Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/753

Rh of diamonds, $100,000 on duties representing a value of $1,000,000 was reported as collected at the single port of New York. With an increase of duty to twenty-five per cent, little or no revenue is derived from that source.

The best and most reliable data for estimating the maximum revenue resulting from the taxation of distilled spirits is to be found in the experience of the Internal Revenue Department for the fiscal years from 1887 to 1893 inclusive. During these years, under a uniform and stable rate of taxation, a good and efficient administration of the law, and a fairly prosperous condition of the country, the average increase in revenue was nearly $5,000,000 ($4,910,000) per annum; the whole culminating in the fiscal year 1893 in a revenue of $89,231,000. In a report made by the writer to the Secretary of the Treasury in July, 1893, the sequel of any increase in the then existing rate of tax (ninety cents), which was at that time to some extent advocated, was foreshadowed in the following language: "It will favor a recurrence of the disgraceful and disastrous results that characterized the period of experimental taxation in the years immediately succeeding the termination of the war. Certain it is also that an anticipation of participation in an increase of the tax would lead to such a production of spirits as to postpone for one or two years any increase in revenue to the Government." It is needless to say that every prediction thus made has been fully verified, and, encouraged by such success, the following anticipations may be warranted: If our legislators in Congress assembled, agreeing to limit all consideration of the subject to the one point of revenue, will reduce the present rate of tax per proof gallon of distilled spirits from $1.10 (about 825 per cent) to the former rate of ninety cents (690 per cent), with no exemptions, and the industry of the country again become fairly prosperous, the average per capita consumption of 1892 and 1893 may be fairly taken as the basis of future estimates from the greatest and most reliable single source of national revenue. Or, in other words, an annual revenue, under such conditions, approximating one hundred millions may be anticipated in 1899, with a certain regular increase contingent on a normal increase in population of from three to four millions additional per annum.

—A brief notice of a proposition to essentially impair the revenue from distilled spirits by exempting alcohol used in comparatively few manufacturing industries and in the preparation of "medicinal and other like compounds" from taxation is here pertinent. The history of this movement constitutes an extraordinary feature in American fiscal experience, and in brief is as follows: When "an act to reduce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for