214 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (THE TAEIFF LAW.) 



sought to make the duty 85 cents. The pro- 

 priety of the increase was reargued and every 

 effort was made upon a call of the yeas and 

 nays to tax iron-ore higher than 50 cents a ton. 

 It was again voted down by an overwhelming 

 majority. 



"In view of all these undoubted facts I ask 

 the Senate, and I intend to appeal to the coun- 

 try even from the Senate, what right had that 

 body of men who were sitting in secret coun- 

 cil, authorized only to act upon disagreeing 

 votes between the two Houses and to sustain 

 the action of the Senate by all honorable 

 means, to consider the tax on iron-ore, on 

 which the Houss and Senate had agreed, and 

 raise the duty on it 50 per cent., and then 

 come here without even deigning to state the 

 facts and tell us that we must adopt the report 

 they have made, right or wrong -fas et nefas 

 or we are obstructors of public business? 



"I aver, and the silence of the four or the 

 five or whatever the number who agreed to 

 this report gives consent to the truth of my 

 statement, that they have imposed an increased 

 tax of 50 per cent, on all the iron-ore that 

 comes into the country beyond what either 

 the House or the Senate had imposed, and 

 when the House and Senate were agreed. 



" If these admitted facts do not condemn 

 this whole report and stamp it as a thing abso- 

 lutely unfit for the Senate to indorse, I do not 

 think any argument of mine will. There is 

 not a Senate conferee who will venture to rise 

 in his place and either justify it or excuse it. 

 It stands confessed as a plain violation of their 

 known duty. 



"Passing from that, though one illustrates 

 all, look at the action of the conference com- 

 mittee relative to glassware, one of the first im- 

 portant things touched in the report. Let me 

 examine their action in that regard. 



" This is the language of the present law : 



" Earthen, stone, or crockery ware, white, glazed, 

 edged, printed, painted, dipped, or cream- colored, 

 not otherwise provided for, 40 per cent. 



"That, of course, relates to earthen, stone, 

 and crockery ware. The plainest character of 

 designs on paper can be painted and pasted on 

 plain crockery, and when placed in the furnace 

 the paper is burned out and the paint or print 

 remains.. That is the whole process; there is 

 no skill or intellect involved ; it is done by the 

 plainest, simplest process; the designs are 

 painted by the hundred or thousand on pieces 

 of paper and burned in ; the paper, as I said, 

 burns off and leaves the paint or print. Yet 

 the conference committee, without any rea- 

 son in the world that I can see, have taken 

 that class of cheap goods out of the schedule 

 where the Senate placed them at 50 per cent., 

 which is 25 per cent, increase on the duty 

 under the present law, because it was said we 

 had given importers the benefit of a reduction 

 of taxes, by taking the duty off the packages, 

 which on the cheapest classes of goods amount 

 to, say, 10 per cent. Our confereea have taken 



these goods from the schedule of 50 per cent, 

 and placed them in the schedule of 60 per 

 cent., an increase of 50 per cent, on the pres- 

 ent rate, along with china, porcelain, parian, 

 and bisque ware, and the other decorations 

 that ornament the mantel-pieces of the rich. 



' I have never heard the revenues of the 

 Government spoken of as being worthy of con- 

 sideration by any gentleman on the other side 

 during this whole discussion. 1 have never 

 heard the rights of the consumers of this coun- 

 try spoken of as being worthy of considera- 

 tion while extravagant taxes were being im- 

 posed. The whole question has been, How 

 much can the iron-men afford to take off; how 

 much will the cotton schedule, how much will 

 the woolen schedule bear reduction, or shall 

 they be increased above present rates? And 

 when Senators examine into the pretended re- 

 ductions, they will prove to be increases in 

 nine cases out often, all assertions to the con- 

 trary notwithstanding. The swarms of lobby- 

 ists who are now here and have been for weeks, 

 are all begging for more bounty, more protec- 

 tion, or rather more taxation on the people to 

 enrich themselves. These are the plates [ex- 

 hibiting] that the conference committee have 

 put up to a 60 per cent, tax after the Senate 

 had peremptorily refused to consider all the 

 propositions urged when we had these matters 

 under consideration. 



' Yet the chairman tells us that they are 

 making this increase of taxation in the interest 

 of economy, carefully retraining from stating 

 the facts, and frowning upon any attempt to 

 expose their acts as improper and factious op- 

 position. Of that plain crockery-ware, as you 

 will observe by looking over the schedule that 

 we have before us, furnished by the Treasury 

 Department, there were goods imported last 

 year to the value of $4,400,000, at 40 per cent. 

 The duty which the people paid on them was 

 $1,775,294. By the provision now proposed 

 on the same amount of importation at 60 per 

 cent, they will have to pay $2,662,941, or an 

 increase of $887,648 over the present high war 

 tariff that everybody says ought to be reduced, 

 and they will have to pjiy $443,824 by this 

 change of rate on the same importations more 

 than they would have to pay under the bill as 

 it passed the Senate at 50 per cent. That is 

 called a slight modification, a very slight in- 

 crease, so in significant that the chairman seemed 

 to think that the report should be concurred in 

 without a word. He did not even think that 

 it was worth while to tell us what he and his 

 co-conferees had done. 



" Turn to another change in the glass sched- 

 ule and see what the autocrats of the confer- 

 ence have done. We struggled over the ques- 

 tion of taxing bottles time and again, first in 

 Committee of the Whole, and next in the Sen- 

 ate; that question was brought up in season 

 and out of season. We settled it at 30 per 

 cent., and provided that bottles in which apol- 

 linaris and other natural mineral waters came 



