The most significant side to the victory was that it established firmly the politico-industrial alliance which organizations like the Industrial League, the Iron and Steel Association, and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers had worked so indefatigably ever since the war to build up. Moreover, in the making of this bill, that alliance had found the Congressional leader it needed—a man who was willing to accept its dictates as to classifications and rates, to fight for them with skill, energy, and technical knowledge, and who took it as a matter of course that he and his party should receive in exchange what financial and organizing aid they required. This man was Nelson W. Aldrich. The part he had played in the Senate in the making of the Allison and McKinley Bills had proved him the first entirely able and what was quite as important, entirely cynical leader, the high protectionists had developed. Those whom he had served so well were not ungrateful. Particularly jubilant was the National Association of Wool Manufacturers. It publicly acknowledged its “great obligations to Senator W. Aldrich of Rhode Island for the masterly manner in which he advocated its cause in the Senate.” “Indeed,” the Bulletin went on to say, “it is proper that we should bear testimony in this connection to the remarkable familiarity with all branches of industry displayed by Senator Aldrich in his management of the tariff bill. Every detail of the most complicated of the schedules was present in his mind for instant response to any criticism or inquiry. Day after day he stood at his post, alert and watchful, rarely speaking except when a response was required, but armed cap-à-pie for attack from any quarter. Rarely in the history of tariff legislation in this country has the whole burden of so protracted a debate fallen upon one man, and certainly no representative in Congress ever acquitted himself more admirably of so great a responsibility.”
The best reason for believing that the methods and principles embodied in the bill would have more than a brief life, that the revolt already begun against its excesses and makeshifts would not weaken it, lay in the fact that the ideal leader for the measure had developed in the Senator from Rhode Island.