g pretty hot. The President replied that he knew
it was hot, but that Congress would have to stay there till that bill
was passed. Already he had given the lower house something to keep it
busy while the Senate wrestled with the tariff.

As for the lobby, the President had his own method of dealing with
that. On May 26 he issued a public statement calling attention to the
"extraordinary exertions" of lobbyists in connection with the tariff.
"The newspapers are being filled," he said, "with paid advertisements
calculated to mislead not only the judgment of the public men, but also
the public opinion of the country itself. There is every evidence that
money without limit is being spent to maintain this lobby.... It is of
serious interest to the country that the people at large should have no
lobby and be voiceless in these matters, while the great bodies of
astute men seek to create an artificial opinion and to overcome the
interests of the public for their private profit." The outraged dignity
of Senators and Representatives, not to mention lobbyists, rose to
protest against this declaration. A Republican Senator even declared
that the President, who had been actively urging his views on
legislators just as he had done in New Jersey, was himself the chief
lobbyist in connection with the Tariff Bill. A Senate Committee was
appointed to find out if there had been any lobbying, and discovered
that there had. Meanwhile the bill was being argued out in the Senate,
and the President stood firm against any substantial modification. It
was finally passed on Oct. 3.

It was a vindication of the platform promise and a fulfillment of the
duty with which the party had been charged in the last election, and it
was a notable triumph for the personal policy of the President-Premier,
who more than anybody else had literally forced the bill through
Congress. The tariff had taken such a prominent place in the fight
against business influence in the Government that the passage of a bill
which made a material reduction in rates was a moral victory for
progressivism at large, and for President Wilson in particular.

The actual effect of the tariff, or rather the actual effect that it
might have had, is something impossible to estimate at this time.
Before it had been in operation a year, before the country had had a
chance to study the new conditions brought in by the legislation of the
first year of the Wilson Administration, the war brok