The only effective bit of tariff legislation in this period, 1876 to 1882, was due largely to the Parsee Merchant—the removal of the duty on quinine. The wholesale price of this medicine, enormous quantities of which were consumed, particularly in the Middle West, had risen in 1877 and 1878 as high as $4.75 an ounce, the highest point recorded in the history of the business. The Parsee merchant took up the matter in the press. The duty on quinine—40 per cent—was, he declared, “a sickening, disgraceful blood tax.” It was made by only four houses in the United States, all of them manufacturing chemists who were growing enormously rich—which was true. They brought in their bark free, and they were able to make their own price for the product. The press took up the cry. Frightened by the popular indignation, one firm of quinine manufacturers offered Moore $100,000 to withdraw his opposition. Several young Congressmen saw the chance, and in rapid succession ten different bills repealing the duty on quinine were brought into the House. The one brought to vote was introduced by James McKenzie, a young Kentuckian. It went through without debate, a victory which earned for Mr. McKenzie a name by which he is called to-day in Kentucky—“Quinine Jim!” The Senate was less in a hurry about the quinine bill, for there it met the opposition of Mr. Morrill, who on principle had always fought against legislating a duty off or on a single article without considering those related to it. He pointed out now that the makers of quinine used several articles on which they had to pay duty—fusel-oil, distilled spirits, soda ash, East India bark (if they used that variety, which few of them did). To compel the manufacturers to pay these duties and give them no compensating duty on their product was unfair. But the tide was against him. “Raise a cry of ‘mad dog,’” Mr. Morrill commented, “and the dog is sure to die.” And he did—the bill passed. As a matter of fact the effect of the removal of the duty was magical. In five years from the date the bill became a law—July, 1879—quinine had fallen from $3.40 per ounce to $1.23, and in ten years, July, 1889, to 35 cents, in 1905 to 21 cents. The quinine manufacturers were thunderstruck. They declared that they were ruined, and very likely they believed so. At all events, they discharged their hands and closed their works. As the country was not moved to tears by the spectacle, they gradually reopened their factories and resumed business, and eventually became more prosperous on a free-trade basis than they had been before. They remain a bright and shining example of the ability of Americans to compete with foreigners in a fair field and without favor in any industry not forbidden by our soil and climate. The quinine bill was the one tariff result the Democrats had to show for the four years they had held the House!