The Enactment and Development of the "Walker Tariff Act"

Abstract

Because "Walker Tariff" that depended upon free trade in principle was enacted and evolved, the period from 1846 to 1861 should be given a peculiar position in the tariff history of the United States of America where a protective tariff policy was formed the keynote of through the nineteenth century. In this paper, we put in order the factors to make it possible to enact and evolve this tariff act, and attempt to suggest the factors to reconvert the protective tariff policy after the Civil War. Conclusions are summarized as follows: (1) In order that the act was realized, it was presupposed that America was the exporter of raw cotton and food and the importer of manufacturing good at the classical world market built by the establishment of English industrial capital. (2) So, the interests to promote the act were mainly composed of slavery plantation of the South, commercial agriculture of the West, and a part of industrial capital. (3) The fundamental feature of the act was perceived by the adoption of low revenue standard to easure free trade. But there was a limitation to impede the development of such a policy in the financial structure of this period. (4) The development of free trade by itself aggravated the opposition and conflict on the land question between slavery plantation and commercial agriculture though both were unanimous for free trade. (5) Facing to the crisis of 1857, the principle of free trade was inconsistent with the actual financial structure definitively, and the system of such a policy was substituted for one to depend upon high protective tariff and domestic market. (6) This turning of the policy was realized by the forming alliance with protective tariff and "Homestead" interests.