But when the bill went to the Senate it fell into the hands of those who were enemies both of tariff reform and of the President. The interference of special interests, which in the House of Representatives had served to demoralize the tariff reform forces to a dangerous degree, appeared in the Senate in a shape far more insidious as well as powerful. A combination formed by a number of Senators strong enough to defeat the tariff bill dictated to the Democrats of the Senate its conditions with the brutal peremptoriness of a band of brigands demanding ransom for a captive. Senator Gorman again was its directing spirit. Free coal and free iron were unceremoniously sacrificed, and the Sugar Trust had its own way in determining the duties in which it was interested. After months of secret intriguing and open bullying and dickering and haggling, the bill was at last put on its passage, but all that was left of it, except free wool, was a mere caricature of a tariff reform measure.
When the bill was about to go to a conference committee of the two Houses, the President made a last effort to save his cherished cause from discomfiture and disgrace. In a letter addressed to Mr. Wilson, and through him to the House of Representatives, he called upon the Democrats in pathetic accents to remain true to their principles.
But it was all in vain. Mr. Wilson indeed made a gallant fight in the conference committee, but the Democratic majority of the House at the decisive moment failed to sustain him. The Senatorial combination carried the day, and the cause of tariff reform was treacherously slaughtered in the house of its friends.
The chagrin of the President was extreme. He gave vigorous expression to it in denouncing the perfidy of those who had “stolen and worn the livery of Democratic tariff reform in the service of Republican protection,” and cast “the deadly blight of treason” upon their cause.
