200 



CONGRESS. (REVENUE REFORM.) 



products brought here ? We sold all the wheat 

 and corn and meat products that Europe 

 would take at the prices that prevailed. Who 

 can tell at what prices Europe would have 

 taken even five hundred millions or one hun- 

 dred millions more of our agricultural prod- 

 ucts than she did take? The mere state- 

 7ii ent of the proposition is enough to disclose 

 the error on which it is founded, and shows 

 the importance of uniting manufactures with 

 agriculture, or, as Jefferson states it, putting the 

 manufacturer by the side of the farmer. In 

 fact, both must, in our country, depend almost 

 exclusively on our home market. It is folly, if 

 not a crime, to attempt a change in these 

 respects. It would bring ruin and bankruptcy 

 without the possibility of having such a result 

 accomplished. The greater the diversity of 

 industries in any country, the greater the 

 wealth-producing power of the people, and the 

 more there is for labor and capital to divide, 

 and the more independent that country be- 

 comes." 



Mr. Randall criticised the Mills Bill severely 

 in detail. He said: "Notwithstanding these 

 facts, we have before us the bill of the com- 

 mittee, which is not in any proper sense a re- 

 vision of the tariff but consists of amendments 

 constituting, I might say, a patchwork upon 

 the existing law, perpetuating and multiplying 

 its numerous infirmities of phraseology ; its 

 ambiguities and inequalities, which have per- 

 plexed and vexed the executive officers in its 

 administration, have been the subject of vol- 

 umes of Treasury decisions year by year, and 

 have embroiled the Government and merchants 

 in untold litigation, making it necessary to cre- 

 ate new courts for the special trial of customs 

 cases, which are increasing in number month 

 by month, and involve unknown millions of 

 demands upon the Government a constant 

 menace to the Treasury. Not only have the 

 committee ignored the recommendations of 

 Secretaries Manning and Fairchild and of the 

 customs officers at the various ports for the 

 adoption of specific duties, but have actually, 

 in a large number of cases, substituted ad-va- 

 lorem rates for existing specific duties, thus 

 showing preference for a system which has 

 been abandoned by all the civilized commercial 

 nations on the globe, and which has been char- 

 acterized as a system under ' which thieves 

 prosper and honest traders are driven out of 

 business.' 



" A declared purpose of this bill is to secure 

 'free raw materials, to stimulate manufact- 

 ures.' In execution of this idea the bill places 

 on the free list a large number of articles 

 which are really articles of manufacture, such 

 as salt, sawed and dressed lumber, laths and 

 shingles, hackled and dressed flax, burlaps, 

 machinery, terne or galvanized plates, glue, 

 glycerine, soap, certain proprietary articles, 

 extracts of hemlock, oils of various kinds, in- 

 cluding hemp-seed and rape-seed, olive and 

 fish oils, refined sulphur, various coal-tar prep- 



arations, earth-paints, distilled oils, alkalies, 

 and various other chemical compounds ; va- 

 rious manufactured mineral substances, pre- 

 pared China clay, quicksilver, bricks of all kinds 

 except fire-brick, prepared meats, lime, plas- 

 ter of Paris, ground and calcined, various pre- 

 pared drugs and chemicals, and many other 

 articles of like character. These constitute 

 the products of large and useful industries 

 throughout the United States, in which many 

 millions of capital are invested and employing 

 many thousands of working people. 



" At the same time the bill leaves or puts 

 upon the dutiable lists such articles as lead ore, 

 iron ore, zinc ores, nickel ore, and coal, which 

 might be called raw materials, if that term can 

 be properly applied to anything involving the 

 expenditure of labor in its production. Fur- 

 ther than this, the bill not only makes the so- 

 called ' raw materials ' free, such, for example, 

 as flax, jute, hemp, hemp-seed and rape-seed, 

 crude borax, opium, and hair of animals, but 

 places on the free-list the manufactured prod- 

 ucts of these materials, namely, burlaps (for 

 bagging, etc.), hemp-seed and rape-seed oil, 

 boracic acid, codein and other salts and com- 

 pounds of opium, and curled hair for mat- 

 tresses, etc. Thus the manufacture of such 

 articles is made impossible in this country, ex- 

 cept by reducing American labor to a worse 

 condition than that of labor in Europe. It goes 

 even further, and places or leaves dutiable 

 certain so-called raw materials, as, for example, 

 iron ore, lead, coal, paper, paints, caustic soda 

 and other alkalies, and sulphate of ammonia, 

 while placing on the free list articles made 

 from these materials, such as hoop-iron and 

 cotton-ties, iron or steel sheets or plates or 

 taggers iron coated with tin or lead, known as 

 tin-plates, terne-plates, and taggers tin, sul- 

 phate of iron or copperas, machinery, books 

 and pamphlets, paintings, soap, and alum. In 

 other words, the bill leaves or makes dutiable 

 the raw material and puts on the free list the 

 article manufactured from it, thus not only 

 placing an insurmountable barrier in the way 

 of making such articles here, but actually pro- 

 tecting the foreign manufacturer and laborer 

 against our own, and imposing for their benefit 

 a burden upon the consumer in this country. 



" Again, the bill places lower rates on some 

 manufacture'd articles than on the materials 

 used in making them, as, for instance, manu- 

 factures of paper, 15 per cent., and the paper 

 to produce it at 25 per cent. 



"It leaves an internal-revenue tax of more 

 than 300 per cent, on alcohol used in the arts, 

 amounting, according to a fair estimate, to as 

 much as the entire amount of duty collected 

 on raw wool, which alcohol enters as a ma- 

 terial in a vast number of important and need- 

 ful articles, which the committee have either 

 made free or have so reduced the rates thereon 

 that the duty would be less than the tax on 

 the alcohol consumed in their manufacture. 



" In some cases the difference between the 



