tion of duties, of any tariff bill ever
passed by the Congress of the United States.

It has been said that the McKinley act was the cause of the deficiency
of revenue that commenced about three years after its passage.
That is a mistake. Until Mr. Cleveland was sworn into office,
March 4, 1893, there was no want of revenue to carry on the operations
of the government. Until July, 1893, there was a surplus of revenue,
and not a deficiency. The receipts during the fiscal years ending
June 30, 1891, 1892, 1893, under the McKinley act, furnished ample
means for the support of the government, and it was not until after
Cleveland had been elected, and when there was a great fear and
dread all over the country that our industries would be disturbed
by tariff legislation, that the revenues fell off. The surplus in
1891 was $37,000,000; in 1892, in the midst of the election, it
was $9,914,000, and in 1893, up to June 30, the surplus revenue
was $2,341,000. Yet in a single year afterwards, after this attempt
to tinker with the tariff had commenced, after the announcement as
to the tariff had been made by Mr. Cleveland, after the general
fear that sprang up in the country in regard to tariff legislation,
the revenues under the McKinley act fell off over $66,000,000, and
the deficiency of that year was $66,542,000.

I believe that if Harrison had been elected President of the United
States the McKinley act would have furnished ample revenue for the
support of the government, because then there would have been no
fear of disturbance of the protected industries of our country.
Cleveland's election created the disturbances that followed it.
The fear of radical changes in the tariff law was the basis of
them. That law caused the falling of prices, the stagnation of
some industries, and the suspension of others. No doubt the fall
in the value of silver and the increased demand for gold largely
precipitated and added to the other evils that I have mentioned.

If when Congress met in December, 1893, there had been a disposition
on the part of both sides to take up the tariff question and discuss
it and consider it as a pure question of finance, there would have
been no difficulty with the Republicans. We were all ready to
revise the rates contained in the McKinley tariff act. The body
of that act had been embodied in the Wilson bill as part of the
proposed law. Nearly all of the working machinery of the collection
of custom