otes of the
representatives of the Mississippi Valley and the Middle Western States,
and to an outsider the opposition of those regions looked very much
like a manifestation of selfishness and lack of patriotism, on the part
of the inland population jealous of the seaboard States. In the East,
various reasons were given at the time for the failure of the measure. I
happened myself to be travelling then through the States of the
Mississippi Valley, and I discussed the situation with people whom I
met, and particularly with politicians. The explanations which I
received fell into one of two categories. Some said: "It is true that
the Mississippi Valley and the West have little direct interest in our
shipbuilding industry, but none the less we should like to see our
merchant marine encouraged and built up. The trouble is that we have
from experience acquired a profound distrust of a certain 'gang' in the
Senate [and here would often follow the names of certain four or five
well-known Senators, chiefly from the East], and the mere fact that
these Senators were backing this particular bill was enough to convince
us Westerners that it included a 'steal.'"

Others took this ground: "The Mississippi Valley and the West believe in
the general principle of Protection, but we think that our legislation
has carried this principle far enough. We should now prefer to see a
little easing off. We do not believe that the right way to develop our
commercial marine is, first by our tariff laws to make it impossible for
us to build or operate ships in competition with other countries and
then to be obliged, in order to equalise things, to have recourse to
bounties. What we want is a modification of our law which will help us,
in the first instance, to build and to run the ships at a reasonable
price. When a bill to that effect comes along, the Mississippi Valley
will be found all right."

Not a few of the voters in the East, also cordially interested in any
plan that seemed to them promising and equitable for building up the
American commercial marine, took the ground that it was an absurdity to
build up barriers against foreign trade by enacting a tariff bill, such
as the Dingley measure, with higher duties than the country had ever
known, and then to attempt to overcome that barrier by means of bounty
measures, which must themselves constitute a fresh form of taxation on
the general public.

The mass of the people, in fact, are in sym