The United States Tariff and Industrial Protection in the Late Nineteenth Century
M1 , - OST treatments of the U.S. tariff in the late nineteenth century have -a distinctly antiquated appearance. Very little discussion goes beyond a summary of legislative actions with some reference to Taussig's scepticism regarding significant economic effects, such as could have been written forty years ago. This conventional treatment can be summarized very briefly. Tariffs were increased during the Civil War, and although some of the increases were defended as offsets to internal taxes imposed to finance the war, they were allowed to remain even when those internal taxes were removed. There was no comprehensive revision of the tariff after the war, but in i872 a IO per cent reduction was made "across the board" in all tariffs. This reduction was reversed in I875, both changes being influenced most by the state of the federal budget. In i883 a comprehensive tariff Act was passed, it being generally agreed that Congress partially adopted the recommendations of a tariff commission, choosing its adoptions so as to make slight reductions in levels of protection. The i883 Act is also thought by some historians to mark the beginning of the tariff as a major issue dividing the two main political parties. After i883, tariff Acts became more frequent with the McKinley Act of I 890, the Wilson-Gorman Act of i894, and the Dingley Act of i897. The first and third of these Acts are usually thought to have overwhelmed the second to produce a general increase in the height of the U.S. system of protection. This interpretation can be traced to Taussig, and those economic historians who have gone beyond contemporary comment have usually relied on the ratio of import duties to either total or dutiable imports, although many have expressed the caution needed with such a measure of the height of protection.2 It would not be surprising if there were now increasing dissatisfaction with this literature, but such dissatisfaction as exists seems to be leading only towards a gradual discarding of the tariff question from economic history.3