and of Mark Hanna, but who and what were Cobden and Bright? What
relation were Cobden and Bright to the G. O. P.? The negotiations were
a joke to the United States and a humiliation to Canada. They were
adjourned from Quebec to Washington; and from Washington, Fielding and
Cartwright returned puzzled and sick at heart. They could obtain not
one single solitary tariff concession. They found it was not a case of
theoretical politics. It was a case of quid pro quo for a trade. What
had Canada to offer from 1893 to 1900 that the United States had not
within her own borders? Canada wanted to buy cheaper boots and cheaper
implements and cheaper factory products generally. She wanted a higher
market for her wheat and her meat and her fish and her crude metals and
her lumber. She would knock off her tariff on American factory
products, if the United States would knock off her tariff against
Canadian farm products. One can scarcely imagine Republican
politicians going to American farmers for votes on that platform. What
had Canada to offer? She had meat and wheat and fish and timber and
crude metals. Yes; but from 1893 to 1900 Uncle Sam had more meat and
wheat and fish and timber and crude metals than he could digest
industrially himself. Look at the exact figures of the case! You
could buy pulp timber lands in the Adirondacks at from fifty cents to
four dollars an acre. You could buy timber limits that were almost
limitless in the northwestern states for a homesteader's relinquishment
fee. Kansas farmers fed their wheat to hogs because it did not pay to
ship it. Texas steers sold low as five dollars on the hoof. Crude
metals were such a drug on the market that the coinage of free silver
was suggested as a panacea. Canada hadn't anything that the United
States wanted badly enough for any quid pro quo in tariff concessions.

This was the time that Uncle Sam rejected reciprocity.