The report of the minority of the Ways and Means Committee was prepared and presented by Mr. McKinley. He had come to be recognized as the best equipped and most formidable protectionist in Congress, and the report he submitted fully sustained that opinion. From that report the following extract will still be read with profound interest:
“The bill is a radical reversal of the tariff policy of the country which for the most part has prevailed since the foundation of the Government, and under which we have made industrial and agricultural progress without a parallel in the world’s history. If enacted into law, it will disturb every branch of business, retard manufacturing and agricultural prosperity, and seriously impair our industrial independence. It undertakes to revise our entire revenue system; substantially all of the tariff schedules are affected; both classification and rates are changed. Specific duties are in many cases changed to ad valorem, which all experience has shown is productive of frauds and undervaluations. It does not correct the irregularities of the present tariff; it only aggravates them. It introduces uncertainties in interpretation, which will embarrass its administration, promote contention and litigation, and give to the customs officers a latitude of construction which will produce endless controversy and confusion. It is marked with a sectionalism which every patriotic citizen must deplore. Its construction takes no account of the element of labor which enters into production, and in a number of instances makes the finished or advanced product free, or dutiable at a less rate than the material from which it is made. ‘The poor man’s blanket,’ which the majority has made a burning issue for so many years, is made to bear the same rate of duty as the rich man’s. More than one-third of the free list is made up from the products of the farm, the forest and the mine; from products which are now dutiable at the minimum rates, ranging from seven to twenty-five per cent. and even this slight protection, so essential, is to be taken from the farmers, the lumbermen and the quarrymen.”
But it was not until the bill was put upon its passage that he rose to his greatest height as a debater and as a statesman. Men old in public life concede that the speech he made, May 18, 1888, was the greatest ever delivered on a purely economic question in the halls of the American Congress. It did more to fix the policy of protectionism unalterably upon the country than any other one influence. It did more to justify the protectionists of the past, and to pave the way for whatever great policy might come after when new occasions brought new duties, when a subsequent era should arise, than all the campaigning and all the labors in or out of Congress that the nation had known. Here are some extracts from that notable address: