492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and sells more taxes than the original cost of whisky, as finds proof 

 and illustration in the fact that the United States imposes a tax of 

 one dollar and ten cents per gallon on proof whisky which its manu- 

 facturer would be very glad to sell free of tax for an average of thir- 

 teen cents per gallon. The tax, furthermore, is required to be laid 

 before the whisky can be removed from the distillery or bonded ware- 

 house and allowed to become an article of merchandise. Tobacco in 

 like manner can not go into consumption till the tax is paid. In 

 Great Britain, where all tobacco consumed is imported, for every 

 3d. paid by the consumer, 2.5d. represents customs duties or taxes. 

 In Russia it is estimated that the Government annually requires of 

 its peasant producers one third the market value of their entire crop 

 of cereals in payment of their taxes, and fixes the time of collecting 

 the same in the autumn, when the peasant sells sufficient of his grain 

 (mainly for exportation), and with the purchase money meets the de- 

 mands of the tax collector. Can it be doubted that the sums thus ex- 

 torted enter into and form an essential part of the cost of the entire 

 crop or product of the land? It is, therefore, immaterial where the 

 process of manufacture takes place ; the citizens of a State pay in pro- 

 portion to the quantity which they consume. The traveler who stops 

 at one of the great city hotels can not avoid reimbursing the owner 

 for the tax he primarily pays on the property; and the owner, in 

 respect to the taxation of his hotel property, is but a great and effect- 

 ive real-estate and diffused tax collector. Again, the farmer charges 

 taxes in the price of his products; the laborer, in his wages; the 

 clergyman, in his salary; the lender, in the interest he receives; the 

 lawyer, in his fees; and the manufacturer, in his goods. 



The American Bible Society is always in part loaded with the 

 whisky and tobacco taxes paid by the printers, paper-makers, and book- 

 binders, or by the producers of articles consumed by these mechanics, 

 and reflected and embodied in their wages and the products of their 

 labor according to the degree of absence of competition from fellow- 

 mechanics who abstain from the use of these and other taxed articles. 



These conclusions respecting the diffusion of taxes may be said to 

 be universally accepted by economists so far as they relate to the re- 

 sults of production before they reach the hands of the final con- 

 sumers; but they are not accepted by many, as Mr. Henry George 

 has recently expressed it, in respect to taxes on special profits or 

 advantages on things of which the supply is strictly limited, or of 

 wealth in the hands of final consumers, or in the course of distribution 

 by gift, and finally in respect to taxes on land. But a little examina- 

 tion would seem to show that all of these exceptions are of the kind 

 that are said to prove the rule. Special profits and advantages in 

 this age of quick diffusion of knowledge and intense competition are 



