Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/755

Rh dollars for every gallon of alcohol that can evade taxation. The annual loss of revenue consequent upon the proposed exemption of alcohol will not be less than $10,000,000 and probably more, all of which, under present revenue necessities, will have to be made good by an equivalent increase of taxation on other commodities.

The circumstance that some of the countries of Europe, especially Great Britain, allow alcohol mixed exclusively with naphtha (methyl), and in very large stipulated quantities, to be exempt from taxation, but the use of which, from the nauseous smell and taste thereby imparted, is exceedingly limited, has no bearing on the situation in the United States. In Europe the process of methylation is conducted under the close supervision of revenue officials, as it must be in the United States. In the former countries the number of grain distilleries, with bonded warehouses attached, where the process must be mainly conducted, is comparatively small. In the United States it is comparatively large; the number operated in the single State of North Carolina in 1895 being largely in excess of the number in the whole of Great Britain. If, in addition to the number of inspectors and gaugers required at the distilleries for an honest administration of the exemption, the number of druggists who use alcohol in medicinal preparations (which has been officially estimated as at least 32,000) and manufacturers of patent medicines are taken into account, the problem confronting the administration of the Internal Revenue Department of the Government might be well characterized as "appalling." In short, if the exact truth in respect to this proposed modification of the taxes on distilled spirits were known, it would probably appear that the people most interested in securing this exemption are the patent-medicine manufacturers, who see a great extension of their business in manufacturing cheap intoxicants without the compulsory use of methyl, under the name of medicinal preparations, and selling them by the bottle from the apothecary's shelf, rather than from the bars of hotels and restaurants. And this assumption finds much of confirmation in the circumstance that in respect to the applications filed in the Treasury for rebates, or damages for the non-execution of the exemption law, which are very considerable, estimated at from $10,000,000 to $19,000,000, the Internal Revenue reports that a large proportion of the claimants are manufacturers of patent medicines, and also to some extent the manufacturers of "mince pies" and candy. Recent investigations instituted and reported by the Massachusetts State Board of Health also show that many of the most noted patent medicines, especially the so-called "blood purifiers," "nerve tonics," and other remedies of like character, contain very large