Chapter IV. The Tariff Act of 1883

THE TARIFF ACT of 1883 made the first general revision since the Civil War, apart from the abortive horizontal reduction of 1872. After the crisis of 1873, little or nothing was heard about the tariff. Currency questions came into prominence during the period of depression. The successful resumption of specie payments in 1879, and the revival of prosperity which set in at the same time, finally diverted public attention from the monetary situation; and the same set of causes contributed to centre attention once more on the tariff system. The revival of activity in 1879 and the years following caused a great increase in imports, and so a great increase in the customs revenue. For several years after 1879, the surplus revenue was on the average over a hundred millions annually. The redundant revenue compelled a revision of the customs duties, and it was inevitable that not only the financial but the economic aspects of the tariff should once more become prominent.

The connection between tariff legislation and the state of the revenue has indeed been almost constant in our history. In 1842 an empty treasury was followed by the passage of a high protective tariff. In 1857 an overflowing revenue caused a reduction of the duties. In 1861 the Morrill tariff was passed, partly in order to make good a deficit. During the war the need of money led to the act of 1864. The ten per cent. reduction of 1872 was called out largely by the redundant revenue; its abolition in 1875 was excused by the falling off in the government income. The protectionist acts of 1824 and 1828 and the so-called revenue act of 1846, stand practically alone as general measures little affected by the state of the revenue at the time. Since the Civil War, the financial situation has usually given the occasion for changes in the tariff rates; and this is true of the act of 1883, as well as of the acts of 1890 and 1897.

In 1882 Congress passed an act for the appointment of a Tariff Commission, which was to report at the next session of Congress what changes it thought desirable. The majority in Congress then was protectionist, and of the gentlemen appointed by the President on this commission a majority were advocates of high protection; while no member could be said to represent that part of the public which believed a reduction of the protective duties to be desirable. Mr. John L. Hayes, the secretary of the Wool Manufacturers Association, was president of the commission. Its report was laid before Congress at the beginning of the session of 1882–83. At first no action on this report or on the tariff seemed likely to be taken; for the House, in which revenue bills must originate, was unable to agree on any bill. But the House having passed a bill for the reduction of some of the internal taxes, the Senate tacked to this bill, as an amendment, a tariff bill, based, in the main, on the recommendations of the Tariff Commission. When this bill came before the House the protectionists again succeeded, as in 1872, in obtaining a parliamentary victory. By an adroit manœuvre they managed to have it referred to a conference committee.¹ In this committee the details of the tariff act were finally settled; for the Bill, as reported to the Senate and House by the conferees of the two bodies, was passed by them and became law. The object of the manœuvre was to check the reduction of duties as it appeared in the Senate bill; and this object was attained. The changes made by the conference committees were, as a rule, in a protectionist direction. The duties on a number of articles were raised by the committee above the rates of the Senate bill, and even above the rates which the House had shown a willingness to accept. The consequence was that the tariff act, as finally passed, contained a much less degree of reduction than the original Senate bill; and it was passed in the Senate only by a strict party vote of 32 to 31, while the original Senate bill had been passed by a vote of 42 to 19.²

In taking up the provisions of the act of 1883, it will be best to consider first those cases in which an increase in the duties was made. Changes of this sort were made in a considerable number of cases, and are significant of the general character of the measure. To begin with, the duties on certain classes of woollen goods were raised. On most woollens the figures were lowered; though, as will be seen, the reduction in these cases was not such as to bring any benefit to consumers. But on certain classes of woollens, on which a reduction of duty, if made, would have been of real importance, the duties were advanced. This was the case with dress goods made wholly of wool. Under the act of 1867 such goods had paid a maximum duty of eight cents per yard and forty per cent. The forty per cent. rate on these goods had already been above the general ad-valorem duty of thirty-five per cent. established by the act of 1867. Nevertheless the act of 1883 increased the duty on these goods to nine cents a yard and forty per cent. The Tariff Commission had even recommended twelve cents a yard and forty per cent. Goods of this class were, and still are, the largest single item in the importations of woollens into the United States. They are made to no very great extent by the domestic manufacturers. The new duty was intended to enable the latter to engage profitably in making them; since the old duty, though it amounted in all to more than sixty-five per cent. on the value of the imports, had not sufficed for this purpose. The increase in the specific duty was not supposed to be necessary to give more effective compensation for the wool duty; in fact, as we shall see, the duty on wool was slightly lowered, so that the compensating duty, if changed at all, should have gone down. The new duty was a concession to the demand of the manufacturers for still further protection.³ It did not attain its object; all-wool dress goods continued to be imported, and few, if any, were made at home; and in time a still further increase of duty was asked, and at last was granted in the tariff act of 1890.

Next to dress goods, such as were discussed in the preceding paragraph, the class of woollens of which the importations were largest were the finer grades of cloths and cassimeres. The importation of these went on steadily in large quantities. Their production was carried on in this country only to a limited extent. It is not surprising, therefore, to find here also a rise of the rates in the act of 1883. Cloths were divided into two classes: those costing more and those costing less than eighty cents per pound. The latter, costing less than eighty cents, were admitted, as before, at an ad-valorem duty of thirty-five per cent. But the former, costing more than eighty cents per pound, were made to pay forty per cent. The specific compensating duty was reduced somewhat in both cases, in connection with the lower duties on wool, which will presently be discussed; but the ad-valorem rate, that which is avowedly protective, was increased. This increase also did not have the desired effect; importations continued in large volume; and here again a further advance in duties was asked and obtained in 1890.

A change of almost the same kind was made in the duties on cotton goods. Here also the duty was lowered on the common grades of goods; and on these grades the reduction was again a purely nominal one. But on other grades of cotton goods, whose importation still continued, and on which a decrease in the duty would have caused some lowering of prices and relief from taxation, there was no reduction, but an increase. The duty on cotton hosiery, embroideries, trimmings, laces, insertings, had been thirty-five per cent. under the old law. In the act of 1883 it was made forty per cent. The duty of thirty-five per cent. had been imposed during the war, in 1864, at a time when raw cotton was taxed, and the manufactured cotton also paid a heavy internal tax. This rate had remained unchanged from 1864 till 1883, notwithstanding the abolition of the internal taxes. The importance of the new duty of forty per cent. is clear only when we know that imports of cottons consist chiefly of goods of the class on which the duty is raised. About two thirds of the cottons imported became subject to the increased duty.

The process by which the protective system has gradually been brought to include almost every article, whatever its character, whose production in the country is possible, is illustrated by the history of the duty on iron ore. This most raw of raw materials had paid in 1861 a duty of ten per cent. as an unenumerated article; and the rate had not been changed during the war, since the article was not one likely to be imported or to yield revenue. In 1870, when the protective principle, as we have seen, was applied with greater strictness in various directions, the duty was raised to twenty per cent. In later years iron ore began to be imported in considerable quantities, especially from Spain; and the duty was raised in 1883 to seventy-five cents per ton, or about thirty-five per cent. on the value.

Still another instance of the advance of duties in the new act was in the rates on certain manufactures of steel. Here, as has so often happened, the increase was concealed under what was in appearance merely a change in classification. The duties on steel ingots, bars, sheets, and coils had been, until 1883, those fixed in the tariff of 1864,—from two and one quarter cents to three and one half cents per pound, varying with the value of the steel. The act of 1883 reduced these duties slightly, making them from two to three and a quarter cents per pound. But previous to 1883 “steel, in forms not otherwise specified,” had been admitted at a duty of thirty per cent. Under this provision, which had been in force since 1864, a number of articles, like cogged ingots, rods, pistonrods, steamer shafts, and so on, had paid only thirty per cent. The act of 1883, however, specifically enumerated these and other articles, and put them in the same schedule with steel ingots and bars,—that is, compelled them to pay a duty of from two to three and a quarter cents a pound. The effect was a considerable rise in the duties on the newly enumerated articles.

These examples indicate the mode and the extent in which the protective system was extended in the act of 1883. As a rule, duties were advanced on protected articles of which importations continued in considerable volume. The advance was by no means universal, being affected, as our tariff legislation so often has been, by the haphazard manner in which the details of the measure were finally settled. But it was made in so large a number of important cases as to give the act a distinctly protectionist flavor. Such extensions of the protective system probably were not at that time expected or desired by the public. The Tariff Commission had been given the task of revising the tariff “judiciously.” The rates recommended by it were declared to effect a general reduction of twenty per cent. or more, and the declared object of the leaders in the dominant party was to make a reform in the tariff system. Reform then was still understood to mean reduction, and real reduction, in the protective duties; and an actual increase in rates, such as we have seen on cottons, woollens, and other articles, was no part of what the public expected or the act professed to do. In truth, these changes were made in good part without plan or consistency, as so many details have been settled in our statutes: a result inevitable from the absence, in our system, of concentrated responsibility for the details of legislation. Some advances were proposed by the Tariff Commission, others by the House and Senate Committees; some by amendments in the House, others by amendments in the Senate; not a few, as was noted above, were finally settled in the Conference Committee. In many cases, they were half concealed by changes in classification, or coupled with reductions of other articles in the same schedules. Had a separate bill been brought forward, proposing the higher duties contained in the act, it certainly could not have passed.

We may turn now to an examination of the cases in which duties were reduced in 1883.

The schedules in the tariff which have the greatest effect on the welfare of the country are those fixing the duties on iron and wool; and to these we will first give our attention. The change in the duty on wool was sufficiently simple. The ad-valorem rate was taken off. The duty of 1867, it will be remembered, had been, on wools costing less than thirty-two cents, ten cents per pound plus eleven per cent. ad valorem, and, on wools costing more than thirty-two cents, twelve cents per pound plus ten per cent. ad valorem. These ad valorem rates of eleven and ten per cent. were taken off, and the rates left simply at ten and twelve cents per pound. In regard to the greater part of the wools raised in the United States, this reduction was purely nominal. It left the duty on the cheaper grades of wool, raised in Texas and in the Territories, at a point where it was still entirely prohibitory. So far as concerns the higher grades of wools, such as are raised in Ohio and neighboring States, the reduction was real, though so small in amount that it practically left the situation unchanged.⁴ On carpet wools the duty was reduced from the former rates of six and three cents a pound, to five and two and a half cents. These wools are practically not raised in the United States at all; and the reduction on them was again real, though slight.

On the whole, the changes in the duty on this raw material indicated a desire to make concessions to the opponents of protection. Greater reductions would probably have been made but for the fear of arousing among the wool growers a feeling of opposition to the protective system as a whole. Little can be said in favor of the duty on wool; and even on strictly protectionist grounds much can be said against it. Notwithstanding the cumbrous machinery of compensating duties, it undoubtedly has a hampering influence on the wool manufacture, and has been one factor, though perhaps not the most important, in confining this industry to the limited range that is so often complained of. As a tax on raw materials, it tends to bear with heavier weight than would be the case with the same duty on a finished product; since it is advanced again and again by the wool dealer, the manufacturer, the cloth dealer, the tailor, each of whom must have a greater profit in proportion to the greater amount of capital which the wool duty and the higher price of wool make it necessary for him to employ. So strong and so clear are the objections to duties of this kind that hardly another civilized country, whatever its general policy, attempts to protect wool.⁵

Moreover, the reduction of a duty of this kind can take place with exceptional ease. Wool is not produced, as a rule, in large quantities, by persons who devote themselves exclusively to this as a business. It is mainly produced by farmers, whose chief income comes from other sources, and on whom a reduction of duty and a fall of price would fall with comparatively little weight. In the Western States and Territories, it is true, wool is grown on large sheep ranches, by producers with whom it is not a subsidiary business. But the qualities of wool grown there are least affected by the duty. While the price of Territory wools is probably higher than the price of similar wools abroad, it is by no means higher by the full extent of the duty. The argument for the consideration of vested interests is consequently less strong than in the case of manufactures in which a large plant is invested, and where the interests of a large body of workmen are involved in the retention of things as they are.

We turn now to the reductions of duty on woollen goods, which would naturally follow the lower duty on wool. It has been seen that the ad-valorem, or protective, duty was not decreased at all, and that on the finer classes of woollens it was increased from thirty-five to forty per cent. But the specific, or compensating, duty was reduced from fifty cents to thirty-five cents a pound. The woollens duty of 1883 was thirty-five cents a pound and thirty-five per cent. on goods costing less than eighty cents per pound, and thirty-five cents and forty per cent. on goods costing more than eighty cents. The lowering of the specific duty was in part called for by the reduction of the duty on wool; but the decrease was somewhat larger than the reduced duty on the raw material made necessary. The compensating duty in the new act was fixed on the assumption that no more than three and one half pounds of wool are used in making a pound of cloth; whereas the act of 1867, it will be remembered, was framed on the basis of four pounds of wool to the pound of cloth. This may be called a tacit confession that the compensating duty of 1867 had been excessive; and the new arrangement took away some of the protection which was formerly given by the specific duty. But the changes were more nominal than real. So far as the finer grades of woollens were concerned, it was more than offset by the increase in the ad-valorem duty from thirty-five to forty per cent. So far as the cheaper grades of woollens were concerned, it had no real effect. The duty on these was prohibitory before, and it remained prohibitory. Such a change has no effect on trade or prices, and brings no benefit to consumers. Precisely similar is the state of things in regard to flannels, blankets, and similar goods. On these also the specific duty was reduced, on the cheapest grades from a rate of twenty cents a pound to rates of ten and twelve cents. But the new rates were still high enough to shut out importation, and brought about no change beyond that of the figures on the statute-book.⁶

Changes of precisely this kind are to be found in other parts of the act of 1883. The rates on the cheap grades of cotton goods, for instance, show a considerable reduction. On the lowest class of unprinted goods the duty had been five cents per yard; it was made two and one half cents. But the old duty had for many years ceased to have any appreciable effect on the prices of cotton goods. The common grades of cottons can be made, as a rule, as cheaply in this country as anywhere in the world; in fact, some of them are regularly exported in large quantities. If the duty on such cottons were entirely abolished, it is probable that they could not be imported; and it is certain that a very small duty would suffice to shut out from our market all foreign competitors in them. Under these circumstances a reduction of duty like that of 1883 could be of no effect whatever. The same holds good of almost all the various reductions in the specific duties on plain and printed cotton goods. These changes also were nominal. On the other hand, in the case of the finer cotton goods, laces, and trimmings, on which a lowering of the rates would have been of real effect, there was, as we have seen, no decrease, but an increase.

The duty on pig-iron was reduced from $7.00 to $6.72 a ton. This change was insignificant, hardly two per cent. on the foreign price of iron. A greater could have been made without danger of any disturbance of the iron trade. The same was the case with the reduction on bar-iron, which, on the ordinary grade, lowered the duty from one cent a pound to eight tenths of a cent. The reduction still left the duty high enough to prevent any lowering of prices and any effect on trade. The duties on the various forms of manufactured iron—hoop, band, sheet, plate iron—went down in much the same way. The reductions were slight in all cases, and often merely nominal. In general, the new rates on iron and its manufactures were such as to have no appreciable effect on the trade and welfare of the country.

The duty on steel rails showed a considerable reduction. The old rate had been $28 a ton; the new one was $17. If this change had been made four or five years earlier, it would have been of much practical importance; but when made, it had no effect whatever. It has already been said that, after the enormous profits made by the steel-rail makers in 1879–1881, the production in this country was greatly increased. At the same time the demand from the railroads fell off, and the huge quantities which the mills were able to turn out, could be disposed of, if at all, only at prices greatly reduced. The consequence was that the price of rails, which in 1880 was higher than the English price by the full extent of the duty of $28, fell rapidly after 1881, and brought the American price in 1885 to a point but little above the English. The new duty of 1883 was under these circumstances still prohibitory. In 1887, when a revival of railway building set in, the price of rails again went up. It is probable that at this time, when there was an active demand for rails, the decline of the duty to $17 was of real effect, preventing the American price from rising as high as it would have gone if the old duty had been retained. But the demand fell off quickly after 1887; the American price fell correspondingly, and soon became lower than the English price by an amount much less than the duty of $17. With the possible exception of the year 1887, the duty of $17 was as much a prohibitory one as the old duty of $28 had been, and the reduction on the whole was as much nominal as those in other parts of the iron schedule.⁷

Analogous in its effects to the reduction on steel rails was that on copper. The duty on this article went down from five cents, the rate imposed in 1869, to four cents a pound. The duty on copper had enured to the benefit of the owners of the copper mines of Lake Superior, aiding them to combine and fix the price of copper without fear of competition from abroad. The great profits of their mines caused them steadily to increase their product; and although much of their surplus was disposed of abroad, at prices lower than those demanded at home, the growing supply caused the domestic price slowly to fall. The discovery of large deposits of copper, in latter years, in Montana and Arizona, and the shipment to market of a great deal of copper from these sources, broke for a while the monopoly of the Lake Superior combination, and caused the price to go down still farther. Importation of copper in any considerable quantities ceased many years ago. The steady increase in the domestic supply brought the price to a point but little above the foreign price. The maintenance of the duty still enabled the combined copper producers at times to secure a higher price than they could have got without the duty; but under ordinary conditions the enormous quantities of copper yielded by the mines compelled a price to be accepted virtually as low as the foreign price.

The cases of copper and steel rails are sometimes referred to as successful applications of protection to young industries. On the surface, the object of such protection seems here to have been obtained. That the price of these articles fell after the duty was imposed, indeed proves nothing; for their prices fell the world over. But their prices fell faster than in foreign countries, and fell nearly, if not quite, to the foreign level; and a price as low as the foreign price, or lower, is the object sought by protection to young industries. This result, however, was not the consequence, in the case of copper certainly, of any stimulus given by the duty to improved methods of production. It was the result of the extraordinary richness of the copper mines, whose discovery and use was not affected by the duty, and would have brought the price down even sooner had it not been for the duty. The duty, so far from stimulating the fall in price, checked it. Much the same is true of steel rails. To be sure, here there seems to have been some stimulus to invention, and some advance by American works over the processes in use abroad; but in the main the decline in the price of rails has been due to improvements common to all countries, to the discovery of rich beds of iron ore on Lake Superior, and not least to the decline in the cost of transporting and bringing together the coal and ore for making the Bessemer iron,—factors not perceptibly affected by the duty.

Other reductions in the act of 1883 may be briefly noted. The duty on marble was fixed at sixty-five cents per cubic foot on rough marble, and at $1.10 per cubic foot on marble sawed, dressed, and in slabs. This was a slight decrease from the compound duties discussed in the preceding chapter.⁸ The duty on nickel was put at fifteen cents a pound, in place of the previous duty of twenty and thirty cents a pound. Practically all the nickel imported had come in at the duty of twenty cents; consequently the reduction was less considerable than it appeared at first sight to be. A change of greater importance was the reduction of the duty on silks from sixty to fifty per cent. In part, it is true, this was again a merely nominal change, many silk goods being as effectually kept out by a duty of fifty per cent. as by one of sixty. But a large quantity of silks were steadily imported; on these, and on goods of the same sort made in the country, the lowering of the duty meant a real decline in the burden of taxation. The situation as to silk goods is more fully discussed in later parts of this volume, and need not now further engage our attention. The reduction of 1883 was as great as could have been expected, and was in marked contrast with the advances made in the duties on finer cotton and woollen goods. The same contrast appears in the reduction of the duty on finer linens from forty to thirty-five per cent. On a considerable number of other articles also reductions were made; the reductions being usually slight, yet sufficient in number to indicate a disposition to concede something to those who called for a curtailment of the protective duties.

The duties on a number of agricultural or mainly agricultural products, such as beef and pork, hams and bacon, lard, cheese, butter, wheat, corn, and oats were left unchanged in the act of 1883. The duty on barley was somewhat lowered at the request of the brewers of beer; and that on rice also was slightly reduced. But almost all of these products were charged with the same rates as in previous years. It is needless to say that the duties on them have no effect whatever, except to an insignificant extent on the local trade across the Canadian border. The duties were left unchanged in order to maintain the fiction that the agricultural population secured through them a share of the benefits of protection. The reductions in this schedule, on barley and on rice, affected almost the only products on which the duties in fact were of any advantage to the agricultural producer or of any disadvantage to the consumer. In this regard, as in others, there was a sharp contrast between the legislation of 1883 and that which followed it in 1890 and 1897.

Enough has been said of the details of the act of 1883. Its general character cannot be easily described; in truth, it can hardly be said to have any general character. On the whole, it may be fairly described as a halfhearted attempt on the part of those wishing to maintain a system of high protection, to make some concession to a public demand for a more moderate tariff system.⁹ Some duties were increased, some lowered; nor was any consistent policy followed. Some raw materials, like wool and pig-iron, were admitted at slightly lower rates; others, like iron ore, were charged with higher rates. The same incongruities appear in the duties on more finished goods; though as to these it may be said that the reductions were generally nominal, rarely of real effect. Looking at the tariff system as a whole, it retained, substantially unchanged, the high level of duties reached during and after the Civil War. No new line of policy was entered on, in one direction or the other; and it remained for the act of 1890, the next step in our tariff history, to begin a sharp and unmistakable movement in the direction of still higher protection. That measure will be the subject of the next chapter.

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¹ This manœuvre was a curious example of the manner in which the rules of Congress are manipulated in order to affect legislation. A two-thirds vote, by the existing rules, was required to bring the Senate bill before the House. A two-thirds majority in favor of the bill could not be obtained; though it was probable that on a direct vote a majority in its favor could have been got. The protectionists wished to have the bill referred to a conference committee, which would probably act in the direction desired by them. For this purpose a resolution was introduced by Mr. Reed, of Maine, providing for a new rule of the House, by which a bare majority was to have power to take up a bill amended by the Senate for the purpose of non-concurrence in the Senate amendments, but not for the purpose of concurrence. By the passage of this rule a majority of the House could take up the tariff bill, and then refuse to concur in the Senate amendments; but under this rule the amendments could not be concurred in. There was, consequently, no possibility of passing the tariff bill in the shape in which it came from the Senate. The bill had to be referred to a conference committee; and that committee, as the text states, the details of the bill were settled. The Reed rule, though made a permanent rule of the House, was passed merely in order to attain this object.

² Mr. Morrison, in 1884, said: “The office and duty of a conference committee is to adjust the difference between two disagreeing houses. This House had decided that bar-iron of the middle class should pay $20 a ton; the Senate that it was to pay $20.16 a ton. The gentlemen of the conference committee reconciled this difference—how? By raising bar-iron [of this class] above both House and Senate to $22.40. The Tariff Commission reported that the tariff on iron ore should be 50 cents a ton. The Senate said it should be 50 cents a ton. The House said it should be 50 cents a ton. Gentlemen of the conference committee reconciled the agreement of the House, Senate, and Tariff Commission into a disagreement, and made the duty on iron ore 75 cents a ton. The gentlemen of the conference did a similar service for the great corporation of corporations, the Iron and Steel Association, by giving it a tax of $17 on steel rails, which the house had fixed at $15 and the Senate at $15.68 per ton.” Quoted in Nelson’s “Unjust Tariff Law,” pp. 22, 23. Cf. remarks to the same effect by Senator Beck, who was a member of the conference committee—Cong. Record, 1883–84, p. 2786.

The conferrees for the Senate were Messrs. Morrill, Sherman, Aldrich, Bayard, and Beck; for the House, Messrs. Kelley, McKinley, Haskell, Randall, and Carlisle. All but three (Bayard, Beck, and Carlisle) were strong protectionists.

³ The Tariff Commission, in its “Report” (p. 31), said: “The new clause in relation to all-wool merino goods is a new provision, and has in view the introduction of fabrics never yet successfully made in this country. Many of these goods constitute staple fabrics * * * and their manufacture would be a desirable acquisition to our national industry.” The duties of the act of 1883 on wool and woollens were discussed in detail by Mr. Hayes in Bulletin Wool Mf., xiii., 1–13, 80–128.

⁴ The duty in the act of 1883 was ten cents on wool costing thirty cents or less, and twelve cents on that costing more than thirty cents. The change (in the line of division, according to value) from thirty-two to thirty cents was not without importance; and, as far as it went, it evidently tended to neutralize the reduction. See the Bulletin Wool Mf., xii., 11, 109.

⁵ Not only England, but countries like France, Germany, Austria, Italy, which have applied protective duties in recent years, admit wool free.

⁶ Complaint was made that the act of 1883 reduced the duties on goods more than the duties on wool. See Mr. Hayes’s articles in Bulletin Wool Mf., vol. xiii. This was certainly the case with worsted goods, which were admitted at specific duties not sufficient to compensate for the duties on wool. The mistake in adjusting these duties was made bv Mr. Hayes himself, in the bill framed by the Tariff Commission. It led to a long struggle on the part of the manufacturers to get a construction of the act of 1883 making worsteds dutiable as woollens. The Democratic administration of 1885–89 refused to adopt such a construction; the Republican administration in 1889 did so, but the courts, when a case was tried before them, promptly decided that the remedy was not to be found by misconstruing the statute; and in 1890 a special act was passed, in advance of the general tariff act of that year, making worsteds dutiable as woollens. A good brief statement of this episode is in the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury far 1887, p. 35. The Bulletin Wool Mf. is full of it from 1886 to 1889, and a detailed account of the last steps in 1889 is in vol. xx. The special act is in 26 Statutes at Large, p. 105.

⁷ For figures as to the production and prices of steel rails, see Appendix VI.

⁸ See p. 191.

⁹ Mr. John L. Hayes, the President of the Tariff Commission, writing more particularly of the new duties on wool and woollens, said, shortly after the passage of the act; “Reduction in itself was by no means desirable to us; it was a concession to public sentiment, a bending of the top and branches to the wind of public opinion to save the trunk of the protective system. In a word, the object was protection through reduction. We were willing to concede only to save the essentials both of the wool and woollens tariff. * * * We wanted the tariff to be made by our friends—Bulletin Wool Mf., xiii., 94.