Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/19

Rh. The average annual consumption by the people of Illinois at the time, supposing that they actually paid the tax on their product of whiskey, must have also been at the rate of over six gallons per head for every man, woman, and child of its population.

When "an act to reduce taxation to provide revenue for the Government and for other purposes"—passed August 28, 1894—was under consideration by the Senate of the United States; and pending a proposition to increase the revenue by increasing an existing tax of about seven hundred per cent on the average prime cost of distilled spirits to a rate of near nine hundred per cent, a Senator of long experience, apparently utterly oblivious that the subject involved had years before been thoroughly considered by the United States Treasury Department and declared to be impracticable, submitted a motion, permitting the use of alcohol in the arts, or in any medicinal or other like compound, without the payment of any internal revenue tax. The motion in question, after very brief consideration, was accepted and incorporated in the statute and now forms a part of the fiscal obligations and laws of the United States. The result was that the Secretary of the Treasury reported, that in default of any appropriation to defray the expenses of the administration of the act and the repayment of taxes, and "after full consideration of the subject, and an unsuccessful attempt to frame regulations which would protect the Government and the manufacturers, the department was constrained to abandon the effort." It was also estimated that the expense to the Government of attempting to administer the act would probably be not less than one million dollars per annum; that the legitimate loss of revenue contingent on its enforcement would be about ten million dollars yearly, or "more than one half of the estimated increase of revenue" that it was expected to accrue from the increase of the tax, and that the loss of revenue from the opportunity for illicit and fraudulent practice, which the act would facilitate would be unquestionably very considerable—probably an equal amount. The inference from all of which is, that when a State sends a representative to the United States Senate who, through indifference or gross ignorance of the most common principles and domestic experiences of taxation prospectively, entails a loss to the Government of some twenty million dollars per annum, it pays a very great price for such a privilege.

During another comparatively recent fiscal debate in the United States Senate, a Senator, who is popularly and justly accredited with statesmanship, advocated certain proposed appropriations of the public money, which were opposed on the ground that they were in the nature of extravagances, by saying that they could not be grievous to the people "since they would not amount to more than three cents per day per capita." But three