William McKinley and the Tariff
by H. WAYNE MORGAN |
Two issues, the currency and the tariff, dominated national party politics in the years after the election of 1876 had eased the major conflicts of Reconstruction. Historians generally tend to dismiss the tariff issue, or to argue that politicians used it to divert public attention from more im- portant problems. It was far from irrelevant, however, since it involved the two most basic problems of the time: the nature of an industrial society, and the degree and manner in which government should enter the economy.
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 277-279 |
216 OHIO HISTORY
The tariff question was historically old
in American politics, but slavery,
sectionalism, and the problems flowing
from the Civil War overshadowed
it. It rose to new prominence as the
issues around Reconstruction faded
in the late 1870's and 1880's, and as
more Americans realized the nation
was becoming an industrial society.
Periodic depressions and government
revenue surpluses focused attention on protection.
It was always a potential
reform issue and could be made a superb
vote-catching device. It may be
hard to remember a time when people
eagerly read tariff pamphlets, or
listened to three-hour speeches on the
subject, but by the late 1880's and
early 1890's it provoked widespread
political interest.
Opinion on the subject fell into three
broad categories: free trade,
tariff for revenue only, and protection.
Like the money question, the tariff
issue defied logical niceties, party
lines, and geographical boundaries.
Though protectionists in both major
parties loosely labeled their opponents
"free traders," the idea of
eliminating all tariff protection generally was
limited to isolated academic circles. A
tariff for revenue only, or taxing
goods not produced in the United States
with only modest imposts on
manufactured articles, was the principle
of most Democrats. But that
party was divided, because southerners
eagerly protected their agricultural
interests while opposing duties on
manufactured goods they hoped to
import cheaply from Europe. Southern
Democrats also thought the tariff
shifted economic and political power to
the Northeast and satellite areas
in the growing Midwest and around the
Great Lakes. In the North,
Democratic protectionists under the
powerful leadership of men like
Pennsylvania's Samuel J. Randall and
Maryland's Arthur P. Gorman
often voted with Republicans to protect
their section's industrial interests.
Of the three views on the tariff,
protection claimed the most adherents
and the fewest divisions in its ranks.
Tariff reform was popular not only
because many people opposed the
system, but because it savored of
change. But protection had powerful
friends in the business community,
agriculture, and labor. The tariff issue
served the Republican party well in
uniting large blocs of business and
labor support under its banner. But it
also, often unexpectedly, aided
the Democratic party. It first offered a
political issue that avoided the
emotional problems affecting the South,
and then late in the 1880's
became the basis of a reform movement
which widened Democracy's
appeal.
No man was closer to protection in that
era than William McKinley,
congressman, governor of Ohio,
president, and "The Napoleon of Protec-
tion" to both friend and foe.2 His position on the subject was not surpris-
ing, considering his personality and
origins. Legend says his friend
Rutherford B. Hayes first suggested that
he study the tariff.3 But the
roots of McKinley's belief in protection
ran back to the dimness of
childhood, when he heard his ironmaster
father complain in the family
circle that foreign competition made
honest men reduce their output,
lower wages, and close their smelters.4
The child in this case fathered
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 217
the man, and when McKinley entered
congress in 1877 he brought with
him a long study of the question.
Many criticized him as a "one idea
man," but none ever questioned his
genuine belief in the protective system.
The industries he saw while
traveling throughout the country during
a long and active career seemed
tangible evidence to him of the tariff's
benefits. Those around him knew
his feelings, and he often imbued them
with the same fervor. "It was a
deep conviction, almost a religion, with
him," Robert La Follette noted.
"No one who ever worked with him
could doubt it."5
McKinley's study of the subject produced
an economic viewpoint at
once simple and politically appealing.
Few men could interest an audience
more in tariff schedules. His approach
was effective because of his phi-
losophy of economic nationalism that
offered benefits to all sections.
Throughout his career he preached and
was identified with a system that
promised national economic integration
and prosperity.
His whole philosophy rested on two
assumptions that shaped the
argument around protection: the tariff
produced higher wages by insuring
an expanding home market; and the
American industrial system could
not yet face foreign competition that
benefited from cheap labor. The
home market must therefore be closed to
sustain both industry and labor.
All other sectors of the economy, including
agriculture, would thus benefit
from expanding domestic demands.
The workers of his northeastern Ohio
congressional district were
McKinley's principal supporters, and he
guarded their interests zealously.
He used a persuasive logic that captured
the attention of millions long
before he ran for president in 1896.
"Reduce the tariff, and labor is the
first to suffer," he reiterated
over and over.6 "He who would break down
the manufactures of this country strikes
a fatal blow at labor. It is labor
I would protect."7 This
belief fitted his concept of a fluid society in an
expanding economy, which allowed anyone
to climb the ladder of success.
It also fortified his appeal as a
politician preaching material progress
and political harmony in a country composed
of varied interests. "Here
the mechanic of to-day is the
manufacturer of a few years hence."8
Pressure for markets outside the United
States seemed dangerous to
him as he began his national career.
"'The markets of the world' in our
present condition are a snare and a
delusion. We will reach them when-
ever we can undersell competing nations,
and no sooner," he argued. "Our
tariffs do not keep us out, and free
trade will not make it easier to enter
them."9 He thought the
country was large enough and sufficiently diver-
sified to allow healthy competition
within her borders. This also assured
a reasonable natural brake on monopoly.10
He disagreed with those who argued that
protection raised the domestic
price of finished goods. His whole
theory rested on the premise that low
prices meant hard times, a doctrine to
which recurring depressions during
tariff agitation lent an aspect of
validity. "When prices were the lowest
did you not have the least money to buy with?"
he asked an audience in
218 OHIO HISTORY
1889.11 Like all protectionists, he
thought that prices of finished goods
declined under protection as production
expanded and distribution im-
proved, while wages rose.12 He
saw little danger in reasonably larger
profits, since this produced capital for
new investment and industrial
expansion. Debaters on all sides of the
question produced ample "facts"
and statistics to "prove"
their arguments. Politically and historically, the
economic soundness of protection and
tariff reform is less vital than what
people of the time believed. The
argument that foreign competition under
lower tariff duties caused falling
production and unemployment seemed
especially logical in many parts of the
country where exactly that had
happened.13
McKinley insisted that the foreign
exporter of goods to the United
States rather than the American consumer
paid most of the tariff tax.14
Though he seldom said as much, he
implied that people who bought foreign
rather than American goods should be
penalized. Taxation was necessary
in any society. Since it afforded
protection to the domestic economy and
produced revenue, he preferred the
tariff to excise or income taxes.
McKinley could understand partisan
conviction, but the academic doc-
trines of free trade exasperated him.
Every college in the country seemed
to him to produce tariff reformers. He
often struck out at the academics
in his speeches, insisting in phrases
that inevitably appealed to his audi-
ences, that "actual results
outweigh an idle philosophy." He preferred
experience to theory. Protection might
not be "favored in the colleges,
[but] it is taught in the school of
experience, in the workshop, where
honest men perform an honest day's
labor, and where capital seeks the
development of national wealth."15
Reformers called the tariff the
"mother of the trusts" in the great
debates of the 1880's, but McKinley
never conceded a connection between
protection and monopoly. "They [the
trusts] are, however, in no wise
related to the tariff, and the tariff is
in no way responsible for them,"
he argued in 1888.16 Pointing to the
growing monopolies in railroads and
oil, neither of which depended on tariff
protection, McKinley thought
other forces and policies produced
trusts. He argued that competition
within the domestic economy kept prices
stable and insured growth. "They
[monopolies] cannot long exist with an
unrestricted home competition
such as we have," he said in 1882.
"They feel the spur of competition
from thirty-seven states, and extortion
and monopoly can not survive the
sharp contest among our own capitalists
and enterprising citizens."17
These were the basic tenets of his
tariff philosophy. They did not differ
remarkably from those of other
protectionists, but he gained greater fame
as an eloquent spokesman for the
nationalism which a protected economy
developed and sustained. His theory was
too simple, reflecting his whole
generation's unfamiliarity with economic
thinking, and the tendency of
men discussing public policy to turn
economic issues into political formulas.
More than protection had developed the
economy. Natural wealth, trans-
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 219
portation, inventive genius, a large
labor supply, abundant capital, organi-
zational techniques, managerial proficiency, and a huge
domestic market
all had combined to raise the American
standard of living. But to McKinley,
tariff protection was the keystone in
this arch of expanding prosperity
since it supported the other elements of
the home market.
The tariff was an important emotional as
well as practical issue in
McKinley's search for expanding
prosperity and domestic harmony. There
was something more in the protective
system than the bare facts of
trade statistics and growth rates.
"It encourages the development of skill,
labor, and inventive genius as part of
the great productive forces," he
once said.18 It was a historic policy,
dating from the nation's founding.
Some of the greatest Americans, like
Hamilton, Clay, and Webster, had
favored protection. Of all the economic
policies in the nation's history,
none was more potent, real, or inclusive
than the tariff. In the dull
schedules that turned other men to
stone, McKinley found the romance
of history and the unfolding development
of his nation's wealth and
greatness.
McKinley agreed with reformers that the
tariff rates were sometimes
unfair, and that reasonable reform was
always in order. He objected
chiefly to the continual agitation of
the subject which unsettled business,
hindered investment, and wasted a great
deal of time and energy in fruit-
less or dangerous debate. He did not
believe until late in his career that
any substantial bloc of the people
favored downward revision. He often
wished that the subject could be
entrusted to some kind of scientific,
nonpartisan management. This attitude
was doubtless correct, for the
fault of protection was not so much the
theory as the method of its
enactment. Congressmen open to local
pressure passed upon tariff laws
amid ignorance and confusion. No genuine
nonpartisan tariff control was
likely in the charged political
atmosphere of the Gilded Age.
In Ohio and in national Republican
circles, McKinley met few people
who systematically questioned the wisdom
of tariff protection. Pressure
for protection came from a great variety
of interests in his district and
state. But as his knowledge of the
subject grew, and as his mental horizons
expanded with travel and experience, he
tended to favor a selective tariff.
His descent from high protection was
slow and cautious, and he accepted
the realities of dealing politically
with an economic issue. He quickly saw
that his desire for gradual, scientific
readjustments in the schedules was
politically impossible. Throughout much
of his career, the alternative was
a wholesale defense of protection or a
wholesale attack upon it. Rather
than risk the system's benefits, he
candidly accepted both its questionable
and good parts.
McKinley was politically wise in making
the tariff his political hallmark.
It figured prominently in almost every
national campaign between 1880
and 1896. In 1888 it apparently brought
enough labor votes to the Repub-
licans in doubtful states not only to elect
Benjamin Harrison but to carry
220 OHIO HISTORY
both houses of congress. Even more
significantly, it often helped Repub-
licans control "swing" states
like New Jersey, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois,
which were passing through major stages
of industrialization.
In 1880 the Democratic presidential
candidate, General Winfield Scott
Hancock, in an unguarded moment called
the tariff "a local question."
Republicans attacked the general's
supposed ignorance, and ridicule ap-
parently helped defeat his party in a
narrow contest. But at heart Hancock
was right, for the tariff was at least a
series of essentially local questions.
What one section wanted protected,
another section wanted duty free.
Within the protectionist camp, importers
wanted raw materials free and
finished goods protected. Farmers wanted
free agricultural implements
and materials, and protected produce.
Workers wanted protected industries
and cheap goods. Reformers tended to
protect products from their own
areas and penalize others. The
Republican party shrewdly fashioned from
this confusion a tariff ideology that at
least seemed national in scope by
admitting these interests into its
coalition. This brought into the party
mutually dependent groups, which greatly
helped it dominate national
politics during most of the period from
Lincoln to Wilson. Especially
between 1880 and 1910, the party
coalition of urban workers, farmers,
businessmen, and professional groups,
hinged in large measure on the
appeal of tariff protection and the
prosperity it symbolized to millions of
people.
McKinley understood the appeals of
protection more than most politi-
cians. His district mirrored the
American economy in microcosm. In Car-
roll, Columbiana, Mahoning, and Stark
counties, he encountered farmers
and workers, rural and urban attitudes,
immigrants and older American
stock. He saw a great variety of
economic interests at work, including steel,
shipping, wool growing and processing,
farming, and mining. He saw that
these interests must be harmonized if
the whole system were to expand.
The variety of interests in his district
and throughout Ohio explained
much of McKinley's career and political
attitudes. He was always cautious,
given to compromise, and unwilling to
alienate support with ringing
declarations on issues he knew were
impossible to enact. He preferred
results to rhetoric. This caution, too
often written off as timidity, was
common to "the Ohio men" like
James A. Garfield, John Sherman, and
McKinley, who played leading roles in
national politics throughout the
whole era.
McKinley was never an arch-conservative
Republican. In congress he
supported antitrust measures, civil
service reform, civil rights programs,
and differed from many conservative
Republicans in his views on the
government's role in the economy. But he
was noted most as a harmonizer
and conciliator who got things done with
a minimum of friction. Tariff
protection was the basis of his
nationalistic thinking. It was practical in
allying political interest groups, and
to him it insured the greatest pros-
perity and harmony for the largest
number of people. In this he was a
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 221
spokesman of his time, for he touched
the needs and issues of an indus-
trializing nation.
McKinley quickly gained the attention
and favor of powerful figures
like William D. "Pig Iron"
Kelley of Pennsylvania, dean of Republican
protectionists. His personal charm and
gift for harmonizing diverse views
combined with his political philosophy
to raise him rapidly within the
Republican congressional power bloc. He
spoke frequently on the tariff
question, and gained some national
attention in the early 1880's when the
Arthur administration proposed a
scientific revision of the whole protective
system. McKinley supported the
president's proposed tariff commission,
which he understood would modify rather
than attack protection.l9 He
did not propose any radical downward
revision, but his acceptance of the
idea of scientific management set
McKinley apart from the more conserva-
tive Republicans of the eastern seaboard
and New England, who bitterly
contested any revision. It also marked
his first downward step from
ultra-protectionism.
The tariff commission toured the country
taking testimony from a
variety of interests, and recommended to
congress in December 1882 a
substantial downward revision of the
schedules. In the following four
months a heated and confused debate amid
the crosscurrents of local
interests and outdated emotionalism
produced the "Mongrel Tariff" of 1883.
McKinley opposed the act because of
serious cuts in the wool schedule,
an industry crucial to his state. He
fell back on the standard protectionist
argument that the government revenue
surplus should be reduced by cuts
in excise taxes. Lower tariff rates
would actually stimulate imports and
increase the revenue surplus, while
denying protection vital to some areas
of the economy.
The Mongrel Tariff satisfied neither
party, and was a specious respite
in the tariff debate that was now
gaining momentum. In April 1884
Democratic Congressman William R.
Morrison of Illinois introduced a
bill to reduce all tariff rates twenty
percent. McKinley attacked the meas-
ure as "the invention of
indolence" and led in defeating it. He shrewdly
noted that this Democratic idea refuted
scientific management, which
Morrison's party had presumably honestly
advocated only the preceding
year.20
Grover Cleveland and a revitalized
Democracy with national power for
the first time since the Civil War posed
a serious threat to protection
after 1885. But the new president's
party remained divided on the issue,
and he was reluctant to touch the
problem until late in his first term when
he saw its political potential. By 1887
Cleveland was convinced that the
tariff enriched some people without
commensurate benefits to the masses,
and that it was the source of Republican
political power. In December 1887,
ignoring the threat of a division in his
own party and possible defeat for
reelection in 1888, he devoted his
entire annual message to an unprec-
edented examination of the tariff. He
counseled reduction both to remove
222 OHIO HISTORY
inequities in the system and to end the
revenue surplus that idled capital
and tempted congress to wasteful
expenditure. He hoped that congress
would rise above localism and act
speedily, remarking in a famous phrase:
"It is a condition, not a theory,
which confronts us."21
Though Cleveland was not a free trader
and proposed gradual lowering
of many duties, his action signaled a
fierce tariff war. The Democrats
sponsored Texan Roger Q. Mills's bill in
the house, proposing substantial
reductions in most industrial rates, but
conceding a good deal to agricul-
tural interests, especially in the South.
Mills produced the bill without
public hearings, hoping to pass it
before the election campaign began. In
April 1888 McKinley attacked the bill in
a strongly worded minority
report that was widely circulated in the
East and Midwest as a pamphlet.
This spirited defense of protection
brought him fresh national attention,
and made him a dark horse contender for
the Republican nomination. He
was not a candidate, however, and first
supported John Sherman, and
then campaigned actively for the
nominee, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana.
In the campaign that followed, he toured
widely and spoke effectively on
the tariff and prosperity theme. The
close victory in November apparently
hinged on the tariff question, for the
Republicans carried several doubtful
industrial states by emphasizing it.
The Republicans controlled both houses
of congress and the presidency
during the fifty-first congress, meeting
from 1889 to 1891, and the session
promised to be both bitter and lengthy.
Thomas B. Reed defeated McKinley
for the house speakership, and the
Ohioan became chairman of the power-
ful ways and means committee and the
administration's house floor leader.
He quickly held tariff hearings to
redeem the party's election promises,
and hoped to pass a new law without the
usual delay that disturbed
business.22
McKinley apparently did not favor
blanket upward revision. He per-
sonally wished to reduce the revenue
surplus and afford more protection
to certain industries like wool under
slightly higher rates. To modify
many of these new rates, Secretary of
State James G. Blaine, with
President Harrison's support, devised a
reciprocity program. He first
asked congress to let the president
negotiate executive agreements with
Latin American countries on certain
goods.23 This was a continuation of
Blaine's old dream of hemispheric
prosperity and solidarity through free
trade, loosely labeled "Pan
Americanism."24 McKinley was interested,
partly because he had long admired
Blaine's ideas. But other ranking
Republicans suspected the proposal as an
indirect assault on the whole
protective system, and the house bill
did not provide for reciprocity. Blaine
impatiently withdrew from the fray, and
waited until the measure went
to the senate to resume his arguments.
McKinley reported his bill to the house
on May 7, 1890, in a lengthy
speech that defended the bill's novel
features. It provided free raw sugar
to reduce the revenue surplus. To
protect the domestic market, the federal
government was authorized to pay a
bounty to American sugar producers.
The bill provided a full agricultural
schedule to answer Democratic argu-
224 OHIO HISTORY
ments that protection benefited only the
industrial North. The most con-
troversial part of the bill levied a
duty on tin plate, not then produced
in the United States, though large
quantities were imported for canning
and other industries. The Republicans
wished to foster not an infant but
an embryo industry by insuring it a
domestic market. Though the Demo-
crats bitterly contested the bill, it
passed by a strict party vote under
McKinley's guidance and speaker Reed's
iron rules, and went to the
senate.25
Republican hopes for speedy action there
faded under the combined
assaults of westerners demanding special
favors for silver,26 and the
suspicions of conservative Republicans
that the bill was not protective
enough. Passage of the Sherman silver
purchase act in July 1890 enabled
the upper house to reach the tariff, but
other questions intruded and un-
limited debate threatened to protract
the session without action. Blaine
returned to the fight and after much
persuasion secured a reciprocity
amendment. His first plan was abandoned,
and the final program allowed
the president to impose duties on
an enumerated list of South American
goods if the countries involved did not
reduce their own duties on American
goods. Weak as it appeared, it was at
least a beginning.
McKinley at first distrusted Blaine's
reciprocity idea, but he soon ac-
cepted the secretary's view because of
Blaine's persuasion, the logic of
his argument, and the plan's real
merits.27 McKinley now questioned
higher rates for some "infant"
industries. The rush of lobbying irritated
him, and he saw that the final product
of any tariff debate was a question-
able hodge-podge of compromises too
often reflecting local politics rather
than national economics. He also saw
that reciprocity could extend trade
and benefit the whole nation. It was a
mark of his liberal viewpoint and
willingness to change that he now
realized the need of new outlets for
increasing American production.
The more he studied reciprocity and all
it implied, the more attractive
it became. It appealed to both political
and economic good sense. It could
be made specific in coverage, leaving
unthreatened the viable parts of
protection. It was a shrewd means of
outflanking the ultra-protectionists
whose unreasonable stand actually
threatened protection. Effective im-
plementation of reciprocity would
silence some tariff agitation and lessen
the need for constant legislative
overhauling. It was a long-range plan
that could be steadily, subtly, and
painlessly modified and extended with
changing needs and demands both at home
and abroad. Above all, it
would allow peaceful American
penetration of many world markets, offer-
ing hope for future power and influence.
The senate and house finally agreed on
an amended version of the original
bill, and President Harrison signed the
McKinley act on October 1, 1890.
Few tariff measures ever received such
partisan abuse. Though he defended
its principle, and many of its specific
parts, McKinley himself criticized
the measure.28 He later told
a cabinet member: "You misapprehend my
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 225
attitude as to the protective tariff....
I thought then [in 1890], and think
now [in 1897], that it is for our best
interests to return gradually to a
much less drastic system of tariff
[legislation]."29 He surrendered to many
questionable pressures under the
necessities of legislative compromise, the
old curse of tariff making. "I
realized that some things were too high,"
he admitted, "but I couldn't get my
bill through without it."30
The new rates were not as unequal or
exorbitant as Democratic oppo-
nents claimed, but politics motivated
most of the increases. Wool, steel,
lumber, and other northern,
Republican-oriented interests received fresh
consideration in return for past and
future political support. The new
rates, together with increased
congressional expenditures, effectively re-
duced the treasury surplus.
In its final form the McKinley tariff
was a classic expression of pro-
tective sentiment in the late nineteenth
century. It came amid industrial
expansion and business consolidation,
and was in effect a Republican
insurance policy. The act, however,
offered four features that marked the
outer limits of protectionism: the
bounty to compensate free sugar; a full
agricultural schedule; the duty on tin
plate; and reciprocity. This last
and most important aspect warned that no
further rate increases were
likely without compensating features. In
the decades ahead it became an
important element of American foreign
policy.
Whatever its merits and faults, the
McKinley act was the focus of a
political storm that helped defeat the
Republicans in the congressional
elections of 1890, and the presidential
election of 1892. McKinley lost his
own seat in 1890, but was far from dead
politically. Elected governor of
Ohio in 1891 and 1893, he and his astute
manager, Marcus A. Hanna,
began the presidential boom that brought
him nomination and election
in 1896. It was often said that Hanna
made him president, and McKinley
was the last to deny his friend's
political sagacity. But the Ohioan could
never have reached the White House
without being identified with a lead-
ing national issue. His tariff record
made him appealing to large sections
of both business and labor, and his name
was a household word throughout
the populous East and Midwest long
before 1896.31
True to its campaign pledges of 1892,
the victorious Cleveland adminis-
tration began tariff reform in the fall
of 1893 that was as disastrous
politically as the panic of 1893 was
economically. Protectionist Democrats,
Cleveland's political ineptitude, and
depression produced a tariff law that
pleased no one, the Wilson-Gorman act of
1894. McKinley's opportunity
lay in the Democrats' disaster, and
Republicans cried that "tariff tinker-
ing" had set off the depression.
The hard times that blighted the land
throughout Cleveland's second term
enhanced McKinley's glamor as the
supposed architect of protected
prosperity. During his four year governor-
ship he spoke throughout the country,
consistently emphasizing protected
prosperity and widening world markets.
He bitterly assailed the Demo-
crats for dropping reciprocity in their
measure of 1894, and assured
powerful business and labor groups that as president he would work to extend overseas markets. The United States was producing more than it could apparently absorb, and reciprocity was the easiest and most profitable way to sell this surplus and avoid future depressions. "We want a reci- procity which will give us foreign markets for our surplus products and in turn that will open our markets to foreigners for those products which they produce and we do not," he told a group of businessmen in 1895.32 Once nominated in June 1896, McKinley hoped to sharpen the prosperity issue in a tariff campaign, avoid the divisive silver question, and allow the Democratic party to die of its own internal disorders. Bryan and free silver ruined these careful plans and forced the tariff into the background.33 But McKinley did not forget the issue. "Get your [tariff] army all ready for the battle," he wrote a friend. "There will be work for them to do and they can get to work with the full assurance of a sweeping victory."34 His strategy of emphasizing sound currency until the last weeks of the campaign, and then switching to the larger prosperity issue centering on the tariff, was sound. Many wavering midwestern Republicans dis- trusted Bryan's low tariff record.35 In the Far West, silver men feared protection's appeal.36 McKinley also realized that many Gold Democrats |
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 227
would swallow his own high tariff record
rather than Bryan's free silver
medicine.37
McKinley's election was a triumph for
the gold standard and tariff pro-
tection, twin symbols of a new
industrial nation. Between November and
March 1897, as president-elect, he
assisted his friend Nelson Dingley of
Maine in outlining the new tariff
measure that would be his administra-
tion's first order of business. Congress
acted quickly in special session
after his inauguration, and the house
passed the Dingley bill on March 31.
On the whole, it offered lower rates
than those in the McKinley act and
in some cases followed the Wilson-Gorman
schedules. Much of the Re-
publican leadership and public presumed
that neither McKinley nor the
men around him wanted a return to
ultra-protection. The president seemed
pleased with the house bill, and used
his prestige and patronage freely
to help pass it.38
As usual, however, the senate threatened
to raise the house bill's rates.
Members of the upper house were always
more powerful and less subject
to presidential control than
representatives, and spoke for potent local
interests demanding higher protection. Senator
Nelson Aldrich of Rhode
Island, beginning to understand world
trade and the role of American
tariff policy in economic expansion,
counseled moderation. "Industrial
conditions in this country with a very
few exceptions do not demand a
return to the rates imposed by the act
of 1890," he lectured his colleagues.
And he presumably reflected the
president's wishes in opposing "the im-
position of duties which are
unreasonable and excessive."39
But the inevitable log-rolling engulfed
hopes for a moderate revision.
The Arlington Hotel, a favorite
rendezvous of politicians, swarmed with
lobbyists buttonholing congressmen, and
impressing on them the power of
the protected interests. Western
silverites entered the picture again,
threatening to overturn the thin GOP
majority in the senate unless they
received special protection on wool,
hides, and ores.40 Their demands
triggered an upward spiral of localism
that repelled even Senator Hanna.
He told die-hard protectionists they
might turn the public against pro-
tection, and assured them that McKinley
wanted no ultra-protectionist
measure: "Mr. McKinley stands for
protection, not exclusion."41 Aldrich
fell ill, and the bill's management
passed to Senator William B. Allison of
Iowa, who steadily compromised toward
higher rates. Though the final
law was unbalanced, McKinley signed it
on July 7, 1897. Senator Joseph
B. Foraker of Ohio summed up the whole
problem when he remarked
wearily: "Tariffs are guesswork
modified by compromise."42
The president initially had wanted a new
reciprocity system, but he
met a cool reception among the tariff
makers. The demand for unqualified
protection was strong, as many visiting
congressmen and senators assured
him in his office. And it did not
reflect only the commercial community:
labor as well as business favored
protection, and suspected reciprocity. New
ideas do not appeal in times of stress.
However subsequently questionable,
orthodox economic thinking dictated that
in depressions the government
228 OHIO HISTORY
should reduce budgets, maintain
"sound" currency, and protect the home
market from foreign "dumping."
As McKinley took office the country
seemed to be emerging from the
depression. Many who voted for him,
whatever their mode of making a living,
argued that it was a time to go
slow, especially in an experiment like
reciprocity. McKinley gradually re-
signed himself to a relatively weak
program, hoping and planning that
returning prosperity would highlight the
need for new markets and the
advantages of reciprocity.
The president's interest and pressure
produced a reciprocity plan that
might offset some of the new rates and
help expand foreign trade. He
impressed many senators and congressmen
with the need for new markets.
He assured visitors that he would press
this program vigorously, and would
appoint men of similar mind to
diplomatic offices wherever they could help
trade expansion. "It was McKinley's
greatest ambition, now that the
country had reached its highest
development under the protective system,
with an excess of production demanding
an outlet, to round out his career
by gaining for America a supremacy in
the markets of the world,"
La Follette remembered, "and this
he hoped to do without weakening the
protective system."43 McKinley knew
that reciprocity was also an excellent
way to instruct the people on their new
world responsibilities and oppor-
tunities. In June 1897 he told an enthusiastic
crowd that America must
build on the world-mindedness of past
statesmen like Blaine. "There is
no use in making a product if you cannot
find somebody to take it," he
said in homely logic that appealed to
both worker and businessman.44
The Dingley act authorized three kinds
of reciprocity arrangements:
(1) the president could negotiate
executive agreements with European
countries dealing with works of art,
liquor, tartar, and other minor items;
(2) he could frame executive agreements
with Latin American nations on
items like vanilla, tonka beans, and
tea; (3) with any country he could
make treaties reducing the Dingley rates
up to twenty percent in return
for similar concessions. These last
treaties had to be negotiated within
two years of the law's passage, would
operate for five years, and were
subject to senate approval.
This awkward system was the best he
could wring from a suspicious
congress, and he bought it at the price
of much maneuvering and party
risk. Despite the more pressing problems
of Cuba, Hawaii, and the res-
toration of prosperity in general, he
set to work with a will. He appointed
veteran diplomat John A. Kasson to head
a special reciprocity division
in the state department in October
1897.45 As he traveled and conferred,
the president tried to educate his
listeners on the subject and its full
ramifications.
Despite the Dingley act's limitations,
McKinley made a series of execu-
tive agreements with France, Portugal,
Germany, and Italy. He also
negotiated thirteen treaties under the
law's third section, and submitted
them to the senate, where they
languished under suspicion and indifference.
Though ranking Republicans opposed them,
one of McKinley's agents
reported that the senate would approve them
if they left committee.46
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 229
In his annual message of December 1900,
and again in his second inaugural
of March 1901, McKinley strongly
recommended the treaties. Kasson
toured the country, speaking to business
groups, assuring everyone that
neither he nor McKinley favored free
trade and that reciprocity would
benefit the whole country. Many business
groups interested in overseas
trade agreed, but it was hard to
overcome inertia and fixed partisan belief
in protection as it stood. Kasson
resigned in disgust in March 1901, saying
that he and McKinley could never
overcome senatorial opposition.47
The status of the new territory acquired
after the war with Spain
sharpened the tariff issue. Were the new
dependencies part of the United
States and thus free from tariff
regulation, or were their goods dutiable
upon entering the American market? In
his annual message of December
1899 McKinley favored free trade with
Puerto Rico. He did not discuss
the Philippine problem since the courts
were considering the application
of American laws there. His stand won
much fresh approval in congress
and among the people. But he touched an
inflamed issue. He had already
irritated many congressmen by acquiring
foreign territory, and his new
prestige and expanding authority seemed
to threaten their own power.48
Many saw this modest proposal as a fresh
assault on the protective system.
If Puerto Rico were granted free trade,
what about the Philippines and
even Cuba? The election of 1900 was at
hand, and it would be wise, they
argued, not to debate such an explosive
issue that might disrupt the party.49
The protectionists also argued that the
Puerto Ricans ought to pay through
tariff taxes a small part of the
expenditures necessary to rebuild the
island after the Spanish occupation and
the devastating hurricane of
August 8, 1899.
A welter of intricate party maneuvering
in the house first produced
a bill imposing twenty-five percent of
the Dingley rates on Puerto Rican
imports. The president reversed his
stand in favor of free trade, and
urged congressmen to support the
compromise. It was not harsh; the Puerto
Ricans could pay it. It was temporary, and
it would avoid dangerous party
bickering.50 "I know I
shall be charged with weakness, but I prefer to
endure any such charges rather than face
the future with a disunited
party," he remarked privately.51
In the senate a fresh compromise appeared,
finally levying fifteen percent of the
Dingley rates, and providing for free
trade with the island after March 1,
1902, or before if the islanders
adopted an adequate tax system.52
The whole affair embittered many
Republicans, and the president pa-
tiently bore the brunt of criticism. Had
he challenged the party recalci-
trants, he would have won a great deal
of public support. But he might
also have driven the dissidents into
bitter enmity, boding ill for future
work in reciprocity. He secured a
reasonable compromise law, and as
usual had his way quietly. Economic
recovery and sound administration
in the island enabled him to proclaim
free trade with Puerto Rico in
July 1901.
McKinley also privately promised the leaders
of the new Cuban republic
to use his influence to obtain tariff
favors for them if they would accept
230 OHIO HISTORY
the Platt amendment. Though he died
before confronting the problem,
his successor, Theodore Roosevelt,
fulfilled the pledge.53
The president's easy reelection in 1900
on the theme of a prosperous and
expanding America noticeably stiffened
his attitude. He informed visitors
that he would press for more vigorous
reciprocity programs. He had a
majority in congress, an apparent popular
mandate, powerful support
from the press, and seemed willing to
confront opponents within his
own party.54
The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo
afforded him a prime oppor-
tunity to discuss world trade, and to
notify both public and party that
he would press for trade expansion
during his second term. Late in the
summer of 1901 he began gathering data
for his speech there, and worked
on it with unusual care. On September 5,
1901, he confronted an enormous
crowd in Buffalo and presented a lesson
in elementary economics and
the realities of world politics. He
noted that commercial exclusion was
wasteful and shortsighted. To a public
growing mindful of world respon-
sibilities, he spoke a real, if often
unwelcome truth: "Isolation is no longer
possible or desirable." Despite the
nation's unparalleled prosperity, the
country must work for the future. He
called for "sensible trade arrange-
ments, which will not interrupt our home
production but which will
extend the outlets of our increasing
surplus." The day of high protection
was over. "We must not repose in
the fancied security that we can for-
ever sell everything and buy little or
nothing." Practical economics and
politics dictated a policy of commercial
expansion. "Reciprocity treaties
are in harmony with the spirit of the
times; measures of retaliation are
not."55
It was a forceful and widely discussed
speech, revealing not only his
sharpened purpose but his willingness to
educate the public and to put
pressure on opponents. He had not
reached these conclusions overnight.
Years of political experience, study,
and reflection had steadily widened
his perspective and his understanding of
the era. His realization that rec-
iprocity was a potent means of peacefully
extending American power
balanced the knowledge that domestic
industry no longer required or
deserved blanket tariff protection.
But he did not live to implement this
important policy. An assassin
struck him down the day after his speech
and he died on September 14.
There was something symbolic in
McKinley's passing after outlining a
major new approach to the tariff
question with which his name had been
synonymous for nearly a generation. He
began his career as an uncritical
high protectionist. He ended it as the
leading American exponent of a
striking long-range program of tariff
reciprocity and international trade.
Between 1877 and 1901 he had steadily
modified his beliefs, realizing that
his country and world were changing. His
growth refutes the charge
that he was ignorant, complacent, or
weak, as he is still too often pictured.
Much of McKinley's final historical
reputation depends on the success
of international trade and tariff
reciprocity as keys to world prosperity
and political stability. In the coming
decades, if trade fosters peace more
McKINLEY AND THE TARIFF 231
than politics and traditional diplomacy,
as he insisted late in his career,
his reputation should rise. He may join
the ranks of such incongruous
figures as James G. Blaine, Woodrow
Wilson, and Cordell Hull as a major
spokesman for that view.56
The tariff was the central issue of
McKinley's public life, but he pro-
gressed beyond its mere political use to
see its full meaning in world
economic and political affairs. When
protection threatened to restrict
American prosperity and power, he moved
beyond it. Wiser than many
leaders of his own party and time, he
understood that "isolation is no
longer possible or desirable." Thus
spoke the best element of statesmanship
in William McKinley, a deep
understanding that neither men nor issues
are fixed, but move forward with
history.
THE AUTHOR: H. Wayne Morgan is
an associate professor of history at the
University of Texas. He is the author of
a
recent life of McKinley, William
McKinley
and His America.