The remarkable fact was that soon after the war the internal revenue taxes began to be repealed one after another, and by 1872 nearly all those bearing upon general manufactures (apart from cigars and alcoholic beverages) were gone.  The tariff, however, remained almost unaltered.  This repeal of internal revenue taxation had the same “protective” effect as raising the tariff rates by so much.  As if this were not enough for the protected interests, in 1867 the duty on woolens was further raised and in 1870 numerous other increases were made in the duties having a protective character.  Some reductions were made, but these were almost all on articles of a distinctly “revenue” character such as tea, coffee, sugar, molasses, spices, wines.  Revenues were superabundant for current expenses of government, and altho there was a large national debt, hardly any of it was redeemable at the time.  There was therefore need to reduce taxation, but the attention of the consuming and tax-paying public was distracted by the somewhat passionate political issues of the day.  Besides, the public had not the technical knowledge or the unified opinion on this subject to protect itself against the greedy lobby in this process of tax revision.  And so, selfish commercial interests could get nearly what they asked for in Congress, and the politicians at Washington, who had come to have a well-nigh superstitious faith in the efficacy of very high protective duties, could quietly use the opportunity to raise the people’s taxes for the people’s good.

These virtual increases in the protective power of the rates in force are not evident in the statistics of average ad valorem rates, because the higher rates in many cases were sufficient to exclude relatively more of the foreign products to which they applied.[5] The imports came, by a process of selection, to consist more largely of goods subject to lower rates.  So the year 1868 showed the highest average rate on dutiable goods (48.6 per cent) of any year after the act of 1828 until that of 1890, and the rate fell somewhat each year until in the fiscal year 1872 it was 41.3 per cent.

Sec. 8. #The tariff, 1872-1889#.  In 1872 the country was again, as in 1857, nearing the crest of a wave of prosperity and of speculation.  Imports and customs receipts attained new high points in our history, and, despite the enormous reductions of internal revenue taxation, the government’s receipts continued to be excessive.[6] The important revenue articles, tea and coffee, were then transferred to the free list, as were also raw hides and paper stock and some other articles; the rate on salt was reduced one-half and that on coal almost as much.  Many other specific rates were reduced and the ad valorem rates on a long list of articles were cut to “90 per cent of existing rates.”  The effects of these reductions were mingled with those of the severe financial panic occurring in 1873 and of the depression following, which reduced especially the