es,
therefore, he urged, is the task before Congress. "With adequate revenue
secured, but not until then, we can enter upon changes in our fiscal
laws." As the Republicans had only forty-six of the ninety Senators, and
at least four of them were known advocates of free silver, the
discretion exercised by the President in selecting the tariff for
congressional debate was the better part of valor.

Congress gave heed to the warning. Under the direction of Nelson P.
Dingley, whose name was given to the bill, a tariff measure levying the
highest rates yet laid in the history of American imposts was prepared
and driven through the House of Representatives. The opposition
encountered in the Senate, especially from the West, was overcome by
concessions in favor of that section; but the duties on sugar, tin,
steel, lumber, hemp, and in fact all of the essential commodities
handled by combinations and trusts, were materially raised.

[Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y._

PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AND HIS CABINET]

=Growth of Combinations.=--The years that followed the enactment of the
Dingley law were, whatever the cause, the most prosperous the country
had witnessed for many a decade. Industries of every kind were soon
running full blast; labor was employed; commerce spread more swiftly
than ever to the markets of the world. Coincident with this progress was
the organization of the greatest combinations and trusts the world had
yet seen. In 1899 the smelters formed a trust with a capital of
$65,000,000; in the same year the Standard Oil Company with a capital of
over one hundred millions took the place of the old trust; and the
Copper Trust was incorporated under the laws of New Jersey, its par
value capital being fixed shortly afterward at $175,000,000. A year
later the National Sugar Refining Company, of New Jersey, started with a
capital of $90,000,000, adopting the policy of issuing to the
stockholders no public statement of its earnings or financial condition.
Before another twelvemonth had elapsed all previous corporate financing
was reduced to small proportions by the flotation of the United States
Steel Corporation with a capital of more than a billion dollars, an
enterprise set in motion by the famous Morgan banking house of New York.

In nearly all these gigantic undertakings, the same great leaders in
finance were more or less intimately associated. To use the language of
an eminent authority: "T