Mr. Mills had been brought up in the fine old school of Democracy. Free speech, free trade, independent action, self-reliance were cardinal virtues to him. He took his principles as he found them in Thomas Jefferson, and he literally followed Jefferson’s advice to go back frequently to the ideas on which the government had been founded for encouragement and advice. The interpretation of protection which he had found in force when he entered Congress and the growing combinations of business men to support it, he despised, and from the first all his fighting blood had been up against them. He had been on the Ways and Means Committee continually since his first appointment and had contributed some of the strongest arguments and sayings to be found in the various debates. “Free poker and a taxed Gospel” was his phrase; his way of characterizing the failure to get Bibles on the free list and playing cards off.
Naturally Mr. Mills brought to his chairmanship some positive ideas. One of the most positive was that there should be no hearings given to manufacturers. If he had denied the right to life, liberty, and happiness, no louder wail would have arisen. With every tariff bill the “hearings” had been growing longer and more futile, declared Mr. Mills, and one who undertakes to read them, even to look over them, cannot deny that he was right. Admitting all that any candid protectionists could claim for the value of the hearings there was already an accumulation of recent ones as great as any committee could digest. There were the two big volumes of the tariff commission dated 1883, perhaps on the whole the best which had been taken; there were several volumes from Mr. Morrison’s committee and from the Senate Finance Committee. This was enough in Mr. Mills’s opinion and he set his foot down about taking further testimony of this kind. He even held out against meeting socially the gentlemen who haunted Washington for the purpose of keeping their representatives in mind of what might happen “back home” if what they had asked was not given. Several amusing incidents resulted from his obstinate stand on the matter. One came through the determination of the “Parsee Merchant” to force Mr. Mills to talk with some of the manufacturers. The “Parsee” was as devoted a free-trader as Mr. Mills, but he did not share Mr. Mills’s antipathy to lobbyists. He was a man of the world, a great diner-out, a brilliant talker. At his own dinners in Washington he brought together people of the most varied tastes. One night he entertained the Ways and Means Committee, including the Chairman. The dinner was under way when a card was brought in. With assumed surprise Mr. Moore exclaimed, “Why, it’s my friend Mr. Havemeyer, bring him in.” Now for some time Mr. Mills had been besought to meet Mr. Havemeyer, and he had persistently refused. He did not propose to be trapped into a meeting. The great sugar man came in one door; Mr. Mills went out the other.
