MASON, David. Hastings, journalist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 8 January, 1828. Between 1852 and 1867 he was editorially connected with newspapers in Georgia and Tennessee. In the last-named year he settled in Chicago, Illinois, where he was one of the writers on the "Tribune" and the "Republican," and subsequently editor-in-chief of the latter paper. In 1870 he began to devote himself wholly to economic, questions, and especially, to that of the tariff. In 1871 he became editor of " The Bureau," a monthly protectionist magazine, and from 1873 till 1880 he was tariff editor of the Chicago " Inter-Ocean," subsequently filling the same place on the Chicago " Herald." He is the author of a large pamphlet, "How Western Farmers are benefited by Protection"" of arguments before the ways and means committee of congress and the tariff commission; of the article "Protection," in Lalor's " Cyclopaedia of Political Science"" and of "A Short Tariff History of the United States," of which only the first part (1783-'9) has been published (Chicago, 1884). He has been engaged on this book for several years, and proposes to bring it down to recent times. In the part that is already published he aims to show that the recognition of the necessity for a protective tariff was the chief impelling cause of the constitutional convention and of the adoption of the constitution of the United States.