From the very beginning of the debate on the bill it became evident that each faction was ready to fight strenuously to carry out its program. The Carlisle Democrats began by bringing to issue almost every item as it was read. They made amendments, debated them, forced them to vote by voice, by rising divisions, and by tellers, and they openly declared that they would keep this up until the Fourth of March rather than allow Mr. Kelley’s bill to come to vote. Their tactics indeed were very like those Mr. Beck was using in the Senate and their effect was identical; that is, they constantly forced the Republicans to put themselves on record against lowering duties. Not infrequently they were aided in their work of obstruction by revenue reform Republicans, particularly from the West, where the tariff on lumber and an increased duty on barbed wire were causing indignation. So strong a program of opposition was developed that in ten days after the discussion opened it became evident that if any bill was passed it would be because the high protection faction yielded to the demands of the majority of the party for a reduction or that they carried their program by superior parliamentary tactics. That they were in strong position for the latter everybody saw. As a fact they held all the strategic positions: the speakership, the chairmanship, and a majority of the Ways and Means Committee, and of the Committee on Rules. For the moment, however, the work was all in the hands of Chairman Kelley and his lieutenants. Mr. Kelley had been ill from the beginning of the session and he had asked Mr. Haskell to take charge of the bill on the floor. A more sympathetic and vigorous understudy than Haskell, Kelley could not have had. He was a man only forty years old, a powerful individual, over six feet high, with a voice as big as his body, and with the face and eyes of an evangelist. His earnestness for a cause he had espoused was almost tragic in its intensity, and forced him to work and fight for it passionately and untiringly. Two subjects had occupied him so far in the six years he had been in Congress, polygamy and protection. He hated the first as he revered the second. Indeed, for Haskell protection was as complete a solution of all economic difficulties as it was for Kelley, and he had the same fanatical devotion to the doctrine. The only question he asked himself in making a tariff bill was whether an article could or could not be raised in this country. If it could not, he would put it on the free list. If it could, he would protect it beyond the possibility of foreign competition. Of course, this reduced his labor to finding out how much each article needed to be put beyond competition. This was a matter of fact. As soon as he was put on the Committee of Ways and Means, which was at the opening of the 47th Congress, he went to work with unparalleled industry to master the conditions of each article. He became a veritable