Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/335

 TAXATION THROUGH MONOPOLY 313 ROSS AND NET YIELD OF INTERVA FRENCH OF TEN TOBACCO Yr. ARS. MONOPOLY AT Years. 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1869  1880 Gross Receipts. Francs, (ooo omitted). 64,171 67,290 95,188 122,113 195,325 255,707 346,130 Net Gain. Francs, (000 omitted). 42,219 46,782 70,111 88,915 143,762 197,211 285,625 We here discover a steady improvement in the net yield, which increases from less then 1,700,000 in 1820 to more then 3,500,000 in 1850, and reaches 11,400,000 in 1880. The mechanism of the monopoly is in its main outlines simple enough. Tobacco can be grown only for sale to the state, or for exportation. It can only be grown in certain departments, (fourteen in number, and experimentally in six others). The area of cultivation, the price of the product, and the proportion between the amount of home-grown and imported tobacco is fixed from time to time. The manufacture is carried on at nineteen state factories, whence the finished product passes to the various ' dep/)ts that supply the retail dealers, who receive as profit a prescribed amount consisting of the difference between the rated wholesale and retail prices. The latter varies according to the district, being lower in the parts most exposed to the danger of contraband trade. 2 The Austrian tobacco monopoly starts from 167.0, wh.en it was . farmed out, and was gradually extended over the various pro- vinces of the Empire. Unlike the contemporaneous French sys- tem, the growth of tobacco was permitted on the condition of obtaining a licence. By the end of the eighteenth century the product was three million florins. In 1851 the monopoly was extended to Hungary, where it did not, as was feared, retard the cultivation. The net yield of the monopoly in 1855 was about  1870 is unsuitable for comparison as a war year. - For French taxation of tobacco, see Clamageran, vol. ii. p. 654; Stourm, chap. xiv.; Leroy-Beaulieu, Science des Finances (3rd ed.), vol. i. pp. 699 706; Vignes, Tra, it des IrapOts, vol. i. pp. 174, et seq.