The Republicans had won in 1888 by taking advantage of Democrats’ miscalculations over the tariff. The Democrats had won in 1890 by taking advantage of Republican miscalculations about the tariff. They stood to win by an even larger margin in 1892. The tariff mattered in its own right, but it mattered mostly because it had become shorthand for the benefits and inequities of an industrial economy. The steel industry ranked among the foremost beneficiaries of the tariff, and Andrew Carnegie had clawed his way to the top of that industry. He became the face of the tariff, which would not prove
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