3i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The specific tax on distilled spirits of fifty cents per proof gal- 

 lon remained in force from July, 1868, to August, 1873, a period 

 of a little more than four years. During this period the tax was 

 assessed and collected on an average production of 67,175,822 proof 

 gallons per annum, yielding an average annual revenue of about 

 $34,000,000, and indicating an average annual consumption for all 

 purposes of the country of about 1'65 proof gallons per capita. 

 For the period of four years immediately preceding the fiscal year 

 1869, under a tax of two dollars per proof gallon for three years, 

 and a dollar and a half and two dollars for one year (1865), the 

 tax was assessed and collected on an average annual produc- 

 tion of only about 13,300,000 proof gallons per annum, yielding 

 an average annual revenue of about $21,727,000, and indicating 

 an average annual consumption of only about 0'38 proof gallon 

 per capita. 



But, notwithstanding these satisfactory results, the law au- 

 thorizing the reduction of the tax from two dollars to fifty cents 

 per proof gallon had hardly become operative when agitation 

 commenced for its repeal or modification. Speculators had the 

 idea that the old scheme of increasing the tax after a little lapse 

 of time, without making the increase applicable to stocks on hand, 

 was, with its gainful prospects, again within the range of possi- 

 bilities ; while very many extreme advocates of temperance, un- 

 taught by and caring nothing for the record of recent experience, 

 were inclined to regard the new and comparatively low tax as im- 

 politic and in the light of the removal of a barrier against the 

 spread of intemperance. These and other arguments proved suf- 

 ficiently potent, and in June, 1872, Congress, by an act which took 

 effect in the following August, increased the gallon tax to seventy 

 cents, and subsequently, in March, 1875, raised the rate to ninety 

 cents per gallon, and in August, 1894, further increased it to a 

 dollar and ten cents, the present rate. 



It is not necessary to recall that the experiences which were 

 attendant upon every advance of the tax on spirits from its first 

 imposition in 1862 to 1868 were repeated subsequently in 1872 and 

 in 1875, when the increased rates of seventy and ninety cents were 

 respectively enacted ; those of the latter date being remarkable from 

 the circumstance that the frauds upon the revenue, which were 

 enormous, were more directly brought home to high officials of 

 the Government than at any former period, and constitute a chap- 

 ter in the history of government by the people which the people 

 may well wish forgotten. 



The above review of the experiences of the United States prior 

 to 1869, in attempting to enforce the collection of an excessively 

 high tax on the production and consumption of distilled spirits, is 

 mainly valuable in this connection from the economic and moral 



