Future President William McKinley Urges High-Tariff Advocate the American Protective Tariff League to Keep Active and Vigilant in the Cause

Starting in the Civil War, protection was the ideological cement holding the Republican coalition together. High tariffs were used to promise higher sales to business, higher wages to industrial workers, and higher demand for their crops to farmers. Democrats said it was a tax on the little man. Bliss was a successful wholesale merchant and Republican Party operative, and was a founder and first president of the American Protective Tariff League, which was campaigning to convince the American voter of the advantages of a protective tariff to labor and the industries of the United States. McKinley would run for president on a high tariff platform a few years later. Bliss declined to run as McKinley’s vice president in 1900 but had served in his cabinet as Secretary of the Interior until 1899.

In this letter, McKinley writes his future Secretary of the Interior Cornelius Bliss concerning the American Protective Tariff League. Typed Letter Signed “W. McKinley, Jr.” December 7, 1892, to prominent Republican politician Cornelius Bliss. “I am very glad to learn that the Tariff League is to continue its work. It has been of great service in the past and it has greater opportunities for the future; and its cooperation was never so much needed as now. Do not relax in a single particular. The cause is worthy of your best efforts, and the approval of the people is sure to come.” McKinley added the “Jr.” to his signature all his life until the death of his father in a few weeks before this letter. Apparently he stopped using it either shortly after this or may he have signed it this way out of habit so soon after his father’s death.