=The Gold Standard and the Tariff.=—­Yet strange as it may seem, the Republicans did not at once enact legislation making the gold dollar the standard for the national currency.  Not until 1900 did they take that positive step.  In his first inaugural President McKinley, as if still uncertain in his own mind or fearing a revival of the contest just closed, placed the tariff, not the money question, in the forefront.  “The people have decided,” he said, “that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and development of our country.”  Protection for American industries, therefore, he urged, is the task before Congress.  “With adequate revenue secured, but not until then, we can enter upon changes in our fiscal laws.”  As the Republicans had only forty-six of the ninety Senators, and at least four of them were known advocates of free silver, the discretion exercised by the President in selecting the tariff for congressional debate was the better part of valor.

Congress gave heed to the warning.  Under the direction of Nelson P. Dingley, whose name was given to the bill, a tariff measure levying the highest rates yet laid in the history of American imposts was prepared and driven through the House of Representatives.  The opposition encountered in the Senate, especially from the West, was overcome by concessions in favor of that section; but the duties on sugar, tin, steel, lumber, hemp, and in fact all of the essential commodities handled by combinations and trusts, were materially raised.

[Illustration:  Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y.

PRESIDENT MCKINLEY AND HIS CABINET]

=Growth of Combinations.=—­The years that followed the enactment of the Dingley law were, whatever the cause, the most prosperous the country had witnessed for many a decade.  Industries of every kind were soon running full blast; labor was employed; commerce spread more swiftly than ever to the markets of the world.  Coincident with this progress was the organization of the greatest combinations and trusts the world had yet seen.  In 1899 the smelters formed a trust with a capital of $65,000,000; in the same year the Standard Oil Company with a capital of over one hundred millions took the place of the old trust; and the Copper Trust was incorporated under the laws of New Jersey, its par value capital being fixed shortly afterward at $175,000,000.  A year later the National Sugar Refining Company, of New Jersey, started with a capital of $90,000,000, adopting the policy of issuing to the stockholders no public statement of its earnings or financial condition.  Before another twelvemonth had elapsed all previous corporate financing was reduced to small proportions by the flotation of the United States Steel Corporation with a capital of more than a billion dollars, an enterprise set in motion by the famous Morgan banking house of New York.