theory of economics. The surplus was accumulating in the treasury, tying up funds needed in the business world, and at the same time tempting Congress to extravagance in pension and river and harbor bills. Whatever other merits the message may have had, it furnished an issue, and held up a standard for party measurement. Democrats in general supported the President, while Republicans called Cleveland a free-trader, and proclaimed their adherence to the protective system. In 1888 in accordance with the President's wishes, the Democratic members of the Committee of Ways and Means framed a tariff measure, the Mills Bill. This aroused a lively discussion in the House, with John G. Carlisle, the Speaker, and William B. Mills, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, as the chief exponents of tariff reform. On the Republican side the leading speakers were William McKinley of Ohio, and Thomas B. Reed of Maine. The protectionists emphasized the necessity of the tariff as a safeguard of American standards of living, and attributed to the high tariff the prevailing American prosperity. In order to enliven the debate, and to convince his hearers that the American workingman was not suffering because of the high prices, McKinley exhibited a suit of clothes, which he had bought for ten dollars. Mills countered with a carefully prepared table of figures, showing how the tariff increased the cost of clothing, and ending with the assertion that without the tariff McKinley's ten dollar suit could have been purchased for four ninety-eight! In the Senate the Republicans prepared another tariff bill, which retained the high protective duties. Neither measure ever passed, but both served to provide an issue for the approaching presidential campaign. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888 The Democrats nominated Cleveland, while the Republicans selected Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a grandson of William H. Harrison, of Tippecanoe and Whig fame. The Republican platform was strongly protectionist. Frightened by Cleveland's advocacy of tariff reduction, business men generally and manufacturers especially worked their hardest to elect Harrison. According to rumor Quay of Pennsylvania made systematic assessments upon the business interests, promising them by way of return a continuance of the high tariff if the Republicans should win. Among the active leaders THE MURCHISON LETTER 639 on the Republican side was John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia merchant. In his appeals for funds, he sent the following pertinent question around to the business men: "How much would you pay for insurance upon your business? If you were confronted by from one to three years of general depression by a change in our revenue and protective measures affecting our manufactures, wages, and good times, what would you pay to be insured for a better year?" THE MURCHISON LETTER At the height of the campaign an ingenious Republican hit upon a clever scheme to discredit the Democratic low tariff policy by making it appear as an offshoot of British free trade. At this time anything with a British taint or tinge was bound to drive voters over to the other side. A man who signed himself C. F. Murchison wrote a letter to Lord Sackville-West, the British minister at Washington; pretending to be a naturalized Englishman, he asked Lord SackvilleWest "privately and confidentially" which of the two leading candidates would be more pleasing to Great Britain. Suspecting nothing, the English diplomat replied rather guardedly that Cleveland's election would be more satisfactory to his government. On October 24 the correspondence was published, and the Republicans seized upon it as proof of their argument that free trade was a British policy. The Democrats made desperate efforts to save the Irish vote, and Cleveland demanded the recall of the unsophisticated lord. When this was refused, the British minister was given his passports. In the election Harrison received 5,439,853 votes, Cleveland 5,540,329, but they were so distributed that in the electoral vote the figures stood: Harrison 233, Cleveland 168. New York as usual was the key state, and while David B. Hill, the Democratic candidate for governor, carried the state by eighteen thousand, Cleveland lost it by thirteen thousand. This gave rise to the story that the Democratic and Republican state machines entered into an agreement whereby Hill was to have the governorship, and Harrison the presidency. From Indiana as usual came reports of corruption and bribery. The Republican National Committee sent the following advice to the local party workers in that state: "Divide the floaters into blocks of five, and put a trusted man with the necessary funds in charge of these five, and make him responsible that none get away, and that all vote our ticket." CHAPTER LVI HARRISON AND WESTERN DISCONTENT The administration of Benjamin Harrison was a period of keen party strife, during the first half of which the President was almost overshadowed by the imperious Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed, while in the second half the Democrats and members of the Farmers' Alliance secured such complete control of Congress that all opportunity for constructive work came to an end. The striking feature throughout was the rise of the organized farmers. Never since Jackson's time had the discontented West displayed such a determination to upset the established political order. In the face of this uncertain new force the regular leaders blundered and floundered, unaware of what was in store for them, and unable to realize either their own weakness or the strength of the new party. THE REED RULES In the Fifty-first Congress, which met in December, 1889, the Republicans had 166 representatives, the Democrats 159. Aside from the danger that the narrow majority might at any time be swept away by unavoidable absences, the Republicans had to face a lively minority, bent on obstructing legislation by a resort to all the known forms of "filibustering." It fell to Reed as Speaker to get what he could out of the unpromising situation. Physically Reed was a big man, almost as big as David Davis of Illinois. His strength of character and his determination were commensurate with his size. Furthermore, he had a keen mind and a sharp tongue, a combination which he used often to the terror of his opponents, and sometimes to the dismay of his friends. Addressing the young, brilliant, and very ardent Theodore Roosevelt one day, Reed remarked: "Theodore, if there is one thing for which I admire you more than anything else, it is for your original discovery of the Ten Commandments." Reed had for some time maintained that the Rules of the House, permitting a member to be counted absent merely because he did not vote, were wrong; they made it possible for a large minority to block THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT 641 all business, on the ground of no quorum. The forceful Speaker insisted that physical presence made a member part of the quorum. Reed therefore proposed some new rules, which gave the Speaker power to count a quorum, and which enabled him to prevent all dilatory motions. The rules were finally adopted by a strict party vote, in the face of spirited Democratic opposition. Reed, “the Czar," as he was dubbed by the members, was thereby enabled to regulate the conduct of the House, and to control legislation. THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT One piece of legislation, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, could hardly be called a partisan measure, because the votes for it came from both sides of the House. It was the product of a long-standing demand for trust "reform," by means of federal regulation. The law declared illegal every contract, combination, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade, and provided for a fine of $5,000, or imprisonment for not over one year, or both, for each offense. The same penalties were provided for monopolists. The measure did not differentiate between "good" and "bad" corporations, and the attitude of the Harrison administration seemed to be that once the law was on the books, the reform had gone far enough. In any case it was not invoked during his term, and it did not become even partially effective until the first Roosevelt administration. It made possible a certain amount of reform but it brought no change itself. The next two laws, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the McKinley Tariff, were both party measures. Characterizing the election of a Republican president and a Republican majority in each house of Congress as a mandate from the country to preserve the protective system, the Republicans immediately went to work on a new tariff measure. McKinley, of Ohio, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, argued that the Democratic policy of a low tariff would ruin the country, that without a tariff barrier English manufactures would flood the American market. Because the ordinary American voter was none too well informed regarding the intricate economic arguments for protection, McKinley compared the American laborer with his European competitor, and pictured him as the best paid, best clothed, and most contented wage earner in the world. Many of the rates in the McKinley tariff were higher than any ever in force before. THE MCKINLEY TARIFF To conciliate the farmers, the McKinley bill provided for protective duties on cereals and potatoes, as well as on raw wool. Some of the opponents of a high tariff had based their opposition on the accumulating surplus in the treasury. McKinley found it easy to undermine their position. His bill removed the duty on raw sugar, thereby dropping one of the most profitable of the revenue producers, and in its place the Republicans gave a bounty to the Louisiana sugar growers. THE SHERMAN SILVER PURCHASE ACT Before this bill was allowed to pass, the combination of western and southern farmer interests plus the silver interests forced the majority to pass a new silver purchase act, to supersede the Bland-Allison law. This new measure, generally known as the Sherman Act, required the Secretary of the Treasury to buy 4,500,000 ounces of silver per month-virtually the entire output of the mines, over and above the amount used in industry-and to pay for it with legal tender treasury notes, redeemable in gold. The Republicans of the East were not in sympathy with the Act, but they looked upon it as less bad than free coinage, and they had to make some concession to the farmers, in order to pass the McKinley tariff. The two bills therefore went through by virtue of a log-rolling agreement between eastern protectionists and western farmers. THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE Lulled into quiet for one reason or another after the climax of the Granger movement, the farmers were again organizing and getting into politics. Protection did not make the appeal to the western farmers that it made to the manufacturers. Farmers' clubs and agricultural papers were talking tariff reform, and to keep them quiet the Committee of Ways and Means granted "protection" to certain kinds of farm produce. This uneasiness in the West found a counterpart in the South, where there was a traditional antipathy to protectionism. In fact farmers all over the country were showing signs of impatience with Republican policies. In the West conditions were nearly ready for a political storm. The newer regions in Texas, western Kansas, and the Dakotas had been |