174 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the receipts of the Government, both from 

 sources of internal revenue and from customs 

 duties, as to render such a revision desirable 

 and possible, keeping in view first the primary 

 object of the imposition of duties, a revenue 

 for the maintenance of the Government, and 

 keeping that revenue as near as possible to its 

 current and necessary expenses. There is an 

 opportunity to revise and reform not only the 

 duties but the methods of enforcing the law 

 and collecting them. Some of the circum- 

 stances justifying this course have sprung up 

 without any reference to legislation. Changes 

 in business, changes in the relations of indus- 

 tries tu each other, as well as changes in the 

 souroes of revenue to the Government, require 

 the Government to look now to one quarter 

 and now to another from which little was ex- 

 pected or received in former times. We should 

 conform our legislation to the changes going 

 on all the time in the methods of business as 

 well as in the sources of revenue. All these 

 invoke at our hands attention to the question 

 whether we shall permit the revenue system 

 of the Government to remain as it is, or address 

 ourselves to the best method of producing out 

 of it a state of things that shall answer as well 

 the demands of the Government as the expec- 

 tations and necessities .and claims of those un- 

 der the Government whose business pursuits it 

 is impossible to reform the revenue laws with- 

 out affecting. 



u If I desired the continuance of the present 

 state of tilings, if I wished to perpetuate these 

 incongruities and these excesses and these de- 

 fects, I should desire that the ideas submitted 

 on Friday last by the Senator from Kentucky 

 (Mr. Back) should prevail ; for it is by the at- 

 tempt to enforce just such ideas in the past 

 that has com3 this condition of things. Since 

 the tariff of 1846, before the tariff of 1846, 

 ye:i, before from the time of the tariff of 1842, 

 the effort has been made to establish a tariff 

 system by precisely the same means as those 

 suggested by the Senator from Kentucky. All 

 the industries of the land affected by the im- 

 position of duties, or by the relief of indus- 

 tries from their imposition, have been sum- 

 moned before committees from 1842 to to-day 

 in precisely the same manner suggested by him. 

 They have been in a great measure also under 

 the control of party organizations. 



" Sir, I am not about to discuss the compar- 

 ative claim of one of the two parties to the 

 confidence and support of the people on this 

 question of the tariff. I am not here now to 

 sty th-it to the Democratic party or to the Re- 

 publican party the country may most safely 

 turn for relief or for reform. I do not think 

 that it is a part of my duty, resulting from the 

 conviction of an experience in this matter 

 somewhat extended, to undertake at this time 

 to stake the great questions involved in the 

 bill and the substitute before the Senate upon 

 the merits of either party. Out of these con- 

 tests of parties have come the evils of which 



we complain. We have had the struggle of 

 the one party or the other to take to itself and 

 appropriate the work of so adjusting the tariff 

 in this country between the Government and 

 those affected by it as to seek and obtain from 

 the people some support that the adversary 

 should not be entitled to ; and out of that has 

 come the shifting from party to party of this 

 question and these measures ; and the Govern- 

 ment on the one hand and the many indus- 

 tries of this country on the other -have suffered 

 in this conflict of party. It is only from the 

 possibility now presented, that the wise men of 

 both parties can take up this question without 

 reference to its effect upon political parties and 

 determine it upon its merits, that anything like 

 permanency, built upon justice and fairness, 

 will ever result from legislation. 



" A duty for the purpose of revenue must 

 be imposed in one of two ways : indifferently, 

 hap-hazard, by blind folly, or with discrimina- 

 tion. I take it that neither the Senator from 

 Kentucky nor any other Senator proposes to 

 impose duties for revenue blindly and indis- 

 criminately, without regard to what will be 

 the effect either upon the revenue or upon the 

 subject-matter upon which the duty is imposed. 

 Then it must be imposed with discrimination. 

 And one other question arises immediately and 

 settles the whole matter: it must be imposed 

 either upon the raw material or upon the man- 

 ufactured article, and no man can address him- 

 self one moment to the consideration of this 

 question, but must settle at the threshold the 

 point whether he will impose that duty upon 

 the raw material or upon the manufactured 

 article. 



" These men represent the manufactured ar- 

 ticle who are invited before a committee of 

 Congress, by the side of whom in the propo- 

 sition of the Senator from Arkansas two or 

 three experts are invited to take seats. They 

 are producers in this land. According to the 

 census of 1860 their products amounted to 

 $1,800,000,000, and in 18YO to $4,000,000,000, 

 an increase in value of 102 per cent, in ten 

 years. Making all due allowance for the dis- 

 turbance of prices by inflation, in actual quan- 

 tity during those ten years the increase had 

 been 52 per cent. Fifty-two per cent, more 

 in actual quantities was produced at the end of 

 that decade. According to that rate of in- 

 crease^ wellnigh eight billion dollars' worth of 

 fabrics will have been produced and developed 

 in the year 1880, as shown by the census. 

 This is represented by men who must appear 

 before this committee. This is the production 

 in this land consumed here, made here for our 

 own people, under such an adjustment of du- 

 ties as the Government was under the necessity 

 of imposing, so imposed that they could be 

 produced here rather than brought here al- 

 ready produced ; for where the production is, 

 there is the manufacture, there are the people 

 whose hands fashion these fabrics ; and where 

 the people are whose hands manufacture these 



