Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/349

 THE MCKINLEY TARIFF ACT 327 tection. Before the Civil War of 1861-65, our tariff system was comparatively moderate and simple; not by any means a tariff .based on the principles of free trade, but a tariff making a very moderate application of protection. During the colossal struggle of the Civil War, every financial resource was strained to the utmost. An enormous national debt was accumulated, a vast system of in- ternal taxation introduced, an inconvertible paper money issued to excess, and a great increase in customs taxation brought about. The protective system in the United States, it may be safely said, would never have reached its present position but for the financial pressure of the Civil War. When the war closed no one expected that any one of the financial expedients to which it led would become permanent. The debt was steadily reduced, the currency was put on a specie basis, almost all the internal taxes were abolished; but the customs taxes remain, and indeed have rather been increased. For the first ten years after the war the general expectation was that these also would be reduced. The opponents of protection take a malicious pleasure in quoting from speeches made in 1870 and 1872 by men who are now unconditional protectionists, pro- tests against the evils of high duties. The present attitude of the Republican party, committed as it is to the rigid maintenance and wider extension of the protective policy, was not clearly assumed until within the last ten years. As late as 1872, its leaders were active in trying to bring about a reduction of the customs duties; and in the.campaigns of 1876 and of 1880 the protective question played noconsmeraoe part. The United States, then, has drifted into its present position; drifted into it because the customs taxes are those whose incidence is least easily followed, which alone find strong pecuniary interests to aid them, which alone hold out the promise of aiding domestic rather than foreign industry. The process of drifting can in no way be better illustrated than by the history of the movement during the last six years, culminating in the passage of the act of last year. In 1883, a general revision of the customs duties was made. That revision was made by he Republican party, and its original object was to make reductions of the duties. The reform of the tariff, of which much was heard in those days from Republican quarters, was on all hands understood to mean a lowering of the rates of duty. In fact the Act of 1883 did make some reductions on important articles, like pig iron and wool; slight reductions, it is true, but none the less significant of what was then understood to be the popular wish. It is true also that the protectionists into