Mr. Randall, however, saw no danger in the building up of monopolies and combinations to limit production which counterbalanced the advantage there was in shutting out foreign competition and keeping the home market inviolate. The danger he claimed to see was unsettling capital. “There is nothing in life so sensitive to adverse criticism and which takes alarm so quickly,” he said, “as capital invested in large industrial enterprises.... Shall we unsettle business interests by constant tinkering with the tariff? Shall no law last longer than the meeting of the next Congress?” The contest between the two men had begun in the summer and had been followed with keen interest in political circles. Early in November the candidates opened headquarters in Washington and soon the town was full of “Randall men” and “Carlisle men,” each ready to prove his candidate a sure winner! All of the big newspapers had correspondents on hand, foretelling confidently the success of the candidate favored by their readers. But there was little to indicate the result. It all depended, it was seen, upon how deep and how general a belief there was in the Democratic party that high tariffs were dangerous. The only really significant feature of the fall contest in Washington was the activity of the protected interests in Randall’s behalf. The iron men and steel men, the wool men, the New Jersey potters, the Standard Oil Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, were all said to be on hand. There were many hints of the use of money. Mr. Barnum of Connecticut, former United States Senator and now chairman of the National Democratic Committee, was said to be in town “buying mules” for Randall, as the slang of the day went. How much truth there was in the charges of bribery the writer does not know; but this is certain, an alliance of business interests in support of Mr. Randall was plainly evident in the fall of 1883. The protectionists were most active, but they had with them the railroads and the Standard Oil crowd, who at that moment were fighting hard to prevent threatened regulation of interstate commerce; that is, all of the interests which were thriving on special privileges were combined into a league for the continuation of those privileges.