One of the leading members of the Pennsylvania delegation in the Thirty-ninth Congress was William D. Kelley. He was a prominent member of the House, a good speaker, although he always prepared his addresses at great length, principally on the tariff; but he did not confine himself to his manuscripts entirely. His specialty in Congress was the tariff. He was called "Pig-iron Kelley" because he was for high duties on pig-iron and, in fact, everything manufactured in Pennsylvania. That State, as everybody knows, is the great iron and steel manufacturing State of the Union, and its representatives in Congress were in that day, as they are in this, the highest of high protective tariff advocates.
Before entering Congress, William D. Kelley for a number of years had been a judge of one of the more important courts of Philadelphia. He was elected to and kept in the House, without any particular effort on his own part, because he was considered one of the most valuable men in Congress in matters pertaining to the tariff. When I was a candidate for re-election to the House he visited my district and made several very able speeches for me at my request, and, with his wife, was my guest in Springfield for several days. At that time Republicans were for a high protective tariff, and it was not considered then, as it seems to be in these days of so-called insurgency, a crime for a Republican to stand up and say that he was in favor of high tariff duties. In any event, Judge Kelley did me much good in the speeches he made in my district.
We occupied apartments in the same house in Washington--on F Street near the Ebbitt House, at which hotel we took our meals. F Street is now the heart of the business centre, but it was then one of the principal residence streets, and many Representatives and Senators lived in that vicinity. The only objection I had to living in the same house with Judge Kelley was that he was always preparing speeches, and when he got ready to deliver a speech he would insist on reading it all over to me; and as his speeches were generally two or three hours long, and always on the tariff, in which I did not take an extraordinary amount of interest, I became pretty tired of hearing them.