Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/352

320 annual taxed production of spirits went up from 50,704,189 gallons in 1878 to 79,616,901 gallons in 1884, and the per capita consumption from 1·07 gallons to 1·45 gallons in the corresponding years. During the period from 1871 to 1880 there was a decrease both in the quantity of spirits on which the Government was able to collect a tax and in the apparent per capita consumption of the people, and this, too, notwithstanding an increase during this same period of thirty per cent in the population of the country; 1871 showing a tax on sixty-two and one third millions (1·58 gallons per capita), while in 1879 the tax was collected on only fifty-three million gallons (1·09 gallons per capita).

The decade from 1870 to 1879 was further characterized by two periods of disturbance—which ought to be instructive in view of future legislation—occasioned by an advance in 1873 of the gallon tax from fifty to seventy cents, and again in 1875 from seventy to ninety cents. In both cases these advances in rates were followed by large annual reductions in the quantity of the spirits taxed and in an apparent per capita consumption, which in turn indicated extensive revivals of illicit practices which the reduction of the tax to fifty cents in 1868 had nearly extinguished, and which indications were also made certainties by abundant direct evidence.

The decade of 1880 to 1889 showed, on the other hand, an increase in the aggregate amount paying taxes from sixty-two and one eighth million gallons in 1880 (1·23 gallons per capita) to seventy-seven and one eighth million gallons in 1889 (1·25 gallons per capita), an aggregate increase approximating a concurrent increase of twenty-two per cent in the population of the country.

During the fiscal years from 1888 to 1893, inclusive, under a uniform and prospectively stable rate of tax, an apparently good and efficient administration of the law, and a fairly prosperous condition of the country, the results in this department of our national revenues were very exceptional and interesting. The continuous increase in production, in per capita consumption, and in revenue was remarkable, the average increase in spirits paying taxes having been nearly 4,600,000 gallons per annum, or in a ratio greater than any concurrent increase in the population of the country; in average per capita consumption, nearly one third of a gallon; in average increase in revenue of nearly $5,000,000 ($4,910,000) per annum, the whole culminating for the fiscal year (1893) in a product of 99,000,000 gallons, an annual revenue of $89,000,000, and a per capita consumption of 1·48 gallons. During the same period the per capita consumption of all spirits, domestic and foreign, in Great Britain was about 1·063 gallons.

The financial troubles and business depressions in Europe and other countries during the years 1892 and 1893 do not appear to