As head of Ways and Means, Morrison worked hard for tariff reform, without conspicuous success. His bill met with so much Democratic obstruction that it never reached a final vote in 1884, and the same was true in 1886. The opposition was led by Congressman Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania on the Democratic side, and there had been bad blood between the two men for almost a decade. In 1875, Morrison had favored Michael Kerr of Indiana for Speaker over Randall, and Randall, coming to the Speakership a year later, saw to it that Morrison was shut out of the Ways and Means Committee chairmanship henceforth. In 1883, when Randall sought re-election to the Speakership, Morrison organized the forces that elected John G. Carlisle of Kentucky instead. But their personal dislike was rooted in sharply different views of how protective the tariff ought to be, and Randall's ability, as Appropriations Committee chairman, to wield the influence among members against any reduction in rates was still considerable through 1886. One high-tariff Democrat described Morrison as "afflicted with economic flatulence and fiscal hydrophobia," firing off "putrid tariff phosphorescence from one end and finance and currency froth from the other." The tariff bill that Morrison wanted never even made it unscathed through the Ways and Means Committee. "Apparently there are many doctors attending the coming Tariff bill at the leader's bedside," the Secretary of the Treasury Daniel Manning wrote an old associate. "I am afraid of many deformities, and feel almost certain that it will not live long enough to grow out of the arms of its nurses." Nor did it. In June 1886, the House voted by 157 to 140 not to discuss the bill. Thirty-five Democrats voted with the protectionist majority, among them congressmen from the wool-growing and sugar-raising districts of Ohio and Louisiana; Alabama's members voted on behalf of the coal and iron interests of Birmingham.