57^ Editors' Table. [July, 



EDITORS' TABLE. 



EDITORS : A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE. 



Perhaps the Secretary of the Treasury desires to aid the 



friends of repeal by a n n of some of the provis- 



ions of our tariff law. By a ruling of his department made some 

 time last month, all books coming through the foreign mail for pri- 

 vate persons are charged a duty of 25 p. c. if of the value of £1.00 

 and over. To collect this amount the book must be sent from the 

 post-office to the custom house, then from the Custom house to the 

 appraiser's store, where a valuation is put on it. It is then returned 

 to the custom house, from which a notice is issued to the addressee. 

 All this requires the filling of blanks and the obtaining of the 

 signatures of eleven or twelve officials, by which the government 

 is richer frequently by 25 or 50 cents. A more disreputable law 

 it would be difficult to imagine. Only the poor student is taxed 

 in his efforts to elevate himself above the general dead level. 

 The aspirations of the seeker for knowledge have, it seems, to 

 be paid for, although by following them the student usually re- 

 signs the opportunity of financial success in life. We know very 

 well that it is not the producers of books in this country that de- 

 sire protection. The sale of their wares abroad depends on their 

 merits, and the production is not to be stimulated by a protective 

 duty. It is the publisher who, like another noted character, sits 



" Hard by the tree of knowledge," 

 to whom we are indebted for this beautiful piece of legislation. 

 Of course we may be wrong. It may be clear to greater minds 

 than ours, that by taxing the books of Gegenbaur, Claude Bernard 

 and Owen, we develop our native genius, and cause \\tt\e fac-simihs 

 of these gentlemen to come immediately into being. By increas- 

 ing the pressure we might squeeze, out Meissoniers and Whistlers 

 Tighten the prohibition, and hear the land resound with the 

 harmonies and melodies of a crop of Verdis, Wagners and Sull:- 

 vans. But possibly the framers of this law were moved by far 

 different aims. They wish to prevent the influx of corrupting 

 scientific literature into the country. Haeckel, Darwin and such 

 men should not be permitted to instill poison into the minds of 

 our young men and women. Or if people will have it, like poi- 

 son, they must pay for it. 



No doubt the tax on foreign animals for zoological gardens 

 was also intended to prevent the spread of immorality— animals 



