Material Interests
versary of the Declaration of Independence was commemorated. This exhibition of the industry, commerce and art of all nations was the most extensive ever thus far held in the world, and it had an effect of inestimable value in acquainting America and the rest of the world with each other and in stimulating the domestic industry and foreign commerce of the United States.
Meantime the question of the tariff, of protection or free trade, increased in importance and became more and more a direct issue between the two parties, the great mass of Republicans inclining toward a tariff for the protection of American industry and the great mass of Democrats toward a “revenue tariff” or declared plainly for a tariff which, while of course primarily for revenue, should be so adjusted as to favor American interests. The Liberal Republican and Democratic platform evaded the issue by remitting it to Congress for its determination; an equivocal course which was necessary because the majority of the Democrats were pronounced free traders, while their candidate, Mr. Greeley, was an extreme protectionist. In the platforms of 1876 more definite stands were taken. The Republicans declared that tariff duties, levied for the primary purpose of revenue, “should be adjusted to promote the interests of American labor and advance the prosperity of the whole country.” The Democrats denounced the protective tariff as “a masterpiece of injustice, inequality and false pretence,” and demanded that “all custom-house taxation shall be only for revenue.”
In that year the Republicans, after a spirited contest among various candidates, nominated Rutherford B.
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