Material Interests
together polled 175,370 votes, and the Prohibitionists 150,369 votes.
During this Democratic administration the Senate remained Republican by a small majority while the House was strongly Democratic. There was thus no opportunity for partisan legislation. The House in 1888 passed a bill abolishing or reducing many duties but retaining high protection on sugar, rice and other articles in which Democratic states were interested; but it was rejected by the Senate. The incident served, however, to assist in making the tariff the foremost issue in the next Presidential campaign in 1888. President Cleveland in 1887 devoted his annual message entirely to a plea for revision of the tariff in the direction of free trade and the Republicans promptly responded to the challenge. In their platform in 1888 the Democrats inveighed at great length against the Republican policy and recommended the enactment of the tariff bill then pending in Congress which, as already stated, the Senate rejected. They renominated Mr. Cleveland for President with Allen G. Thurman of Ohio for Vice-President.
The Republican convention adopted an aggressively protectionist platform, saying: “We are, uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection. We protest against its destruction as proposed by the President and his party. … We favor the repeal of internal taxes rather than the surrender of any part of our protective system at the joint behests of the whiskey trusts and the agents of foreign manufacturers.” It also condemned all combinations of capital, organized as trusts or otherwise, for the arbitrary control of trade and recommended legislation to prevent such schemes.
88
