.

lowers duty on thread, 277.

becomes law, 327.

reception given, 327.

Pennsylvania, 6, 362.

Pensions, 189.

Perry:

lecturer and author, 55.

reminiscences regarding Cleveland, of, 141.

Philadelphia, 23.

Phillips, Thomas W., 292.

Pierce, Henry L., 4.

Pig-iron, 60, 61.

Pike, F. A., 36, 50.

Pittsburg, 360.

Pittsburg _Commercial_, 55.

Pittsburg Survey, 360.

Politico-industrial alliance, 207.

Pomeroy, Senator, 22.

Pope, Col. A. A., 104.

Porter, R. P., 102, 106.

Portland _Advertiser_, 55.

Prentice, George D., 82.

Prosperity, 252, 253, 254.

Protection, 1, 4, 5, 6.

faults of, 24, 51, 52.

opposition to, 54.

doctrine saved, 68.

effects of, 98, 99.

early reasons for, 331.

never to be prohibitive, 332.

Protective steering committee, 85, 86.

Providence, 7.

Public opinion, 297.

Quay:

record of, 175.

chairman National Rep. Committee, 175.

secures funds from Wanamaker, 175.

acknowledges sugar speculation, 227.

long speech of, 228.

Quinine Bill:

introduced by McKenzie, 93.

passes House, 93.

opposed by Senator Morrill, 93.

passes Senate, 93.

effect of passage of, 93, 94.

“Quinine Jim,” 93.

Railroad iron, 21, 26.

Randall, Samuel J.:

skill and endurance of, 83, 84.

on House Committee, 113.

principles of, 119.

refuses to serve on committee, 127.

candidate for speakership, 133.

opposes Morrill Bill, 139.

prepares bill, 144.

Randall Bill, 144.

Raymond, Henry, 36.

Reciprocity, 2, 255.

clause in tariff of 1890, 206.

opposed by interests, 256, 257.

favored by McKinley, 257.

Recognition of organized business man, 131, 132.

Reed, Thomas B.:

as parliamentarian, 125.

views on tariff of, 125.

rule of, 126.

on Mills Bill, 164.

asks conference with House, 182.

as protectionist, 186, 187.

on Gorman Bill, 235, 236.

elected speaker of House, 239.

Register, 17.

Republicans, 67, 69.

dissatisfaction with party, 73, 74, 75.

tariff plank of 1880 of, 94.

attack tariff for revenue only, 97.

demand tariff revision, 98.

rebuked on policy, 110.

majority of, favor reform, 118.

platform of, 173.

free use of money of, 175, 176, 177.

carry parrots in parades, 178.

win election, 179.

heavy losses of, 210.

causes of overthrow of, 210.

platform of 1896 of, 241.

declare for downward revision of tariff, 296.

Resolutions’ Committee, 139, 140.

Revenue:

system for raising, 26.

revision of, 29.

bill framed by House, 110.

Revenue cutters, 25.

Revolt against protective system, 296.

Rhode Island:

as an object-lesson, 336–346.

manufactories in, 337, 338.

desertion of farms in, 337, 338.

a tariff-made state, 338.

foreigners of, 339.

restlessness of laborers in, 340.

housing in factory towns, 347, 348.

Rhode Island factories:

temperature of, 340.

ventilation of, 340.

lint in air, 341.

scarcity of water in, 341.

lack of toilet conveniences, 341.

lack of dressing rooms, 342.

earnings in, 342.

unsanitary, 347.

without fire escapes, 347.

improvements in, 347.

Rise in cost of living, 260, 261.

Roosevelt, Theodore:

unstirred by tariff evils, 296.

St. Louis Democrat, 55.

Salt Interests, 58, 59, 60.

Sawyer, Philetus, 116.

Schenck, Robert C., 54, 62.

Schenck Bill, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68.

Schurz, Carl, 69, 75, 83.

Schwab, 292.

Scrapiron duties, 35.

Seceders, 7.

Secession, 6, 7.

Secretary of Treasury, 29.

Section Struggle, 39.

Semicolon, 124.

Senate:

frames revenue bill, 110.

passes Senate Bill, 118.

hearings before, 166.

examination of, regarding sugar stock speculation, 227.

make-up of Senate of 1897, 245.

analysis of duties of, 308.

Settlers, 116.

Seward, 6.

Sherman, John, 4, 5.

asks Senate to raise wool duties, 39.

advises lobbyists, 75, 76.

removes Parsee from Custom House, 91.

arrogance of, 111.

fights reduction of iron, 114.

fights for wool, 115.

dissatisfaction of wool-growers with, 131.

“Recollections” of, 131.

appoints Tichenor special agent, 167.

introduces anti-trust measure, 201.

prepares for “Hell Gate,” 210.

Ship-building, 61, 62.

Shoddy, 248, 249.

Shoe-making trust:

formation of, 270.

inheritance of, 271.

aim of, 271.

prepares lease, 272, 273.

monopoly of, 273.

Shoes:

cost of, 265, 266.

reasons for increased cost, 266, 267.

royalty on, 273, 274.

Silver Question, 216, 237, 238, 240, 241.

Simmons, “Wood-Screw,” 7.

connection with new tax and tariff bills, 15.

secures gun contract, 15.

Sinister phase of Hearings, 299.

Slavery Agitation, 3, 7.

Smoot, 323.

Smuggling, 24, 25.

Specie Payment, 53.

Specific duty, 302.

Spool cotton, 262, 263, 264.

Spooner, 193.

Springer, Wm., 211.

Standard Oil Co., 278, 279, 288.

Stand-patter, 353.

Starch, 277, 278.

States petition Congress, 85.

Stevens, Thaddeus, 12.

description of, 14, 15.

as dictator, 33.

opposes Morrill Bill of 1866, 33, 35.

alarmed at struggle of sections, 39.

death of, 53.

owner of foundry, 65.

Storey, Moorfield, 305.

Sugar, 195, 196, 197.

“Sugar House,” 227.

Sugar Refineries Company, 198, 199.

Sugar Trusts, 222–227.

Sumner, Charles, 4, 20, 21.

Sumner, Wm. G., 90, 91.

Surplus, 98.

oiling up of, 144.

methods to reduce, 188, 189.

reduction of, overdone, 216.

Surprise resolution, 71.

Swank, James W., 242.

Taft, Wm. H., 296, 300, 313, 324.

Tariff:

fifty years ago, 1.

to-day, 2.

bill of 1862, 14, 15, 16.

bill of 1864, 20.

bill of 1865, 26, 30, 31.

bill of 1875, 81.

“For Revenue only,” 82, 83.

Reformers, 90.

bill of 1883, 128, 129, 130, 131.

bill of 1886, 142, 143.

as a tax, 163, 164.

league, 178.

Act of 1890, 206.

Reform Committee of N. Y., 293.

self-defeating, 295.

as bargains, 363, 364.

a question of national morals, 357, 358.

Tariff Commission, 100.

personnel of, 101, 102.

reception of, 102, 103.

hearings before, 103–106.

platform of, 107.

inconsistencies of, 107, 108.

Tariff Conference, 127.

“Tariff of Abominations,” 1.

Textile World Record, 289, 291.

“The poor,” 258, 259.

“Thousand-dollar breakfast,” 10, 22.

Thread (linen):

advance in, 267, 269.

formation of trust, 268, 269.

duty on, 269, 270.

price jumps, 270.

Payne Bill lowers duty on, 277.

Thread Trust, 269, 270.

Thrift, 259.

Tichenor, Geo. C., 166, 167, 168.

Timber Culture Act, 116.

Tin plate, 278, 279, 280.

Tooke’s “History of Prices,” 95.

Top duty, 304, 305, 306, 307.

Townshend, 123.

Trusts:

development of, 200.

arguments about, 351.

breeding of, 353, 354.

Turner, A. R., 268.

Umbrellas, 30, 31.

Underwood, John W. H., 102.

United Shoe Machinery Co. and Linen Thread Company interwoven, 274,

275.

United States, population of, 259.

United States Census, 304.

United States Government, 24, 25, 27.

United States Investor, 305.

Vest (Senator), 221, 224.

Vilas, 213.

Wages:

government investigation regarding, 261, 262.

Walker, Francis A., 349.

Wanamaker:

contributes money for campaign, 175.

received seat in Cabinet, 175.

War, 9.

qualities developed by, 23, 24.

consequences of, 27, 32.

taxes, 12, 13.

Washington, 6.

Watterson, Henry:

as party leader, 81.

dictator, 82.

writes tariff plank, 82, 83, 139.

platform-maker, 214.

criticises Mills Bill, 219, 220.

Ways and Means Committee, hearings before, 297, 298, 299.

Wells, David A.:

early life of, 29.

head of Commission, 29.

prepares tariff bill, 38.

Carey’s hatred for, 56, 57.

summary of wool conditions, 57, 58.

reports on salt, 58, 59, 60.

effect of report of, 162.

removed from office, 69.

to Democrats, 83.

effect of dismissal of, 91.

Wells Bill:

approved by Senate, 38.

made an amendment to House Bill, 39.

Wentworth, Long John, 37, 38.

West:

disturbed over 1864 tariff bill, 21.

objects to 1866 bill, 37.

asks protection for farmers, 37.

succeeds in getting high duties on farm products, 38.

Wharton, Joseph, 86.

consulted by Blaine, 87.

tariff speech of, 96, 97.

before Tariff Commission, 103.

White, Horace, 55, 83.

Whitman:

Pres. National Association of Wool Growers, 194.

suggestions of, 194, 195.

calls conference, 300.

appears before Ways and Means, 300, 301.

attacked, 303.

denies charges, 304, 305.

correspondence demanded of, 305.

proofs regarding, 307.

reasons for powers of, 312, 313.

on increased cost of living, 350.

Whitney, 213.

Wholesale Saddlery Association, 276.

Wickersham, 352.

Wilson, James F., 36.

Wilson, James Lyne:

head of Ways and Means, 217.

qualifications of, 217, 218.

presents bill, 218.

disappointment of, 234, 235.

Wilson Bill:

provisions of, 218.

opposed by Mills and Watterson, 219, 220.

amendments, 220, 221.

passes House, 221.

Senate opposition to, 221.

revised, 222.

returned to House with 634 amendments, 230.

Cleveland makes protest against, 230, 231.

Wood, Fernando:

appointed head of Ways and Means, 84.

as Mayor, 84.

arrogance of, 84.

stirred by resolution, 85.

tabulates objections to tariff in operation, 87.

brings in new bill, 87.

Wood, William M., 312.

Wood Bill:

unrest over, 84, 85.

brought in, 87.

features of, 87, 88.

indifference to, 88.

opposition to, 88, 89, 90.

object of, 88.

condemnation of, 88.

failure of, 90.

Wood-screws, 7.

Wool:

Interests ask higher tariff, 40.

scandal regarding, 41.

campaign of 1866, 42, 43.

bill of 1867 passes House, 43.

bill signed by Johnson, 44.

dissatisfaction of growers, 113.

growers send trinity, 113.

demands of trinity, 113.

Interests disappointed, 229, 230.

conditions, 245.

Interests muster strong vote, 248.

carpet wool, 248.

value of, 280.

scarcity, 281.

wool tops, 250.

adulteration of, 282.

amount produced in U. S., 285.

two classes of manufacturers, 286.

substitutes for, 287.

decrease in per capita consumption, 288.

comparative prices in England and America, 291, 292.

Interests force Congress, 299.

Interests hold conference, 300.

Compact of Interests, 301.

carders appear before Ways and Means, 302.

carpet manufacturers ask common-sense duty, 303.

combination of Interests, 312, 313.

failure of protective dogma in, 333, 334.

Wool schedule, 284.

complexity of, 289.

difficulty of, 310, 311.

mastered by Dolliver, 311.

shown to be without principle, 311.

reasons for passage, 312, 313.

Wright, Carroll D.:

report of, 143, 160.

+---------------------------------------------------------+

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 63, changed “The manufacturers were to supply all the tools

of the farmers and miners—the farmers and miners all the raw

materials of the manufacturers.” to “The manufacturers were to

supply all the tools of the farmers and miners”.

2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in

spelling.

3. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as

printed.

4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Tariff in our Times, by Ida M. Tarbell