Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/338

306 In the Bureau of Internal Revenue a better system prevailed; but this department of the Treasury being always overburdened with work, and its service largely rendered by assessors and collectors who were destitute of business training, contributed but little in the way of deductions from experience. It had, moreover, at one time as its head an official who subsequently in a higher position refused to allow data to be collected in respect to certain taxes, on the ground that the less the people knew about such matters the better it was for the Treasury.

Another great source of difficulty experienced by the Commission in conducting investigations with a view of arriving at any correct estimates of the prospective revenue of the country was the abnormal condition of every branch of trade and industry after 1861, due primarily to the war disturbances, and next to the frequent alterations in the rates of taxation. Every advance made in tariff, or internal revenue taxes, was anticipated to such an extent by importers, manufacturers, dealers, and speculators that the Government could not fairly test the capacity of any one of its great and legitimate sources of revenue. Thus, for example, the almost incredible profits made by reason of anticipation of the large and repeated advances in the taxes on distilled spirits have already been pointed out. Of cigars, in like manner, it was estimated that above eighty millions had been made and stored at one time in the city of New York alone, in anticipation of a higher tax; and in the case of the comparatively insignificant article of matches, on which the tax was only one cent per bunch, the stock accumulated in anticipation of an advance of tax was so large that it was not entirely exhausted for a subsequent period of three years.

In the absence of any specific instructions, either from Congress or the Secretary of the Treasury, it was difficult for the commission to form an opinion as to the best method of entering upon the comprehension and reform of a scheme of taxation which embraced almost every form of tax that the ingenuity of man could devise, and with an incidence on almost every form of property, business, profession, or occupation that was capable of yielding to the state a revenue. The conclusion arrived at, after no little consideration, involved a complete abandonment of any idea of endeavoring to enter upon and comprehend the whole field of inquiry at the outset; and in its place, and in accordance with the maxim attributed to Emerson, that the eye sees only what it brings to itself to see, it was determined to take up and study specifically the sources of public revenue in the order of their importance; and give no attention to any other subject, or attempt to theorize, until everything that domestic experience or the experience of other countries could teach concerning them had been