Hanna was elected Senator, at this time, to succeed John Sherman, who had been removed to the office of Secretary of State, in order to make a seat for Hanna. The Republican majority was produced. (Senator Dubois had been defeated). And when the special session was called, in the spring of 1897, my vote was no longer so urgently needed. I was invited to a Republican caucus, but I was unwilling to return to political affiliations which I might have to renounce again; for I saw the power of the business interests in dictating the policy of the party and I did not propose to bow to that dictation. When the tariff bill came before the Senate, I could not in conscience support it. The beneficiaries of the bill seemed to be dictating their own schedules, and this was notably the case with the sugar trust, which had obtained a differential between raw and refined sugar several times greater than the entire cost of refining. I denounced the injustice of the sugar schedule particularly. A Mr. Oxnard came to remonstrate with me on behalf of the beet sugar industry of the West. "You know," he said, "what a hard time we're having with our sugar companies. Unless this schedule's adopted I greatly fear for our future." I replied that I was not opposing any protection of the struggling industries of the country, or of the sugar growers, but I was set against the extortionate differential that the sugar trust was demanding. Everybody knew that the trust had built its tremendous industrial power upon such criminally high protection as this differential afforded, and that its power now affected public councils, obtained improper favors, and terrorized the small competing beet sugar companies of the West. I argued that it was time to rally for the protection of the people as well as of the beet sugar industry. He predicted that if the differential was reduced the protection on beet sugar would fail. I laughed at him. "You don't know the temper of the Senate," I said. "Why, even some of the Democrats are in favor of protecting the beet sugar industry. That part of the bill is safe, whatever happens to the rest." "Senator Cannon," he replied, with all the scorn of superior knowledge, "you're somewhat new to this matter. Permit me to inform you that if we don't do our part in supporting the sugar schedule, including the differential, the friends of the schedule in the Senate will prevent us from obtaining our protection." "That," I retorted angrily, "is equivalent to saying that the sugar trust is writing the sugar schedule. I can't listen with patience to any such insult. The Senate of the United States cannot be dictated to, in a matter of such importance, by the trust. I will not vote for the differential. I will continue to oppose it to the end. If you're right--if the trust has such power--better that our struggling sugar industry should perish, so that we may arouse the people to the iniquitous manipulation that destroyed it."