Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. III.djvu/332

 280 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS sary to our manufactures. The world should be open to our national ingenuity and enterprise. This can not be while federal legislation, through the imposition of high tariff, forbids to American manufacturers as cheap materials as those used by their competitors.&quot; A tariff bill, substantially following the lines suggested by the president and providing among other things for free wool, coal, iron ore, and lum ber, was framed by the committee on ways and means, and, with the addition of free sugar and an income tax, passed the house on February 1, 1894. In the senate the bill was amended in many items, and generally in the direction of higher duties. After five months of prolonged discussion the bill, as amended, passed the senate by a small majority, all the democrats voting for it except Senator Hill, of New York. It was then referred to a confer ence committee of both houses to adjust the differ ences between them. A long and determined con test was there waged, principally over the duties upon coal, iron ore, and sugar. It was understood that a small group of democratic senators had, con trary to the express wishes and pledges of their party and by threats of defeating the bill, forced higher duties in important schedules. While the bill was pending before the conference committee the president, in a letter to Mr. Wilson, the chair man of the ways and means committee, which later