the whole mass to subscribe to the fund. Hundreds of pages of testimony are given to requests not to disturb the present schedules unless it be to _increase_ the duty, and when sifted down the reason of the requests is not protection, but prohibition. How ridiculously lacking the testimony was in anything like satisfactory proof of the cost of production here and abroad, one has only to read to see. It was evident that almost none of the manufacturers knew the facts the committee needed. All that the great majority could offer were the phrases they had learned in their youth or had been taught by their predecessors in business. They were men influenced by a superstition, and it is probable few, if any of them, will escape from its influence until, like Mr. Carnegie, they retire from business. Then we may expect some of them to come, as Mr. Carnegie has done, with ridicule and derision for the whole system,—to say, as he did, of the duty seekers: _They are incapable of judging. No judge should be permitted to sit in a cause in which he is interested; you make the greatest mistake in your life if you attach importance to an interested witness._ But it was not the character of the information presented which was the most sinister phase of the “Hearings”; it was the pressure which one felt the informer could exercise on Congress when the time came. These hundreds of witnesses, organized or unorganized, all possessed more or less political importance. They had it in their power to upset local machines, displace local bosses, defeat Congressmen, hold back campaign contributions, make endless mischief. They had been trained for years to expect reward for political support in the shape of duties. They were not going to give it up in a day. They had behind them bodies of favored workmen trained to believe that high wages depended on protection, and these favored workmen were not going to give up their creed in a night. Congressmen knew this well enough. They knew in 1909, when they began work on the Payne-Aldrich Bill, that they were in the position they had been for forty years and more—forced to make a bill with a divided mind—to fix duties with an eye to what effect it was going to have on the fall elections in their districts—on campaign funds for the next presidential election.