Far more dangerous to the Harrison administration than Democratic enthusiasm was the fact that moderate Republicans were also swinging away from it on the issue of protection. Harper’s Weekly had begun to argue that high tariffs were a sort of welfare for business, leading to the very sort of centralized government that Republicans should oppose. High tariffs created treasury surpluses, which bred “extravagance, corruption, and jobbery” as politicians spent profligately to keep themselves in office.
