ive item of the old tariff, and
by substituting a bounty of two cents per pound to the American
sugar-grower, which further relieved the surplus. The sugar clause was
one of the notable features of the McKinley Bill, and was closely
related to a group of duties upon agricultural imports. There had been
complaint among the farmers that protection did nothing for them. The
agricultural schedule was designed to silence this complaint.

Another novelty in the bill was the extension of protection to unborn
industries. In the case of tin plate, the President was empowered to
impose a duty whenever he should learn that American mills were ready to
manufacture it. This was an application of the principle that went
beyond the demands of most advocates of protection.

A final novelty, reciprocity, was the favorite scheme of the Secretary
of State. Blaine, in his foreign policy, saw in the tariff wall an
obstacle to friendly trade relations, and induced Congress to permit the
duties on the chief imports from South America to be admitted on a
special basis in return for reciprocal favors. McKinley, as his
experience widened, accepted this principle in full, and died with an
expression of it upon his lips. But in 1890 most protectionists inclined
toward absolute exclusion, regardless of foreign relations, and were
ready to raise the rate whenever the imports were large.

In the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill it was noticed that a third
body was sharing largely in such legislation. After each house had
passed the bill and disagreements on amendments had been reached, it was
sent to a Joint Committee of Conference whose report was, by rule,
unamendable. In the Conference Committee the bill was finally shaped,
and so shaped that the Republican majority was forced to accept it or
none. The party leaders who sat on the Committee of Conference were a
third house with almost despotic power, and were, as well, men whose
association with manufacturing districts or protected interests raised a
fair question as to the impartiality of their decisions. The Republican
reply, in their hands, to the assertion that the tariff was the mother
of trusts was to raise the tariff still higher and to forbid the trusts
to engage in interstate commerce.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The _Life of Henry Demarest Lloyd_, by C. Lloyd (2 vols., 1912) contains
an admirable and sympathetic survey of the growth of anti-trust feeling,
and should be supplemented