------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (January 2006)  
  
Cynthia Clark Northrup and Elaine C. Prange Turney, editors,   
_Encyclopedia of Tariffs and Trade in U.S. History_. Westport, CT:   
Greenwood Press, 2003. lvi + 1631 pp. (five volumes), $345   
(hardcover), ISBN: 0-313-32789-0.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Stephen Meardon, Department of Economics,   
Williams College.  
  
  
Each of the three volumes of this encyclopedia, edited by Cynthia   
Clark Northrup of the University of Texas at Arlington and Elaine C.   
Prange Turney of the University of Dallas, responds to a genuine need   
of researchers and students of the history of U.S. trade policy. The   
first volume is the encyclopedia proper: a compendium of over four   
hundred alphabetically-ordered entries ranging roughly from 200 to   
1000 words, with a median of perhaps 300 words, and preceded by an   
eight-page introduction and a guide to selected topics. The several   
topics include commodities (under which heading twenty-one entries   
are classified, e.g. coal, rum, and tobacco), economic philosophy   
(one entry on "Economic Darwinism"), economists (seventeen entries   
including Bastiat, Hume, and Ra�l Prebisch), events (sixteen entries,   
e.g. industrial revolution and nullification), organizations   
(twenty-nine entries from the American Free Trade League to the   
Sierra Club), political parties and groups (ten entries including   
Democrats, Republicans, and Know-Nothings), politicians (212 entries   
from Alexander Hamilton to Al Gore), and tariffs (thirty-four entries   
including the Tariffs of 1789, 1790, 1792, and so on to Hawley-Smoot).  
  
The second volume is a selection of momentous texts, reports,   
manifestos and speeches: an anthology of primary documents   
representing the ideas and politics that have animated U.S. trade   
controversies. The third volume reproduces in their entireties the   
thirty-one comprehensive tariff laws negotiated by Congress from 1789   
to 1930, after which time revisions of the tariff were made by the   
executive branch.  
  
These last two volumes are easier to evaluate, and ultimately to   
recommend, than the first. The content, strengths, and weaknesses of   
Vol. II, _Debating the Issues: Selected Primary Documents_, are most   
visible in contrast with F. W. Taussig's old but still valuable   
_Selected Readings in International Trade and Tariff Problems_   
(1921). Both include excerpts from Book IV of Smith's _Wealth of   
Nations_ on the fallacies of the mercantile system and the benefits   
of trade; from Hamilton's _Report on Manufactures_, an abiding source   
of inspiration to advocates of protection; and from Grover   
Cleveland's 1887 State of the Union address, in which he staked his   
re-election the following year on tariff reform -- and lost. But each   
includes many more readings unduplicated by the other.  
  
Taussig's purpose was to piece together a book that could stand on   
its own as a college text on international trade and tariff problems   
in America and Europe, so he included alongside the foregoing   
documents samples from (among others) Ricardo, J. S. Mill, J. E.   
Cairnes, and Taussig himself on international trade theory; Bastiat,   
Richard Sch�ller, Lujo Brentano, and Alfred Marshall on free trade   
versus protection; and Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and William   
McKinley on the protective controversy in the United States. Northrup   
and Turney intend their Volume II to be, unlike Taussig's _Selected   
Readings_, a library reference book, not a course textbook, and their   
inquiry is best described as historical, not economic. Their   
geographic area of concern, too, is limited to the United States. So   
notwithstanding their inclusion of Smith they pass over the theorists   
and redouble their attention to American politicians. To Taussig's   
Webster, Clay and McKinley they add speeches by Andrew Jackson, John   
Sherman, Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt,   
Woodrow Wilson, and so on, up to the transcript of the 1993 debate   
between Al Gore and Ross Perot over the NAFTA.  
  
Intellectual historians may be disappointed to see the crafters of   
legislation privileged to the exclusion of the crafters of their   
ideas. When Senator John Sherman of Ohio, speaking in advocacy of the   
tariff increase of 1865, explained that "although representing an   
interior state chiefly engaged in agriculture, yet I have always felt   
that the prosperity of one industry and section finally inured to the   
benefit of the whole nation and every part" (II., 235) and proposed   
therefore to discriminate in favor of home industry, he echoed Henry   
C. Carey. One would like to see the idea exposited also by Carey   
himself.  
  
That alone does not stand as much of a criticism of the anthology:   
its boundaries had to be drawn somewhere, after all, and for the late   
nineteenth century at least one can refer to other sources, like   
William Barber's (2005) excellent anthology, to fill in the   
theoretical gaps. On the other hand, the inclusion of the likes of   
Carey in addition to Sherman would have done more than consolidate   
the relevant material in one set of books. It would have raised the   
question: Why Sherman, after all? Carey's protective doctrine was   
influential not only to Sherman: among Carey's more ardent disciples   
were William D. ("Pig Iron") Kelley and James G. Blaine, who were the   
principal standard bearers in Congress for the protective system   
before the ascendancy of McKinley. Their speeches are more reflective   
of the doctrine than is Sherman's -- as should be expected, for they   
were more loyal adherents to the doctrine than was Sherman, who was a   
relative moderate (Stanwood 1903, II, 181, 190). Some more   
intellectual context could have served as a check on the selection of   
political documents (and vice-versa). Nevertheless, given the limited   
scope of the volume, the well-chosen selections far outnumber the   
questionable ones.  
  
Volume III, _The Texts of the Tariffs_, would appear at a glance to   
be immune to similar criticisms of omissions, at least through 1930.   
All of the comprehensive tariff acts prior to that year are included   
in it. As for the period since 1930, Northrup and Turney explain that   
tariff changes have been secured through bilateral and multilateral   
agreements negotiated by the executive and approved by Congress,   
rather than (as was done before) the other way round. The large   
number of such agreements prohibit their inclusion in the volume.   
Here, too, what is missing, one could argue, is the necessary, and   
even well-chosen, sacrifice that must be made given the space   
constraint.  
  
The problem with the argument would be that even from 1789 to 1930   
the executive branch negotiated numerous reciprocal trade agreements.   
 From the immediate postbellum period to the 1890s, in particular,   
they were the subject of considerable controversy in U.S. tariff   
policy. Erstwhile Whigs and Republicans like Henry C. Carey and his   
prot�g�, Blaine, who deplored the Canadian reciprocity agreement of   
1854, were the leading advocates of later agreements negotiated   
mainly (but not only) with Hawaii and the Latin American republics;   
Democrats by and large opposed them. Why? With no additional   
information, one might suppose either that Blaine and his ilk were   
not really as protectionist as heretofore suggested, or that they   
anticipated trade to be the handmaiden of U.S. investment abroad,   
investors the advance party for annexation by an emergent U.S.   
empire, and imperial growth to be worth the loss of protectionist   
doctrinal purity.  
  
With some additional information -- just one or two examples of the   
many reciprocity agreements ratified during the period, including   
preferably one that Blaine negotiated as Harrison's Secretary of   
State and that Cleveland abrogated -- one would begin to see why   
either one of the last two stories is incomplete. Republicans and   
Democrats alike understood reciprocity to serve the interests of   
protection, and their understanding was well founded. This important   
facet of nineteenth-century American tariff controversies, in which   
may be found the origins of the Republican turn towards trade   
expansion, is clouded from view by a collection of legislative acts   
comprising exclusively those modifying "the" tariff. And yet, having   
such a collection at hand, while potentially hazardous to the student   
of U.S. trade policy, is helpful to the researcher.  
  
Back to Volume I, _The Encyclopedia_. The more than four hundred   
entries were written by seventy-four contributors, most of them   
faculty members in history departments, a few of them graduate   
students in history, and a few others undergraduates or independent   
scholars. Many of the entries concern organizations, individuals,   
events or things of which I knew little before picking up the   
encyclopedia. I profited from reading them but cannot evaluate their   
accuracy. Others concern things I already knew either vaguely or   
firmly and found to be explained extraordinarily well. In this   
category the entries on John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Clay's   
Compromise, the Force Act [of 1832], the Tariff of Abominations [of   
1828], and Andrew Jackson written by Adrienne Caughfield, at the time   
of publication a Ph.D. student in history at Texas Christian   
University, stand out. Those by Cynthia Clark Northrup are notable   
for their generally high quality and also for their number: she   
appears to have done the heaviest lifting in Volume I, authoring by   
my count eighty entries.  
  
But other entries by other authors are worryingly inaccurate or   
misleading. Regarding "American Farmers" the reader is told that "in   
1913 the Underwood-Simmons Tariff became the first tariff since   
before the American Civil War to put many agricultural items of the   
free list while lowering others; unfortunately, this benefited the   
consumer, not the producer" (I, 12). The part before the semicolon is   
proved by Vol. III to be untrue; the part after it, depending on who   
is meant by "the producer," is either obvious or false. Regarding   
Charles Francis Adams, the reader is told that after Adams's   
supporters were outmaneuvered by those of Horace Greeley for the   
Liberal Republican nomination in 1872, "throughout the Gilded Age the   
tariff issue would only emerge as a diversionary tactic" (I, 3). At   
best this statement presumes "Gilded Age" to refer to a much shorter   
time period than is usually intended (and even then it is arguable).   
More accurately it is odd -- and refuted by any number of people,   
events, and texts, e.g. the careers of authors like William Graham   
Sumner and politicians like Blaine, Harrison, and Cleveland, the   
tariff commission of 1882, the presidential election of 1888, and   
Joanne Reitano's very good book (cited elsewhere in this   
encyclopedia) _The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great   
Debate of 1888_ (1994).  
  
What stands out ultimately in these three volumes -- the convenience   
of having at hand the many resources that are included in it, or the   
misapprehensions that could result from the exclusion of notable   
others? The excellent encyclopedia entries by scholars like   
Caughfield and the overall accomplishment of Northrup, or the smaller   
number of misleading entries? My reservations have not prevented me   
from thumbing often through the encyclopedia -- particularly but not   
exclusively Volume III -- while doing my own writing. So I will   
recommend it to other researchers of the history of U.S. trade   
policy, too. The high price will cause most to obtain it only through   
their institutions' libraries.  
  
References:  
  
William J. Barber, editor, 2005. _The Development of the National   
Economy: The United States from the Civil War through the 1890s_.   
London: Pickering and Chatto.  
  
Joanne Reitano, 1994. _The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The   
Great Debate of 1888_. Pennsylvania State University Press.  
  
Edward Stanwood, 1903. _American Tariff Controversies in the   
Nineteenth Century_ (two volumes). New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.  
  
Frank W. Taussig, editor, 1921. _Selected Readings in International   
Trade and Tariff Problems_. Boston: Ginn and Company  
  
  
Stephen Meardon is author of "Richard Cobden's American Quandary:   
Negotiating Peace, Free Trade, and Anti-Slavery" (in Anthony Howe and   
Simon Morgan, eds., _Rethinking Nineteenth Century Liberalism:   
Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays_, Ashgate, forthcoming) and "How   
TRIPs Got Legs: Copyright, Trade Policy, and the Role of Government   
in Nineteenth-Century American Economic Thought," _History of   
Political Economy_ (supplement, 2005).  
  
Copyright (c) 2006 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be   
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to   
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the   
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2229).   
Published by EH.Net (January 2006). All EH.Net reviews are archived   
at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.  
  
-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW  --------------  
EH.Net-Review mailing list  
[log in to unmask]  
http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo/eh.net-review