Mr. Mills had of course decided notions about the principles to be embodied in the bill. He stood for free raw materials, and consequently increased the free list considerably; wool, salt, lumber, wood pulp, flax, hemp, and jute were the important additions. Tin plates and cotton-ties were the leading manufactured items he made free. His chief hobby, however, was no specific duties. As the schedules then stood both specific and ad valorem were assessed on a great variety of articles. As an illustration, take dress goods, which started with a division into part wool and all wool. The former class was then divided according to value, those goods worth 20 cents or less per square yard carrying a specific duty of 5 cents per square yard and 35 cents ad valorem; those worth more than 20 cents, 7 cents and 40 per cent ad valorem. All-wool goods were divided according to weight: those weighing 4 ounces or less per square yard carried 9 cents per square yard, and 40 per cent ad valorem; those over 4 ounces, 35 cents per pound and 40 per cent ad valorem. The confusion resulting from this complexity was constant and opportunity for fraud increased with each variation. The scandals through the ’70’s and ’80’s charged by the Republicans solely to ad valorem duties were largely due to the irritating classifications according to value and the mixture of ad valorem and specific duties.
When Mr. Mills went to work on the bill he had before him a trial measure on which he had spent six months at home before his appointment and which for his own satisfaction he had had printed. He had attempted in his bill to avoid all specific duties; thus in the case of dress goods he wiped out all classifications and put a straight 40 per cent on the value, but as he afterwards said: “When I got to work with my brethren on the bill I found it would not go and I had to abandon my ad valorem tariff bill. The schoolmaster had not been sufficiently around to bring our people back to the Democratic principle of taxation as to value.” Mr. Mills simplified the complicated cotton schedule in the same way that he had the woollen schedule, by sweeping away the confusing classifications and assessing a straight 40 per cent on their value. The duties were reduced less drastically on iron and steel, and sugar suffered a reduction of only 18 per cent. The failure to apply the same rule to iron and steel and sugar as to wool and cotton was probably “geographic,” as Tom Reed charged. “This bill, far from being philosophical, is political from one end to the other,” Mr. Reed said in debate. “Is it not singular that this great principle of labor cost somehow or other seems to be strictly geographical—that it strikes the Canadian line with cyclonic force and that the Southern states seem to be so far removed from the storm centre as not to be in the slightest degree even ruffled?” Mr. Mills’s committee was made up largely of Southerners; iron and sugar interests were strong in their districts, both claimed special protection and both received it.