TARIFF. 



645 



salt, was repealed or even reduced, and when the see- 

 ond war with Great Britain occurred the duties were 

 doubled until three mouths alter the cessation of hos- 

 tilities. In this first period of our tariff legislation 

 there was entire agreement among our statesmen as to 

 the wisdom and propriety of the protective policy, 

 Washington and Hamilton on the one side, and Jef- 

 ferson and Madison on the other being of that mind. 

 At the same time there was prevalent a very moderate 

 idea of what the country should undertake in the way 

 of supplym;: itself with manut'acturps, and the tariff 

 omitted or placed under a mere nominal duty some of 

 the most important staples. 



It was the war of 1812 which nt onee destroyed the 

 previous unanimity of view and raised the ideas of the 

 protectionists as to the necessity and feasibility of a 

 national manufacturing system, which would make the 

 country independent of foreign supplies in case of an- 

 other war. The war itself acted as a prohibitory tariff 

 on British poods, and forced Americans to begin mak- 

 ing lor themselves what tli had been buying abroad. 

 It created the factory system on American soil, and 

 thus began the supersession of those household manu- 

 factures which had clothed our people. At its close 

 the people of the Middle and Southern States were 

 pretty well united in the belief that it would be a mis- 

 take to allow the industrial gains of the war to be sac- 

 rificed to the competitions of cheaper labor and more 

 abundant capital in Europe; and the tariff of I^SIt) 

 was enacted, in the face of the resistance of New Eng- 

 land, will; that purpose. It proved quite inadequate, 

 as its duties were too low to meet the new conditions 

 as to cheapness of production and of transportation in 

 Europe, and it was reinforced by higher duties in 18'J4 

 and 1 828, th<s latter being the highest tariff ever en- 

 acted in this country. 



In the meantime the South and New England had 

 changed places as regards the principle of a protective 

 tariff, the former because manufactures were found 

 impracticable in slave States, the latter because it had 

 begun to duert its capital and the ingenuity of its peo- 

 ple from an exclusive devotion to commerce and ship- 

 ping to manufactures. In both 1824 and 1828 the 

 amount of opposition from the South had increased, 

 and in the next decade that section had become almost 

 unanimous for free trade. This was especially tin- 

 case ailer England in 1S32 removed the protective 

 duty she had levied upon our cotton for the benefit of 

 her East anil West Indian dependencies, as she had 

 found that our longer and finer staple was indispensable 

 to her spinners if they were to compete with those of 

 America, From that time the Southern planter no 

 longer depended upon the Northern mills for a market 

 for his crop ; and he entered into a free trade alliance 

 with the English loom-lords for mutual advantage. 



In 1832 the tariff w-is revised, ami ns.-.ny of its duties 

 were reduced to conciliate the growing opposition, but 

 the result was so little acceptable to the South that 

 South Carolina, with some moral support from her 

 neighbor States, undertook to "nullify" the tariff 

 laws of the United States, and to prevent the collec- 

 tion of their duties in her ports. By the firmness of 

 Pres. Jackson this danger was averted ; but for politi- 

 cal reasons a further revision was had in 1833, and it 

 was agreed that there should be a progressive reduc- 

 tion of duties until by 1842 none of them should stand 

 higher than 20 per centum ad valorem. This reduc- 

 tion proved disastrous to our manufactures, and was a 

 landing cause of the panic of 1837, which caused a po- 

 litical revolution and brought the Whigs into power in 

 IH41. The tariff of 1X12 ranks in protective efficiency 

 beside that of 182, and it caused a revival of Ameri- 

 can industries in nil directions. 



In June of IS4f> Great Britain repealed its corn laws 

 nnd abandoned the protective principle, after enjoying 

 its benefit* fiir more than ~>o:> years. It was predicted 

 undcoi." l.-ntly expci ted by Mr. Cohden and his asso- 

 ciate* in the I :i-i:e lh..t lllU v.'uiiKI bu followed by the 



speedy adoption of free trade in all parts of the civil- 

 ized fforld. In the United States it did lead to the 

 tariff of 184f>, which placed almost all duties at one of 

 three ad valorem levels of 10, 20, or 30 per centum, in- 

 stead of the specific duties of the tariff of 1842. It 13 

 notable that Mr. Calhoun suggested as preferable the 

 sliding-scale method, by which duties should rise as 

 prices fell and rice versa, as tending to reduce instead 

 of increasing fluctuations in prices, and also to give 

 American manufacturers a better chance. The tariff 

 operated very unevenly upon our manufactures, as 

 some of them still enjoyed ample protection, while 

 others, especially those of iron and woollen goods, 

 were greatly depressed, and in many cases ruined. 

 Presidents Taylor and Fillmore urged a return to pro- 

 tective duties on the ground of the harm the industries 

 of the nation had received ; but the slavery controversy 

 occupied the time and attention ot Congress to the ex- 

 clusion of almost everything else. In 1 857 the South- 

 ern leaders even carried an amendment to a bill for a 

 slight alteration in tariff methods, which reduced the 

 duties by 25 per centum. This was followed by a 

 panic, of which it was a chief cause ; but although 

 rres. Buchanan urged the revision of the tariff in the 

 interests of our native industries his recommendations 

 passed unheeded, until at the close of his administra- 

 tion the withdrawal of Southern senators and repre- 

 sentatives of the seceding States left the Republican 

 party with a majority in both branches of Congress, and 

 this led to the adoption of the protective tariff of 1 801, 

 called the Morrill Tariff from its chief author, Hon. 

 Justin D. Morrill. 



When this tariff was adopted six States had declared 

 themselves out of the Union, Jefferson Davis had been 

 inaugurated as President of the Confederate States at 

 Montgomery, and nine days afterwards the Constitution 

 of the Confederacy was adopted, declaring that its 

 Congress should have no power to impose protective 

 duties on imports. The tariff of 1861 was a war 

 measure both in the sense of levying many duties for 

 the sake of a large revenue to the national government, 

 and in the sense of aiming to put the country in a 

 posture of defence in case of any complication with 

 Europe. It was altered by the imposition of higher 

 duties in the session of 1861^62 and in that of 1863-64, 

 and in a minor degree at various other times. Through- 

 out the period protection and revenue were equally 

 kept in view, and through its operation both these were 

 secured. The manufacturing industries grew and the 

 natural resources of the country were developed with 

 such rapidity, and the losses of population were re- 

 placed by immigration to such an extent, that the ter- 

 rible waste of war was hardly felt in an economic 

 sense, and the country came out of the most gigantic 

 civil conflict known to history richer and stronger than 

 when it began. 



With the close of the war and the reduction of the 

 burdens of national indebtedness, the work of bring- 

 ing the tariff from a war to a peace basis began. First, 

 revenue duties, such as those en tea and coffee, were 

 repealed. Then as the internal revenue taxes were 

 repealed, duties raised to compensate them were re- 

 duced correspondingly. This was effected especially 

 in 1870; but in 1883 a general revision was effected 

 after a thorough investigation of the workings of the 

 tariff through a national commission. But the accumu- 

 lation of a surplus of revenues in the national treasury 

 brought up the question of a further revision and re- 

 duction, and the majority of the House in the Fiftieth 

 Congress committed itself to that policy by passing the 

 Mills Bill, so called from its author, Hon. 11. Q. Milk 



As Pres. Cleveland had urged this policy very 

 strongly upon Congress in his annual message of De- 

 cember, 1887, and was known to have expressed his 

 approval of this particular measure, and became a 

 candidate for re-election to the presidency in 1888, the 

 election campaign of that year was accepted on both 

 1 sides as turning upon this issue. An especial feature 



