in the cost of production, that they sneered at the idea, that they were simply intent on giving their political supporters what they wanted. Moreover, they intended to force us to be a party to the business. It was the most dishonest and corrupt work I have ever seen, and I revolted.” The insurgents determined to demonstrate to the country the utter unscrupulousness of the leaders of their own party, and to do this effectively they divided among themselves the schedules which they knew to be most important politically and therefore to be most open to suspicion, the intention being thoroughly to master their intricacies. Schedule K fell to Senator Dolliver. Now Senator Dolliver had always been what one may call a McKinley protectionist or prohibitionist. He had followed that leader with the unquestioning fidelity which the man had the ability to inspire in many who knew him. His speeches in the ’90’s are brilliant and witty defences of the new interpretation of protection which the party for political reasons was trying to force on the country. They are thoroughly orthodox and thoroughly unsound. In 1897 Mr. Dolliver was a member of the Dingley Ways and Means Committee, which seriously tried to lower the rates in all the schedules, and particularly in wool. He had seen the effort frustrated by the very group whom he knew now to be behind the wool bill which Mr. Aldrich reported. He determined to master the history and the operation of the schedule in so thorough a fashion that he could go on to the floor of the Senate or on to any platform and make clear to a popular audience its tricks and its injustices. He believed that such an exposure must in the long run kill it. Now the wool schedule is one of the most difficult in our tariff laws to understand and to explain. It is really the accumulation of fifty years of active superstition and greed. An ocular demonstration of the change in its character and its intelligibility may be had by comparing the wool schedule of fifty years ago and that of to-day as printed in the official collection of United States tariff bills. Fifty years ago wool was disposed of in perhaps fifty words, which anybody could understand; to-day it takes some three thousand, and as for intelligibility, nobody but an expert versed in the different grades of wools, of yarns, and of woollen articles could tell what the duty really is. It is a mistake to suppose that because a man has been twenty years in Congress and has served for a portion of that time on the Ways and Means Committee, he therefore understands the tariff schedules. As a rule, it is safe to say that a Congressman understands rarely the real meaning of the rates he votes for. What he understands is that the Committee has made the bill for what it considers sound party reasons, and that if he does not accept the rate, he or some colleague is in danger of defeat, and he accepts it without too much scrutiny.