Tariff Controversies
the Senate, also of the House by a large majority, and thus for two years had full control of the government in all branches for the first time since the years before the Civil War. But two years later, in 1894, the Republicans regained, by a still larger majority, control of the House and also won a plurality of the Senate.
Having thus complete control of the government in 1893 the Democrats set about revising the tariff and the result was described by their own President as one of “perfidy and dishonor." The Wilson-Gorman tariff, as it was known, was not at all a “tariff for revenue only” but was almost as much a protectionist measure as the one which it supplanted; only the duties were so shifted as to favor the industries of Democratic states. In addition it imposed an income tax which was declared unconstitutional. This measure was so objectionable to President Cleveland that he refused to sign it and let it become law without his approval. Its effects upon the industry and trade of the country were decidedly unfavorable and, coupled with the financial panic and business depression which had set in soon after the accession of the Democrats to power, it contributed largely to the political landslide which, beginning in 1894 and culminating in 1896, returned the Republican party to complete control of the government in all its branches for many years.
Bad as the Wilson-Gorman tariff was, however, it practically marked the decline if not the close of the tariff controversy between the two parties, in what was virtually—though of course not so admitted at the time—a surrender by the Democrats to the Republican principle of a protective tariff. Thereafter the only questions were the amount of protection needed and the
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