It was a political manœuvre pure and simple. No tariffs can protect the farmer’s products save locally and sporadically. His is the basic world industry. The inhabitants of the earth, _all_ the earth, not a corner of it, are his market. The most imperious cry of men, that for food, calls him. Laws as all-powerful as gravitation govern him. Petty and temporary interferences like tariffs may hinder his labors for a season, but the word of the Almighty is his guarantee that the little schemes of men to keep the fulness of the earth from its creatures are bound to end in confusion. Already the farmers had striking proof that the radical interference with the laws of supply and demand, which had been forced upon the country by the Civil War and which had been kept alive since by a combination of greed, superstition, politics, and loose thinking, were telling on his industry. The entire agricultural production of 1890 was worth only about ten per cent more than that of 1890, but the population had increased some twenty-five per cent. That which had been repeatedly prophesied had happened. The privileges granted to manufacturers had enticed capital from the farms and men from the soil. It was natural that this should be so. Effort will go where the way is made easiest and the results are quickest. There was sound reason in the charge of the free trader. You have ruined our commerce on the high seas, now you are injuring our agriculture. Moreover, nations will not buy freely of nations that close their doors. The country was beginning to feel this fact. We were antagonizing the foreign market. The member of the Harrison Administration who saw this fact most clearly was James G. Blaine, Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine had been guilty of some curious quakery in the campaign for tariff reform, which Mr. Cleveland had forced. His treatment of the surplus and the trust in their relation to the tariff had been superficial. But to the question of our foreign trade he had given serious thought. He saw clearly enough that increased duties would injure trade and that limiting our trade would hurt the Republican party. There was no mistaking the sentiment of the country on the need of extending foreign markets. Mr. Blaine feared above all things to excite further suspicion that the new bill would be to decrease rather than to increase them. Before the measure had even been reported he made at least one strong protest against a proposed duty on an article heretofore free. This was the duty on hides. For over twenty-five years hides had been free and we had been importing large quantities from South America. The demand for a duty came from the cattle-growers of the West and Mr. McKinley proposed to grant it. When Mr. Blaine heard of this he wrote a letter to Mr. McKinley so sound that one can hardly believe it to be from the same man who had proposed to perpetuate an exorbitant surplus and use it to fortify American cities.