Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/165

Rh manner, upon the brass runners, the tips, the ribs, the cloth composing the cover, the elastic band which fastened the cover when closed, the rubber of which the band was composed, the button to which it was attached; and finally upon the umbrella itself, when the separate parts were aggregated, and thereby converted into a finished product. And if any of the constituents of the umbrella—as the ivory, the silk, or the metal—were of foreign production, the same were subjected on coming into the country to an import duty in addition.

In the case of books and pamphlets, it was proved by the New York Publishers' Association that, including the license and income taxes, the finished book and its constituent materials paid from fifteen to twenty separate and distinct taxes before it came to the reader—the paper and its constituents, the cloth, the glue, the starch, the leather, the slaughtered animal whence the hide furnishing the leather was obtained, the dyes with which the cloth or leather was colored or stained, the thread, the gold leaf, the type metal, the type, and the printing machinery; and then, when the whole was combined, the finished book paid an additional tax of six per cent, which was levied not upon the cost of manufacture but upon the price at which the book was sold. In addition to all these taxes, the manufacturer or publisher paid for the privilege of doing business an annual license tax, and an income tax of from five to ten per cent on his profits, if he had any.

In short, it was as if a frontier line had been drawn about each individual article or product in the nation, across which nothing could pass without being submitted to an exaction.

Besides these taxes on manufactured products of the character specified, a tax of from three to six per cent was imposed on repairs when the value of the article repaired was increased by the reason of the repairs to the extent of ten per cent; and a further tax of six per cent on what was termed "increased values," or the additional value given to any article, which had either paid an import or internal tax, by being "polished, painted, varnished, waxed, gilded, oiled, electrotyped, galvanized, plated, framed, ground, pressed, colored, dyed, trimmed, or ornamented."

The examples of difficult and nice adjudication experienced in enforcing these two classes of taxes are so curious as to justify somewhat more than a passing notice. Thus, if a worker in tin or iron made a stove at one hour and in the next hour repaired a stove to the extent of more than ten per cent of its value, he paid on the product of his first hour's work a tax of six per cent, and on his second three per cent. In like manner, a blacksmith making a taxable article, and then repairing one exactly like it, was liable to the payment of the two classes of taxes; and the theory of the law, furthermore, was that both the tinsmith and the blacksmith