This is the first in-depth study of the involvement of businessmen in the campaign for Tariff Reform, the most important and pervasive political debate on economic policy in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Previously published work on Tariff Reform has concentrated on its...

The argument about the limits of Free Trade or Protectionism rages throughout the world to this day. Following the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, free trade became one of the most distinctive defining features of the British state, and of British economic, social, and political life. While the...