Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/682

 650 The Civil Service and the Tariff. [1882-5 a half-crazy adherent of Conkling, a disappointed office-seeker, shot the President in July, 1881. Driven by a popular outcry, Congress slowly and rather reluctantly passed an Act establishing a Civil Service Commission, and empowering the President to extend to the depart- ments the rules of appointment after competitive examination. The number of offices included was small, but the reform was fairly estab- lished; and, on this occasion, Congress did not, as ten years before, immediately undo its own work. The other question now revived was that of the tariff. This matter had been fairly prominent in 1872, but had dropped out of sight during the years of depression, until, in the years 1879 to 1885, a great surplus revenue brought it again to the front. It soon appeared that the Western States were desirous of a reduction, while the Eastern States, the seat of the country's manufacturing industries, were extremely averse from any diminution of the protection enjoyed by them for twenty years under the war tariff. At the recommendation of President Arthur, Congress in 1882 established a Tariff Commission, which took evidence, and in the next session reported a bill making some reductions. After much debate and some very sharp parliamentary management, a Tariff Bill of a strongly protective character was passed, lowering duties on a few articles where the rates still remained prohibitory, but actually increasing them upon many others. The tariff question was not, of course, laid at rest by any such measure ; and in the next Congress an attempt was made to lower all rates by 10 per cent. This failed by a narrow majority, and left the tariff question still pending in 1884, the surplus revenue continuing in spite of the panic of that year. The tariff, then, apart from the Civil Service, was the principal subject of debate between 1880 and 1884; and this leads to the consideration of parties in this period, and the manner in which the tariff question came gradually to affect them. Both parties from 1879 to 1884 showed marks of fossilisation. The questions which had caused their division were practically laid at rest ; and yet never were organisations more active, partisanship more rigid, or campaigns more vigorous. The members of each party were held together by a tradition and a loyalty akin to religious faith, which led to a fixity in party votes that made the results of State elections, except in years of unusual excitement, perfectly easy to predict. This fixity had however no relation to legislative action, and did not prevent influential members of the parties from holding opposite opinions on public questions. In elections neither party dared to commit itself, since the taking of any decisive ground for or against anything beyond the traditional issues risked the defection of a number of adherents, small in any one region but large enough, in the East or the West as a whole, to cause the loss of Congressmen or electors. The result was that each party in Congress, from 1874 onward, divided freely on every