Note to the Fifth Edition

In previous editions, the narrative was brought to date by chapters on the acts of 1890, 1894, and 1897. It is now again brought to date by the addition of a chapter on the act of 1909.

One further change is made in the present edition. The chapter on “Some Aspects of the Tariff Question,” which came at the end of the volume in the third and fourth editions, is omitted. That chapter considered certain industries—the manufacture of silks, fine woollens, glassware, earthenware, the production of hemp, flax, and beet sugar—as they had developed to the year 1890. Since then, great changes have taken place, and the narrative as it stood was incomplete, and in some respects misleading. I hope before long to take these subjects up again, and to bring to date this part of our tariff history also. The pressure of other tasks makes it impossible to do so at the moment, and hence the chapter is omitted in the present edition.

Cambridge, Mass., November, 1909