But his work in the Lower House was done, and nothing could undo it. He had made a record as the champion of the protective tariff, had called back the leaders of his party to their duty, and had reinspired them with a courage which has never since faltered nor diminished. In his second term he made a national reputation as a tariff debater, and when James A. Garfield was advanced from the House, William McKinley succeeded him on the Ways and Means Committee, the most valuable man on the most important group of men in the nation.
In 1882 he began a systematic movement for the enactment of a tariff law which should be the expression of “the American idea,” and four years later that idea took form and effectiveness in the McKinley tariff bill which went into effect Oct. 6, 1886.
His enemies tried to see the rejection of his policy when he was defeated for re-election, after his bill became a law; but his return to Congress two years later was sufficient answer to that. And the law which he imprinted on the statute books of the nation was the crystallization of his people’s sober judgment as to a national policy, as to the wisest course in an economic system.
Remember that no tariff before that of the bill of 1890 had been openly and frankly advocated and adopted as an expression of the policy of protection to American industries. Every other bill of like nature had been devised with a view to raising revenue simply. Protection, the encouragement of industries, was a mere incident.
But this man stood for the policy which, he was confident, would bring the greatest good to the greatest number; would, both for the present and the future, be of most benefit to the nation.
The two systems are essentially different, though the purpose in each case, both by protectionists and free traders, was, of course, the good of the country. The aim of all men contending in that twenty-year debate was to achieve the best results for the people of the United States. But the forces for which William McKinley spoke held that the era of agriculture had passed, and that, while the farming interests might in no wise be neglected, the period of the factory had arrived. This man recognized the fact that a nation has definite eras in its life, as there are distinctive periods in the life of a man. St. Paul said: “When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I am a man, and have put away childish things.” The childish things are none the less needful and important IN THAT PERIOD; but when another period comes a different treatment will appeal. And as the ante-bellum era was the era of opening the new land, of reducing the forests and reclaiming the prairies, so now had arrived the era of manufacturing the raw material produced. And for this era of the mills, a protective tariff was an absolute essential.