Highest tariff in United States history to that point.
Despite a Treasury surplus attributable to previous tariffs, William McKinley, Republican member of the House of Representatives from Ohio and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced a tariff measure that increased duties on imports so substantially that it barred some foreign-made goods from entering the United States. Moreover, the measure had two other features that particularly differentiated it from previous tariffs: reciprocity (which allows for the reduction of duties charged a specific country in exchange for more favorable tariff rates from the other country) and the promotion of new industries, especially the tin-plate industry, which made thin sheet iron or steel coated with tin. Republican Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who had comanaged Benjamin Harrison’s successful presidential campaign in 1888, strongly supported the passage of the tariff bill partly because of his many campaign promises to industrialists. Quay ensured passage of the bill by gaining Southern support through a compromise that prevented a vote on a federal elections bill concerning the right of African Americans to vote.
Many farmers and urban laborers called the 1890 McKinley measure a “rich man’s tariff.” Republicans asserted that the McKinley tariff would benefit workers through higher wages, but once the tariff was enacted, prices immediately rose faster than wages. Emphasizing the problems with the tariff, the Democrats soundly defeated the Republicans in the 1890 Congressional elections, and Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, won the presidency in 1892. In 1894 the Wilson-Gorman tariff increased rates once again.
