Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/187

Rh iron and steel industries of the country, including all its mines of both coal and iron.

An incident also illustrative of the character of an indirect tax was afforded some years ago when it was proposed in Washington to ex-Governor Warmoth, of Louisiana, as representative of the sugar-producing interest of that State, to substitute a bounty on domestic sugars in place of the protection afforded by the then tariff (taxation) on the importation of foreign sugars. The suggestion was repelled with no little warmth, on the ground that such a substitution would be most prejudicial to the domestic sugar industry. "The people," he said, "know that a bounty is a tax, and as soon as they found out its amount would insist upon its repeal, and thus the sugar interest would lose both the protection of the tax on foreign competitive imports as well as the bounty." How far subsequent events harmonized with this forecast by Mr. Warmoth is worthy of brief notice in this connection. Congress in 1891 entirely repealed all the tariff (tax) on the importation of raw sugars, and to compensate the domestic producers of sugar for the abrogation of the protection which had been previously given them, authorized the payment by the Federal Government of a bounty of from one and three fourths to two cents per pound on their product. In a little more than four years subsequently, when the effect of the bounty—aggregating over $30,000,000 and representing nearly the whole cost of producing the sugar entitled to bounty—had been fully recognized by the public. Congress repealed the act authorizing its payment without restoring the former protective duties; and with such a pronounced approval of its action on the part of the people of the United States as to render it almost certain that no Congress will hereafter authorize the direct payment of bounties by the Federal Government for any purpose.

—Any discussion of this subject would be