such success that its promoters
thought a new political party had been born.

Agricultural discontent, growing with the hard times of 1889, had been
noticed, but there had been no means of measuring it until Congress
adjourned after the passage of the McKinley Bill and the members came
home to conduct the congressional campaign of 1890. They found that the
recent law had become the chief issue before them. The so-called popular
demand for protection, revealed in the election of 1888, had after all
been based upon a minority of the votes cast. The tariff and the way it
had been passed were used against them by the Democrats and the Farmers'
Alliance.

The act was passed so close to election day that its real influence
could not then be seen and its opponents could not be confuted when they
told of the evils it would do. Before the election of 1888, as again in
1892, Republican manufacturers frightened their workmen by threats of
closing down if free-traders won. This time the tables were turned
against them by the recital of prospective high prices.

Corrupt methods in framing the schedules furnished an influential
argument throughout the West. Even in the East the tariff reformers
asserted that undue favors had been done for greedy interests; that
manufacturers who had bought immunity by their contributions to Quay's
campaign fund had been rewarded with increased protection. The farmers
believed these charges, plausible though unprovable, for they were
disposed to believe that both the great parties were interested only in
selfish exploitation of the Government to the advantage of politicians.

In every State Republican candidates had to meet this fire as well as
the local issues. In Maine, Reed met it and was elected with enlarged
majority from a community that wanted protection. In Ohio, McKinley lost
his seat, partly from the revulsion of feeling, but more because the
Democrats, who controlled the State Legislature, had gerrymandered his
district against him. Cannon, of Illinois, who had already served nine
terms and was to serve ten more, lost his seat, and LaFollette, of
Wisconsin, whom the protectionists had made much of, was checked early
in a promising career because of an educational issue in his State.
Pennsylvania, protectionist at heart, elected the Democratic ex-governor
Pattison again in one of its revulsions against the Quay machine.

The Democrats defeated the Republicans in the East while the Farmer