The chief articles which he hoped to make too dear to import were woollens and higher grade cottons, cotton knit goods, stockings, linens, and all iron and steel and metal products, the articles, it will be noted, which are essential to everybody. It was not necessary to raise the rates on all these products to make them too dear to import. Not a few rates then in force could be lowered and still be prohibitive. Thus in the case of structural steel and steel rails, the McKinley bill reduced the existing rate slightly without in the least disturbing the situation. Mr. McKinley’s pet duty in the metal schedule, and indeed in the bill, was that on tin plate. There had been a duty of a cent a pound on tin plate for some years and throughout much of this period there had been a steady pressure to raise it to 2½ or 2½ cents. In the early ’70’s there had been a little tin plate manufactured in the country. The price at the time had been abnormally high on account of the Franco-Prussian War and the premium on gold. When things dropped back to normal, the industry lagged. But the would-be manufacturers—and many makers of iron plates naturally wanted to turn them into tin plates—for ten years at least had kept up an agitation. The tariff commission of ’82, through Commissioner Oliver’s influence probably, had advised 2½ cents, but Congress refused to raise the duty in the Bill of 1883. The Tin Plate Association and the Iron and Steel Association continued their work. An increased duty on tin plate became, in a way, in the ’80’s, a test of a Republican’s soundness in the minds of the big interest which had put themselves behind the party. If he hesitated, recalled that we had developed no tin mines, that inevitably the price would be higher for a long term, that such a duty would be a blow to an industry many times greater than tin plate could ever be,—that of canning,—that the burden would fall directly on the poor, they being the chief consumers of tin buckets, and cups, of canned fish, meat, and vegetables—the answer was the answer of “Pig Iron” Kelley!—“In God’s name do not let the gentleman lead us to declare that the people of this country shall never manufacture tin plate!”