ter against Cleveland for his vetoes of private pensions and the Dependent Pension bill and expected pensions in recompense for their support. The President and his party, taking the same point of view as did the veterans, were prepared to pay the price. Harrison in his inaugural address and first annual message had spoken for adequate pensions and now the surplus in the Treasury offered the means. "A surplus," so Colonel Frederick Grant truly said, "is easier to handle than a deficit." 1

The Dependent Pension Bill, similar to the one which President Cleveland had vetoed, became a law on June 27, 1890. It provided that all veterans of ninety days' service in the Civil War who suffered from any mental or physical disability which was not the result of their own vicious habits and which incapacitated them for manual labor to such a degree as to render them incapable of earning a support should receive a pension ranging from six to twelve dollars a month, according to incapacity. Present pensioners might apply but no man could receive more than one pension. Rank should not be considered. Widows and minor children of those who had served ninety days, if the widow had no other means of support than her manual labor, might, on proof of her husband's death and without reference to whether death was due to service in the war, receive a pension of eight dollars a month during widowhood, and two dollars in addition for each minor child of said soldier. The widow must have been married to the veteran at the time of the passage of the act.

The number of pensioners increased from 489,725 in

1 H. T. Peck, 197.

1889 to 966,012 in 1893 and the amount of money from 89 millions to 157 millions; but the appropriation fell next year to 140 millions and ran along at about that sum until 1908.

The Act of 1890 was the last great piece of pension legislation prompted by the Civil War, until 1906 when age pensions were introduced; later, widow pensions and others were increased and length of service was taken into consideration.1

The Presidential campaign had been fought out on the tariff issue. A new tariff was now demanded and the need of it was set forth by the President in his message to Congress of December 1889. "I recommend," he said, "a revision of our tariff law both in its administrative features and in the schedules." Into no better hands than McKinley's could this business be intrusted. He first carried through a customs administrative act which provided for "the honest collection of the revenue and an honest administration of the laws." This it undoubtedly effected, but it was none the less a merit in McKinley's eyes that it also enhanced the tariff. This was, however, but the prelude to the McKinley Bill.

McKinley was sincerely devoted to a protective tariff. He concluded his speech on his bill on May 7, 1890 with: Protection "is a deep conviction, not a theory. I believe in it and thus warmly advocate it because enveloped in it are my country's highest development and greatest prosperity; out of it come the greatest gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, the widest

1 This account is based largely on a thesis prepared for me by D. M. Matteson. See also Glasson, History of Military Pension Legislation in the U. S. Written previous to Jan. 1, 1918.

1

encouragement for manly aspirations, with the largest rewards, dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety and purity and permanency of our political system depend." In a campaign speech during the previous year he had said: "They say 'everything would be so cheap' if we only had free trade. Well, everything would be cheap and everybody would be cheap. I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of hope; it is not a word of comfort; it is not a word of cheer; it is not a word of inspiration! It is the badge of poverty; it is the signal of distress." 2 When a Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, holding such a belief, went to work framing a tariff bill, no revision downward such as the situation really demanded could be expected. McKinley's associates on the Committee were able men and as thorough believers in the system as himself. It is extraordinary that men of such ability should have matured and induced Congress to pass such an Act. Its greatest merit was its symmetry. McKinley and many of his fellow committee-men understood the tariff system thoroughly and knew how to apportion the protection so that no single industry or section should get too much benefit and another too little. Helpful to this end were the open and full hearings given by the Committee to manufacturers, laborers, consumers and farmers, both free-traders and protectionists.

Undoubtedly the demands of manufacturers who had contributed liberally to the campaign fund of 1888 were

1 Speeches and Addresses, 430.

2 Ibid., 376.

3 "It was one of the strongest committees ever constituted." Among the Republican members were: J. C. Burrows of Michigan, T. M. Bayne of Pennsylvania, Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, Sereno M. Payne of New York. Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, ii. 259.

troublesome and would have been distasteful to McKinley had not his thorough belief in protection inclined him to listen sympathetically to any one representing a worthy interest that seemed to need an increased duty. The mental attitude of the manufacturers was curious; they seemed to think that if they could get an increase of duty on any article of theirs, they would obtain an increased price and profit. The result of the claims of manufacturers and of the deliberations of the Committee was an average increase of a tariff, already too high, of four per cent1- "a tariff at which," so George William Curtis said, "as many Republicans think, even Henry Clay would have blushed.” 2

3

1

As the bill left the House it increased the duty on tin plate; this increase remained when the bill was finally approved and developed the manufacture of tin plate in the United States. A certain feature of the bill revealed the clever politics of its framers. Before 1890 the farmers of the West were generally in favor of lower duties and the party or faction favoring revision downward had their allegiance. But after 1890 they became good high tariff Republicans and this was due to the protection given them in this bill. "It was," wrote Stanwood, "the first tariff act to contain a complete schedule of protective duties upon products of agriculture." 4 But the increase of the duty on raw wool was no partisan scheme. In Ohio McKinley was looked upon as the apostle of the wool growers and he took pleasure in being

1 Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance, 134.

2 Orations and Addresses, ii. 435.

"Tin plate is simply sheet iron or steel, coated with tin." Life of McKinley, Olcott, i. 170.

Amer. Tariff Controversies ii. 263.

their representative. Let us "cheerfully lend legislative assistance," he said, "to the million farmers who own sheep in the United States." 1

McKinley believed in letting in free non-competing foreign products and laying a duty on those which competed with American manufacturers; stretching a semblance of the truth to the utmost, he thought that if the tariff was a tax such a policy would compel its payment largely by the foreigner.2

The surplus troubled McKinley as it had Cleveland and Harrison and he reduced it by making raw sugar entirely free but, to recoup the native producers of sugar, he gave them a bounty of two cents a pound, "a sum equal to the duties upon foreign sugar imported into this country." 3

4

McKinley did not then believe in reciprocity, which accordingly had no place in the bill as it left the House. "We have been beaten," he declared in his speech on the bill, "in every agreement of reciprocity we have ever had with any nation of the world." But Secretary Blaine, full of the spirit of the Pan-American conference, had so keen an eye to trade with the South American countries that one must regret his impaired health and reputation. "Entre nous," wrote Bayard to Schurz on March 9, 1889, "having seen Blaine (for the first time in seven years) I am compelled to think him a very en

1 Life of McKinley, Olcott, i. 167.

2 Ibid., 163; Speeches and Addresses, 294.

Life of McKinley, 166. The Committee estimated that its recommendations would reduce the revenue from imports 61 millions, from internal revenue 10 millions, an aggregate of 71 millions; but the great part of the reduction, or 56 millions, came from making sugar free. The estimated cost of the bounty was 7 millions. Ibid., 164.

*Speeches and Addresses, 408.