A Political Response to Industrialism: The Republican Embrace of Protectionist Labor Doctrines

Abstract

Historians have often displayed a sense of bewilderment and perplexity when confronted with the strength of the tariff issue in mid-and late-nineteenthcentury American politics. To explain the adoption of protectionism by the Republicans in the 1850s and its installment as a national industrial policy during and after the Civil War, scholars have offered three general interpretations. The first posits that the Republicans were the willing tools of incipient monopolists and that they aided industrialists in wringing money out of the consumer; the second holds that Republicans honestly believed that the tariff promoted their ideals of nationalism, the general public interest, and balanced economic development; and the third proposes that Republicans used the tariff as a symbol to solidify party loyalty. But there exists another explanation for the rise of the tariff issue and its longevity. Historians have long noted the labor appeal imbedded in the protectionist argument, but they have generally failed to elaborate fully its implications. An investigation of early high tariff proponents reveals that they were genuinely concerned over the fate of the wage earner and were fearful that free trade policies would lead to the workers' degradation by permitting competition with the "pauper labor" of Europe. In the 1850s trepidations over the material welfare of the mechanic merged with the Republican party's ofr-stated purpose of elevating and dignifying free labor. Republicans, however, did not come to accept protectionist theory solely for antislavery reasons~ the party politicians realized that industrialization had upset the lower orders and that some action had to be taken to mitigate its influence upon the working class. In the establishment of the high tariff policy during the Civil War and the maintenance of the policy in the years thereafter, the Republicans became the first political party to wield consciously the power of the federal government in order to smooth over some of the social dislocations generated by the industrial revolution, x lames L. Huston is visiting assistant professor of history at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma.The early proponents of high tariffs, most notably Alexander Hamilton and later Henry Clay, did not interject into their arguments the idea that import barriers would improve the lot of the working class. Prior to 1840 the principal justifications for constructing massive tariff walls were to promote industrial growth, to provide an economic base for national defense, to foster American economic independence by severing the nation's business ties with England, and to encourage the full utilization of the country's resources by creating a large domestic market. These goals never disappeared from protectionist speeches and continued to live on into the twentieth century. 2 But the core of the protectionist appeal altered in the two decades preceding the Civil War. Tariff advocates replaced their slogans of economic development with the cry of "protection to American l...

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