always been favourable to the double standard, and are still anxious. for and hopeful of such international agreements as will make it possible. The Bland Bill of 1878, providing for a limited monthly coinage of silver at the old ratio, not accomplishing all that was desired by the silver advocates, our legislation was rushing us headlong to free coinage and a debased currency, when the Sherman suggestion of the purchase at the market price of 4,500,000 ounces of silver a month to be represented by the issue of silver certificates, and to that extent increase the currency, was accepted by all parties as a tentative compromise. The operations of the Bill had accumulated in the Treasury vaults about 160,000,000 dollars' worth of silver at the time of the recent panic. Neither this sum nor what might be added for several years to come by the operation of the law would, under normal conditions, have materially affected the value or credit of our currency, which amounted to about 1,700,000,000 dollars.

The conditions, however, were abnormal. The Presidential election of 1892 was a surprise. Everybody thought Mr. Cleveland might go in, but very few believed that both the Senate and House of Representatives would also be carried by his friends. The country was paralysed by the plunge it had deliberately taken. Every industrial and business interest in the land was inextricably interwoven with and interdependent upon the protective system. A party had come into possession of the Government pledged to the uprooting of that system. It had declared in its platform that the principle of protection was condemned by the constitution, and that its practice was robbery and fraud. Not only was its platform the most daring and explicit utterance ever given by an American party or an American statesman for free trade, modified only by the necessities of the revenue, but the letters of acceptance of its candidates, the speeches of its orators, and the editorials of its press promised an immediate and thorough revision of the law, and the excision of every one of its protective features. Bonfires burned on the hilltops, and triumphal processions marched though the valleys, to celebrate the emancipation of the people from the tyranny of the tariff robber-barons and the inauguration of an era of cheaper goods.

6

What will you do with your victory? was the question eagerly asked from every mill and mine, from every factory and furnace, from every counting-room and banker's office, from every corporation and working-man. The answer was flat and frank: We will do what we promised if elected, and what you have specially commissioned and instructed us to carry out.' There never was so direct a mandate from a constituency to an Administration, nor an Administration which knew so well what was expected of it and what it intended to accomplish.

The business of the country at once began to adjust itself to the

proposed change. It was in an unusually conservative and healthy condition. Credits had contracted within narrow limits. There were no great institutions or enterprises in danger to precipitate trouble by their fall. But a panic is as unreasoning in the commercial world as on a field of battle. When the cry rings out 'Let every man save himself who can,' all is lost. Mr. Cleveland was elected in November 1892, and inaugurated in March 1893, and the newly elected Congress was to meet in December. The belief became general that at its first session the body politic would be strapped on the operating-table, and merciless but untrained and unpracticed surgeons would explore with a knife its heart and brain, its liver and lungs, its kidneys and stomach, and its muscles and nerves, for protection parasites. It is customary for the mills and factories to lay up large stocks of raw material and gather equally large stocks of manufactured goods for the approaching season, and for their factors and commission houses to receive and carry the latter until they are absorbed by the usual demands of the markets. The banks practically assume the whole burden by loans upon commercial paper. The fear of losses if the tariff was removed from articles which were enjoying a protection of from five to twenty-five per cent. paralysed this whole process. The market and the mill alike stood still. The banks became alarmed and refused to grant the ordinary accommodations to their customers, and depositors in fright withdrew their deposits in currency or coin, and locked them up in their own vaults.

The familiar principle that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link had a rude illustration soon after Mr. Cleveland's inauguration. The weak link was silver, though its possible danger was far in the future. Imagination takes the seat of judgment at such times, and in the popular mind the Government was on the eve of meeting its obligations, the debtor his dues, and the labourer of receiving his wages, in silver worth only sixty-eight cents on the dollar. The result can hardly be conceived by those who were not in the midst of the revolution. Exchanges ceased to exist, and the elaborate machinery of credits devised in the middle ages, and infinitely improved and enlarged since, went to pieces. The internal commerce of the United States over its rivers and canals, its great lakes and one hundred and seventy thousand miles of railroads, is twenty times larger than its foreign trade. Ninety-five per cent. of it is done by bills of exchange of various kinds, and five per cent. with currency. At least eighty per cent. of the mills, factories, and furnaces locked their doors, and two millions of people were thrown out of employment. Collections between New York and Philadelphia, only ninety miles apart, were made through express companies and by messengers with carpet bags. The demand for the repeal of the Silver Purchase Law became so loud and threatening that the President was compelled to call

Congress in extra session. Then occurred one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of parties. One half of the President's followers refused to follow his lead, and it required every resource known to power and authority to hold those who professed obedience to their elected chief. The wild horses of Mr. Gladstone obey every suggestion of the bit with the reins in the hand of that veteran able and accomplished whip; but the wild horses of Mr. Cleveland plunged and bolted at the start, nearly upsetting the national coach. If I may continue the figure, which was suggested by General Harrison, it was only by emptying the stalls of the Republican stables and putting their occupants in the traces that the first measure of the Administration, and one vital to its prestige and to the solvency and prosperity of the country, was pulled through at all.

Contrary to expectations, an immediate and full restoration of business and employment did not follow this anxiously desired repeal. A large proportion of industries resumed work, but it was either on half-time or with proportionate reduction in force, and wages were scaled down from ten to twenty per cent. It soon became apparent to the dullest intellect that no sane man or sensibly managed corporation would do more than meet the demands from day to day until it was known what the tariff legislation was to be. No one dared accumulate stocks of goods and have their value so reduced by Congress as to be sold at a loss. While business was waiting on politics, the elections came off in November in thirteen of the forty-four commonwealths of the Union for members of the Legislature and State officers. The constituencies were the same in part which had elected President Cleveland and the present Congress. Though they voted at these elections only for the local officers of their several States, the battle was fought on national issues, and upon the same lines as in the Presidential canvass the year before, in every State except New York. There the contest was complicated by local questions. The results were astounding. The educational campaign for free trade, which, after thirty years of earnest and ceaseless labour, had finally triumphed, was in less than twelve months turned into a disastrous rout. The people did not simply say, they shouted to the theorists and reformers, 'If the distant blast from your furnace dries up our resources, we will not be purified by its fire.' The State of Iowa, which, though formerly Republican, had become a Democratic State, gave an anti-Administration majority of twenty thousand; the State of Massachusetts did the same, and the State of Pennsylvania increased its Republican majorities of the Presidential Election from fifty to one hundred and twenty-five thousand.

But the State of Ohio was the accepted battle-ground. This commonwealth fairly represents our general American conditions. It is about third in rank in its output of wool, about the same in

agriculture, and about fifth in manufactures, among the States. Its industries are varied, and in iron and coal, in wood and glass, in textile fabrics and other articles, cover nearly the whole range of American production. Mr. Cleveland had come within a few hundred of carrying Ohio in 1892, and succeeded in electing one of his electors. Mr. McKinley was a Republican nominee for Governor in 1893, and not only advocated protection, but said, 'I am protection.' Mr. O'Neal, his Democratic opponent, was the author of the free trade or revenue plank in the national Democratic platform, and the best possible representative of that idea. The contest ended in the election of McKinley by eighty thousand majority, and two-thirds of the Legislature were Republicans. The constituencies of one half of the Democratic members of Congress had reversed the figures which the year before had given them their seats. The results of these elections fell like a dynamite bomb in the midst of the Democratic Congressional Committee, which was busily at work preparing the Administration Tariff Bill. They are still engaged in a desperate effort to pull together themselves and their measure.

The President, while reaffirming his views, hastened to reassure the country in his recent message to Congress that any legislation would have due regard to existing business interests and the wages of labour, and the Committee threw its doors wide open for those who wished to be heard in defence of their protective duties. The Government said in effect, 'We are opposed on principle to the worship of Diana, but, out of regard for the business and employment of our people and the prosperity of our city, we will do nothing which can injure the trade of the silversmiths of Ephesus.' The reformers abandoned their free-trade principles, and have since been discussing the details of protection. The high debate, whose teachings were one year ago so emphatically approved by the people, has fallen into the slums of compromise and bargain upon the duties which shall be increased or lowered upon each article in controversy. Free trade is a myth, and tariff, for revenue only, a shadow. Most of our industries are stagnant, and the majority of our mills, factories, and furnaces in total or partial paralysis, while the victors are experimenting with the weapons of their protectionist enemies. This singular mixture of high protection for interests too powerful to be attacked, and low duties or none for weaker ones, would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious, resulting in idle capital and unemployed labour, in diminished incomes and unprecedented bankruptcies. Their Bill, now and before it has become still more absurd in the crucible of Senate and House discussions and amendments, is both a protecting and a revenue measure. It disturbs business without changing either the policy or principles of the past.

A tariff framed to protect certain products or manufactures, as well as to secure revenue, is either within the powers delegated by

the constitution, or it is not. It is either right in theory and practice, or the reverse.

The Democratic party came into power declaring it to be unconstitutional and its enactment and enforcement robbery. Any departure from this position involves them in inextricable difficulties. The Democratic States of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee say, 'Free coal from Canada bankrupts us, therefore we must be excepted.' The Democratic State of South Carolina says the same of rice from India; Louisiana of sugar from the West Indies; and Alabama and Missouri, of iron-ore from Cuba. Then the individual Democratic Congressman, whose district by its votes in the recent election has warned him that if the particular industry upon which that neighbourhood depends for its prosperity is disturbed he is doomed to defeat, demands that the exceptions be broadened sufficiently to shelter him. If, under these conditions, the muchheralded measure which was to repeal the alleged atrocities of the McKinley Bill and curb the reputed rapacity of the tariff robberbaron ever reaches President Cleveland for his signature, he will not recognise it. It will belong to that kind of legislative legerdemain where the ambitious politician is willing to sacrifice every section of his law if his name remains on the cover.

The tariff reformers, therefore, find themselves in a position where it is equally hazardous to advance or retreat. They must do something, or confess either the falsity of their promises or the fallacy of their teachings. Such a radical reform as was originally intended they cannot carry through, and anything less is simply an affirmation of the Republican policy. In the meantime, the people, harassed with doubts and fears, losing money, or out of employment, with the impatience of despair or of hunger, are clamouring for action. Every day's delay is regarded as further evidence of incapacity for government. Under these circumstances, a miracle can scarcely pass a measure which would materially alter the miracle can prevent the return 1 25

present law, and only a ctionists to power.

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake

to return unaccepted MSS.