“I confess my great surprise,” he said, “at the opposition of the gentleman from Pennsylvania to the printing of this report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue.... He admits, in the first place, that the facts stated are generally correct—that the statistics collected and arranged in tables are true and correctly stated, but declares that the marshalling of the facts is dangerous—that they are put together in such a way, and such inferences are drawn from them, that the report is dangerous to Congress, and to the enlightened people of the country. The gentleman asks this House to make a humiliating confession in which I, for one, am not ready to join. If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories. An officer who has served the country so ably and faithfully as the Special Commissioner of the Revenue deserves well of the country. I trust the motion to print will prevail.” As we have seen, the tariff reformers of 1870–72 really numbered Garfield as one of them and wanted him as the head of the Ways and Means Committee—a position he would have had had it not been for Mr. Blaine’s slipperiness. The events that followed—the panic of 1873, the outspoken plank of the Democrats in 1876 in favor of tariff for revenue only, the effort of his party to keep quiet on the tariff—did not change Garfield’s views, though they did make him a shade more cautious in expressing them. When he came to face a campaign for the presidency in 1880, he must have realized that whatever he thought about the tariff would count for little if a struggle were precipitated. He had nineteen iron foundries in blast in his Ohio district, and the watch their owners kept of him creeps out more than once in his speeches. He must have known that in case it should be needed these gentlemen were ready to make the biggest fight they had ever made for high protection. Indeed, only a few months before the nomination the ablest one among the organized metal workers, Mr. Joseph Wharton, had openly served notice of their intention on the coming administration. Mr. Wharton was speaking in Pittsburg on “The American Ironmaster,” and said: “_It is meet that we should declare to the country that we will support no party and no candidate who cannot be depended upon by something better than election-day promises to protect and defend home labor. It is fitting for us to call ‘hands off’ to those who are itching to tear our tariff laws to shreds; to call upon the President in advance to refrain from meddling with commercial treaty-making and to veto, as he doubtless would, any measure injurious to home industry which a hostile majority in Congress may pass_; to call upon the representatives of all other American industries to stand by us as we will stand by them in resisting all changes in the tariff laws and all tariff-making by treaty until these laws can be carefully and