Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/214

174 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS the west the bill was in intense disfavor. The charge was made that in the main it was the handi work of the same interests which had dictated the least acceptable rates in the McKinley and Dingley tariffs. Mr. Taft undertook to stem the tide of censure by making a tour of the disaffected states, to reason directly with the voters about some phases of the matter on which he suspected they were mis informed. At Winona, the home of the one con gressman from Minnesota who had voted for the bill, he made a speech emphasizing the fact that the Payne- Aldrich act lowered the duties on 654 items, of which Americans consumed $5,000,000,000 worth in a year, while it increased duties on only 220 items, of which they consumed $300,000,000 worth, so that on the whole the tariff had been lowered; and this argument he capped with the sweeping assertion that, with all its faults, the new act was "the best tariff bill that the republican party has ever passed, and therefore the best tariff bill that has been passed at all." At this super lative phrase the democrats and the insurgent re publicans grasped as soon as it was uttered, and the changes rung on it constantly for a year gave it prominence in the next congressional campaign. Meanwhile, Mr. Taft had appointed as his secre tary of state Philander C. Knox, a senator from Pennsylvania, during whose term the cabinet sal aries had been increased, and who therefore was in-