Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/341

Rh 1866, and her per capita consumption during the same period from 2.70 pounds to 3.42 pounds; and again, when the duty was further reduced in 1865 from 1s. to 6d. per pound, the annual importations increased from 139,000,000 in 1866 to 209,000,000 in 1881, and the per capita consumption from 3.42 pounds to 4.58.

When by the act of October, 1890, the tax was removed from the imports of crude sugars into the United States, the price of the same went down almost immediately to an equal extent in all American markets; while the consumption of sugar in the country increased from an average of about fifty-four pounds per capita in 1890 to more than sixty-seven pounds in 1892. A like result has attended a similar experience in respect to this in other countries, and especially in Great Britain. Thus, the aggregate consumption of sugar by the British people in 1844 was returned at 237,143 tons. A reduction of taxes on its importation in 1864 increased its domestic use to 528,919 tons; a reduction of fifty per cent on existing rates in 1870 made it 695,029 tons; another reduction of fifty per cent in 1873 carried up consumption to 779,000 tons; and when, in 1874, all taxes on the imports of sugar were abolished, the annual domestic consumption increased in little more than a year's period to 930,000 tons. On the other hand, when by the tariff act of 1890 an additional tax of half a cent per pound was imposed on the import of tin plate into the United States, tin plate went up to an equal extent in price all over the country; and so also on pearl buttons, linen goods, and other articles of foreign production on the importations of which the tariff taxes were largely increased. By the tariff act of 1890, also, eggs, which could formerly be imported into the United States free of duty, were made subject to a tax of five cents per dozen. Since then the price of eggs imported from Canada into districts of the United States within the same sphere of territorial competition has been increased to the American consumers to almost exactly the extent of the import tax to which they are subjected. Thus, when the price of eggs was ten and a half cents per dozen in Toronto, they were sixteen cents in Buffalo and sixteen and a half to seventeen cents in New York. Such a result would be unaccountable if the Canadian farmers paid the duty on eggs sent by them to the United States.

It is interesting to here ask attention to the opinions entertained and expressed by those whose situation and experience have qualified them to speak with authority: "The duty constitutes the price of the whole mass of the article in the market. It is substantially paid on the article of domestic manufacture, as well as that of foreign production" (John Quincy Adams). "I said it, and I stand by it, that as a general rule the duties paid on imports operate as a tax upon the consumer" (John Sherman). Mr. Blaine, in his Twenty Years in