Let us admit that reasonable people must not expect in a popular government to arrive at results save by a series of compromises. As long as men disagree as to what is desirable to accomplish, as well as on the methods which are to be employed in getting what they all agree to be desirable, each successive step comes by one side agreeing to take less than it believes should be given, and the other yielding more than it believes wise. No reasonable person can expect the protective system to be handled without compromises, backsets, and errors of judgment, but _he can expect it to be handled as a principle and not as a commodity_. The shock and disgust come in the discovery that our tariffs are not good and bad applications of the principles of protection, but that they are good or bad bargains. Dip into the story of the tariff at any point since the Civil War and you will find wholesale proofs of this bargaining in duties; rates fixed with no more relation to the doctrine of protection than they have to the law of precession of the equinoxes. The actual work of carrying out these bargains is of a nature that would revolt any legislator whose sensitiveness to the moral quality of his acts has not been blunted—who had not entirely eliminated ethical considerations from the business of fixing duties. And this is what the high protectionist lawgiver has come to—a complete repudiation of the idea that right and wrong are involved in tariff bills. There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral. But this is the man the doctrine of protection, as we know it, produces, and therein lies the final case against it,—men are worse, not better, for its practice. INDEX Agriculture, 203. Aldrich, Nelson W.: ability of, 111, 112. influence of, 168, 169. protection policy of, 170. position of, with regard to McKinley Bill, 199. leadership of, 207. and the “Interests,” 208. as leader for McKinley Bill measure, 208. and sugar stock speculation, 227. on Dingley Bill, 244. and sugar trust, 245. and wood interests, 251. report on wool schedule of, 308. and cotton manufacturers, 319, 320. relation of, with Lippitt, 320, 321, 322. loyalty of, to wool schedule, 325. traffic in duties of, 326. threats of, 355. political methods of, 363. Alliance of wool and cotton, 325, 326. Allison, Wm. B., 36, 51, 53, 63. debate of, on Schenck Bill, 67, 68. and wool tariff, 115. chairman of sub-committee, 165. position on tariff of, 166. preparation of bill of, 166. report of bill to Senate, 168. and tin plate, 192. Allison Bill: discussion of, 168–172. passed by Senate, 181. goes to Ways and Means Committee, 184. Ambler, Judge Jacob A., 102.