When in 1903 the Tariff Reform movement began under Joseph Chamberlain's leadership, he gave it his enthusiastic support, becoming a member of the Tariff Commission and one of the most strenuous advocates in the country of tariffs in opposition to free trade. His daughter Edith said that Chamberlain's adoption of Tariff Reform must have seemed to Chaplin that "the hour he had waited for all his life had come at last"; Chaplin had been raised in a wheat-growing county that had been hard-hit by the agricultural depression and he had for years past advocated protectionism as a solution. He had supported the protectionist "Fair Trade" campaign in the 1880s and gained the nickname the "Veteran Protectionist". Chaplin earned Chamberlain's gratitude for his hard work in the Tariff Reform campaign.