It was the 20th of February before the Senate Bill was passed. Two weeks before this the bill had taken on an importance quite unexpected. This change was due to the growing certainty that the House was not going to be able to finish its bill and that if a tariff bill was passed this session, it would be the measure on which the Senate was working. No sooner did this rumor go out than the whole body of lobbyists, whose work up to this time had been concentrated on the House, rushed pell-mell to the corridors of the Senate to see what they could do to make the measure “satisfactory” before it was reported. Some of the things they helped to do have already been alluded to. The House Bill was having a hard time. The Committee, instead of following the Tariff Commission report and reducing duties 20 per cent, had reduced them less than 10 per cent. Now there was no doubt but that a majority of the Republicans in the House were in favor of real reform. Most of them declared they dared not go home without a reduction of taxes. But there was a powerful Republican minority who believed with Senator Sherman that it was more essential to satisfy the combined industrial organizations besieging the Capitol than it was to satisfy public opinion. This minority was determined no bill which gave anything like a 20 per cent reduction should pass. It is not unfair to say that it wanted a bill, but _a bill which gave the appearance of reduction, not actual reduction_. The Democrats, too, were divided. John G. Carlisle, who led the majority, was what may be called a constructive free trader; that is, he believed in scaling down duties as rapidly as industries enjoying them could support it, until a ‘tariff-for-revenue only’ basis was reached. He declared now that if the Republicans had presented a bill which sincerely attempted to embody the reduction of 20 per cent suggested by their commission and demanded by public opinion, he would favor its passage, but Kelley’s bill he would not support. Randall, who led the Democratic minority, was a high protectionist, but Randall was really willing to support any bill which promised to get the tariff out of the way. He expected to be a candidate for Speaker at the opening of the next Congress and did not want to divide his party by supporting protection in opposition to the Democratic majority.