UNITED STATES, FINANCES OF THE. 



831 



one-cent bronze coins; 4,519 pieces, of the face 

 value of $185.57, of three-cent nickel pieces; 

 and 5,519 pieces, of the face value of $275.95, 

 of five-cent nickel pieces. The cost of the sil- 

 ver used during the year in the coinage of the 

 29,838,905 standard silver dollars under the 

 compulsory silver- coinage act of 1878 was 

 $23,448,960.01. There had been coined up to 

 the close of the previous fiscal year 203,882,554 

 silver dollars, and on the 1st day of December, 

 1886, the total amount of such coinage was 

 $247,131,549. At the time of the passage of 

 the law of 1878, directing this coinage, the in- 

 trinsic value of the dollars thus coined was 

 ninety-four and one fourth cents each, and on 

 the 31st day of July, 1886, the price of silver 

 reached the lowest stage ever known, so that 

 the intrinsic or bullion price of the standard 

 silver dollar at that date was less than seventy- 

 two cents. The price of silver on the 30th 

 day of November last was such as to make 

 these dollars intrinsically worth seventy-eight 

 cents each. Every fair and legal effort has 

 been made by the Treasury Department to dis- 

 tribute these dollars among the people. The 

 withdrawal of United States Treasury notes of 

 small denominations, and the issuing of small 

 silver certificates, have been resorted to in the 

 endeavor to accomplish this result, in obedience 

 to the will and sentiments -of the representa- 

 tives of the people in Congress. On the 27th 

 day of November, 1886, the people held of 

 these coins, or certificates representing them, 

 the nominal sum of $166,873,041; and there 

 still remained in the Treasury $79,464,345 as 

 against $142,894,055 so in the hands of the peo- 

 ple, and 72,865,376 remaining in the Treasury 

 one year ago. The President says, in his last 

 annual message: "I have seen no reason to 

 change the views expressed in my last annual 

 message on the subject of this compulsory 

 coinage; and I again urge its suspension on 

 all the grounds contained in my former recom- 

 mendation, re-enforced by the significant in- 

 crease of our gold exportations during the last 

 year, as appears by the comparative statement 

 herewith presented, and for the further reasons 

 that the more this currency is distributed 

 among the people the greater becomes our 

 duty to protect it from disaster ; that we now 

 have abundance for all our needs; and that 

 there seems but little propriety in building 

 vaults to store such currency, when the only 

 pretanse for its coinage is the necessity of its 

 use by the people as a circulating medium." 



Taxation Reform. The Secretary of the Treas- 

 ury submitted to Congress at its last session a 

 supplementary report on the collection of 

 duties, together with another from Assistant 

 Secretary Fairchild, embodying replies re- 

 ceived from those subordinate bureaus and di- 

 visions concerned in the administration of the 

 tariff law, as well as from the chief officers of 

 the four largest ports, in answer to specific 

 inquiries in relation to that subject. These 

 documents embody the opinions of the chief 



officers of the ports of Boston, New York, 

 Philadelphia, and Baltimore, at which, out of 

 a total revenue from customs exceeding $190,- 

 000,000 during the last fiscal year, there were 

 collected nearly $170,000,000. In his consid- 

 eration of the subject, the Secretary says : 



In a matter of so much importance as the levy and 

 collection of about $190,000,000 as taxes on imported 

 merchandise out of a sum total of $310,000,000 of an- 

 nual Federal taxation, I have deemed it due to Con- 

 gress that all the suggestions made to me by Govern- 

 ment officers, in response to my official inquiries, 

 should be laid before the legislative branch of the 

 Government without suppression, or modification of 

 any. The problem of reforming our existing taxes 

 on consumption in that most defective branch of the 

 same a survival of the war which consists of the 

 drag-net collection of multifarious duties on more 

 than 4,000 different commodities imported for con- 

 sumption here, is so environed with conflicting theo- 

 ries, purposes, passions, interests, or partisan hopes, 

 that fought to fully and frankly exhibit to Congress, 

 which has the power and responsibility of achieving 

 all needed reform, everything in my possession which 

 can illuminate the subject, or tend even remotely to 

 show which of the existing evils can be fairlv deemed 

 capable of executive remedy, and which will require 

 legislative treatment. 



The Secretary proceeds to consider the im- 

 pediments in the way of ascertaining the in- 

 voice value and the dutiable value of consigned 

 goods on which ad-valorem rates are to be 

 levied ; and also points out existing abuses in 

 regard to consular verifications and certifica- 

 tion of invoices. He next deals with what he 

 calls the " consignment system " that is to 

 say, "a system whereby enterprising agents of 

 foreign manufactures, or dealers, come hither, 

 solicit and accept orders on samples to deliver 

 their fabrics to buyers in our country at a 

 prearranged price, the duties and all charges 

 of every sort to be paid by the foreign seller." 

 From this system, according to the judgment 

 of a Boston committee that had been asked to 

 examine the subject, results the greater part 

 of the evils of undervaluations, wrong classi- 

 fications, and other errors. 



The Secretary also reiterates his recom- 

 mendation in favor of reducing with an un- 

 sparing hand the taxation entailed upon trade 

 and industry by the existing war tariff. It is 

 his belief that 



Whenever we begin taking off the shackles of war- 

 tariff taxes on raw materials, such increased prosperity 

 will follow to the employers who dread it, and such 

 larger and steadier employment to the wage-earners 

 who need it, by increasing the sales abroad of our 

 own manufactures, and by whipping out foreign com- 

 petitors in our own markets, that we shall see our in- 

 come from imported manufactures dwindle so fast as 

 not only to compel the retention of these most fit 

 items of revenue whisky, tobacco, and beer but 

 perhaps to drive us back to getting $10,000,000 of 

 revenue from two cents a pound tax oh coffee and half 

 as much from tea. . . . These prolonged war- tariff 

 taxes, incompetent and brutal as a scheme of revenue, 

 fatal to the extension of our foreign markets, and dis- 

 orderly to our domestic trade, have, in the last resort, 

 acted and reacted with most ruinous injury upon our 

 wage-earners. Encumbering with clumsy help a few 

 thousand employers, it has trodden down the millions 

 of wage-earners. It has for twenty-one years denied 

 them even the peaceable fruits of liberty. 



