ement
possible at the eleventh hour. President Taft proposed a conference at
Albany; the Dominion Government accepted, and an agreement was reached
on the 30th of March, the last day of grace but one. Canada conceded
to the United States its intermediate rates on a few articles of minor
importance--china-ware, window-glass, feathers, nuts, prunes, and other
goods--and the United States accepted these as equivalent to the French
concessions. Then, to complete the comedy, Canada at once made {262}
these lower rates part of its general tariff, applying to any country,
so that the United States in the end was where it started--enjoying no
special concessions whatever. Canada had gone through the motions of
making a concession, and that sufficed.

This agreement, however, was only the beginning. President Taft, who
recognized too late that he had antagonized the growing low-tariff
sentiment in the United States by his support of the Payne-Aldrich
tariff, decided to attempt a stroke for freer trade. He proposed a
broad revision of trade relations with Canada. In negotiations which
began at Ottawa and were concluded at Washington in January 1911, an
agreement for a wide measure of reciprocal free trade was effected. It
was nearly as broad as the treaty of 1854. Grain, fruit and
vegetables, dairy products, live stock, fish, hewn lumber and sawn
boards, and many minerals were put on the free list. Meats, flour,
coal and other articles free in the earlier agreement were subjected to
reduced rates, a limited number of manufactured articles were included,
some of them Canadian and some of them American specialties. The
agreement was to be effected, not by treaty but by concurrent
legislation for an {263} indefinite period. The Canadian Government
announced that the same terms would be granted all parts of the British
Empire.

After the cabinets, the legislatures. President Taft had great
difficulty in securing the consent of Congress. Farmers and fishermen,
stand-pat Republicans and anti-administration insurgents, opposed this
sudden reversal of a traditional policy. Only by the aid of Democratic
votes in a special session of Congress was the measure adopted, late in
July. Meanwhile the Opposition in the Canadian parliament, after some
initial hesitation, had attacked it with growing force. They resorted
to the obstruction which the Liberals had practised in 1896, and
compelled the Government to appeal to the cou