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Though the desire for reciprocity with the United States was exploited politically more by the Liberals or low-tariff party than by the Conservatives the high-tariff party both had repeatedly sent official and unofficial emissaries to Washington seeking tariff concessions. Tariff concessions were a plank in the Liberal platform from the days of Alexander MacKenzie.
The positions of the two political parties on the tariff were not sharply defined during the ten years immediately following the war. The Democrats seemed naturally destined for the role of revisionists because of their party traditions, their support in the South ordinarily a strong, low-tariff section and because they were out of power when high tariffs were enacted.
The original Fielding tariff of 1897 had adopted the minimum and maximum principle, with the intention that a few low-tariff countries should share with Great Britain the advantages of the lower rates. Treaty complications made this impossible, and the lower rates were confined to the Empire. Then in 1907 came the intermediate tariff as a basis for bargaining.
"Why not make a speech on the subject?" she suggested. He laughed. The matter under discussion was the cotton-goods schedule of the new tariff bill, about which really he knew a little; his wife placed every temptation to knowledge before him, even inspiring Senator Smith to ask him to defend that schedule against the low-tariff advocate.
President Taft, who recognized too late that he had antagonized the growing low-tariff sentiment in the United States by his support of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, decided to attempt a stroke for freer trade. He proposed a broad revision of trade relations with Canada.
It was realized that it was one thing for Canada to give a reduced tariff, leaving the fiscal system protective still, and quite another for Great Britain to abandon entirely her free-trade policy in order to be able to give preferential rates to colonies or to low-tariff foreign states.
This, although not so nominated in the bond, amounted in intention to the British preference which the Liberal party had urged as early as 1892, for, except New South Wales and possibly one or two low-tariff states like Holland, Great Britain was believed to be the only country entitled to the minimum rate.
Owing to existing British treaties with most-favoured-nation clauses which bound the colonies, the concessions given France had to be extended to Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Switzerland. Belgium and Holland, both low-tariff countries, received many of the same concessions, and in the same year a special convention was made with Italy.
We always get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high-tariff and low-tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur Ortons and the Mrs.
This was only the beginning of attempts at accommodation. The threat of tariff war had called forth in the United States loud protests against any such reversion to economic barbarism. President Taft realized that he had antagonized the growing low-tariff sentiment of the country by his support of the Payne-Aldrich tariff and was eager to set himself right.
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