Tariff | - Theodore Roosevelt Center

The blessings of “protection”

An oversized, bloated human figure with the head of a pig, wearing a sash labeled “Steel Trust,” holds steel rails in both hands. He stands on the grounds of a steel factory labeled “U.S.” John Bull stands on the left, on a patch of ground labeled “England,” paying a reduced rate for the rails. Uncle Sam, standing on the right, pays an exorbitant rate due to a “Protective Tariff 43.58%.” Caption: The poor foreigner couldn’t get his rails for twenty-four dollars if we didn’t elect to pay thirty-five.

Comments and Context

The background of this cartoon is less about the mathematical results of tariffs and rates, though they were always matters of Byzantine debate between free-traders and defenders of “infant industries” and protective tariffs, and more about the headline of the day: J. P. Morgan’s purchase of Carnegie Steel Company. Its capitalization was touted at $1 billion when U. S. Steel was introduced to Wall Street. Merged with his own Federal Steel, Morgan introduced the business model of “vertical integration,” control of production from raw materials through transport and manufacture to ultimate marketing and shipments. Andrew Carnegie’s reluctant sale price was $480 million, which Morgan instantly accepted. Later, Carnegie told Morgan he always regretted not asking for $10 million more. Morgan immediately replied that would have paid it. Puck traditionally was a proponent of free tree and low tariffs, and generally was anti-monopoly from its earliest days. In the 1888 presidential election, it even published a campaign booklet, The Tariff ‘Question.’

Our “infant” industries — why can’t they be content with the half they make honestly?

Illustration showing a gigantic Andrew Carnegie standing between two large pumps, one labeled “Protective tariff” representing the Treasury building and the other labeled “Legitimate business” representing his factory buildings, with two men pumping his coat pockets, each labeled “$20,000,000 a year,” full of money.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1900-04-04

Jack ashore

Illustration showing two men escorting Admiral George Dewey down a street, on the left is a man labeled “McLean” and on the right is Joseph Pulitzer. On the left side of the street is the “Democratic Museum” and on the right of the street is the “Republican Museum,” and a sign on the left is directing them to the convention hall.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Despite appearing that the men, right and left, might be recommending the saloons to Dewey, they are in fact husting him past them to the Democrat presidential convention. After his adulation in the United States as the hero of Manila Bay — a smashing naval victory in the Spanish-American War — Admiral George Dewey was seduced by the clarion call of politics. Democrats, especially those who feared that another William Jennings Bryan candidacy would lead to defeat again, persuaded him to explore the possibility of running for the presidency in 1900. Two such Democrats were publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who boosted Dewey in his newspapers, including the New York World, and Dewey’s informal political adviser and brother-in-law William R. McLean, publisher of The Washington Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer, and part owner of the Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team. Dewey embroiled himself in awkward public situations and his putative candidacy never gained traction.

Want him to keep

President Roosevelt drives to keep the Republican elephant, labeled tariff power, moving in order to power the mill labeled Prosperity. Caption: Teddy-“Git up! If we stop, the mill stops.”