A similar measure was brought forward again in the Congress elected with President McKinley in 1896, and the bill passed the Senate, again to meet the same fate as its predecessor in a Republican House of Representatives with a thorough working majority, notwithstanding that the policy of aid to American shipping had been a cardinal plank in the platform of that year, upon which that House had been elected. The defection was almost wholly among Western Republicans. [Illustration: BATTLESHIP NEW IRONSIDES] During the contest over the bill in the Congress under consideration, the tactics of the foreign steamship owners and managers, personally as well as through their hired agents, were a disgrace to the good name of American legislation. They threw off all disguise and openly lobbied on the floors and in the corridors and committee rooms of the House to prevent consideration of the bill. In that Congress there was every prospect that if the Senate Bill could be brought up for consideration it would pass with some trifling amendments, which could easily be adjusted in conference committee. The whole strategy of the alien shipping interests was to prevent consideration, which they ultimately succeeded in doing by working upon the susceptibility or the apprehensions of certain Republicans from the far Western States. In 1898, the tonnage bounty bill in a modified form was brought forward again; this time with a limitation of the amount to be expended under its provisions in any one fiscal year to nine millions of dollars, but it met the same kind of opposition that had beaten its two predecessors, and it shared their fate, passing the Senate and being denied consideration in the House. Finally, in the Congress elected in 1900 and assembling in 1901, a tonnage bill still further modified was brought forward and passed the Senate. For a time it was believed that the alien ship-owners and managers would not be able to beat this bill as they had its predecessors, and strong hopes were indulged by its friends that it would receive consideration in the House. Even up to the last few weeks of the closing session of the Fifty-seventh Congress which expired March 3, 1903, the Chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and other advocates and friends of the bill believed that they would be able to get a rule for its consideration even at the last moment. But that hope, like all the others, passed away. * * * * *