But why should the price of shoes have increased? Under the extraordinary advance in shoe machinery, it should have decreased. The shoe was pinched by a combination of tariffs and trusts which can hardly be matched in any other industry in the country. First, there was the tariff laid on hides in 1897. For twenty-five years hides had been free and cheap, for South America sent us large quantities. The shoe dealers were taking all both markets offered. But the cattle-growers of the West raised a cry that they should have more money for their hides, that Congress should pass a law which would compel the people to give it to them. In 1890 a strong appeal was made to Mr. McKinley for such a duty and it is probable that he would have granted it, so great was his reverence for the doctrine, had not Mr. Blaine interfered. The duty was not granted in 1890, but in 1897 it was given. The effect was immediately to raise the price of sole leather. In June, 1906, W. L. Douglas, ex-Governor of Massachusetts, a shoe manufacturer, said in a public speech that since 1897 the increase to his company in the price of sole leather in a single pair of shoes had amounted to 17½ cents. Mr. Douglas figured that the tariff on hides and soles caused the people of this country to pay $30,000,000 a year more for shoes than they otherwise would. They paid this tax that perhaps 85,000 stock-raisers, herders, and drovers might get more for their cattle. It was argued that with the duty they could monopolize the domestic trade and cut off the South American trader, but that gentleman sent us more hides in 1906 than in any year since the duty was imposed! Moreover, it was not the cattle raiser who was chiefly or proportionately profited by the higher price. It was the Beef Trust, as Mr. Blaine said it would be. The cattleman received no such increase in the price of his steers as the beef men did in the price of hides. In November, 1907, the _Hide and Leather Journal_, commenting on the good thing the Trust had always made out of this particular duty, declared it was paying stock-raisers $12.50 apiece for cows, and selling the hides alone for $9.00 apiece!