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Updated: June 10, 2025
The result of the work of Congress was the enactment of what is known as the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Law of 1909, the measure taking its name on account of the joint efforts in its behalf of the Honorable Sereno Payne, of New York, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House, and Honorable Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, Chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate.
It declared for a rational tariff and the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of experts, and it denounced alike the Republicans for the Payne-Aldrich Bill, which dishonestly revised upwards, and the Democrats, who wished to abolish protection altogether.
If you will get some expert to go through the schedules of the present Payne-Aldrich tariff, you will find a "nigger" concealed in almost every woodpile, some little word, some little clause, some unsuspected item, that draws thousands of dollars out of the pockets of the consumer and yet does not seem to mean anything in particular.
For some years a steadily growing agitation in favour of reciprocity with Canada had been carried on in the New England and Northwest states. Nothing might have come of the agitation, however, had not the Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 compelled official negotiation and opened up the whole broad issue.
Since 1897 the "infant industries" have grown, and some have in recent years declared dividends of 66 per cent per annum. The Payne-Aldrich Bill increased the average rate on cotton goods from 44.84 per cent in the Dingley Tariff to 50.62 per cent. The increases are not so much on the high-priced goods as on the cheaper grades.
This the House refused to accept and the usual conference committee was organized, out of which committee came the compromise Payne-Aldrich Bill, destined to become law through the President's signature, August 5, 1909. The debate in the Senate was a noteworthy one.
Curiously enough, it came as an unexpected by-product of a further experiment in protection, the Payne-Aldrich tariff. For the first time in the experience of the United States this tariff incorporated the principle of minimum and maximum schedules.
The apparently determined effort on the part of the masses of the people, and especially the newspapers, to discredit the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill resulted in the Democrats carrying the House in the campaign of 1910 with the result that in the Sixty-second Congress the Democratic party has a substantial majority, causing the retirement of Mr. Cannon from the Speakership. For a time Mr.
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