The Failure of the Scientific Tariff

Abstract The period 1906 to 1910 saw Hewins becoming more and more embroiled in Unionist Party affairs, the Commission machine becoming used more directly in support of Tariff Reform propaganda, and Commission strategy being bent to the dictates of Unionist Party unity. At a time when, as our survey of Chambers of Commerce has shown, there was a marked shift in the balance of business opinion towards Tariff Reform, it became increasingly evident to insiders that the construction of a scientific tariff, the primary purpose of the Commission, was not being achieved. There were three proximate reasons for this: the failure in later surveys to emulate the tariff schedules of the early single-industry reports, the failure to deal satisfactorily with banking and foreign investment, and the failure to produce an integrated tariff in a ‘Final Report’. Behind such factors lay the political dangers in exposing concrete Tariff Reform proposals to public scrutiny, and an increasing diversion of Hewins’s own attentions into political activity.