192 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
The total is important in that it shows the significance of 
the subject of the fee-system as a source of revenue. Without 
the fee-system this sum would have to be raised by taxation or 
in some other way. This four and a half million dollars repre¬ 
sents the amount which is annually collected for the numerous 
little services performed by Federal officials throughout the 
land. The true significance of the Federal fee-system will be 
more adequately represented, when the receipts of the Post 
Office, which in essence are pure fees, are added to the above 
miscellaneous fees, making a total of nearly eighty millions a 
year; while the revenues of the United States from all sources 
was $372,802,498.29. 1 
The revenues from fees vary with the general prosperity of 
the country. There may be, and usually is, a gradual increase 
in the total from year to year, although there is at times 
a diminution of several thousand dollars from some particular 
source. In 1891 the consular fees had increased to $782,619, 
while the registers’ and receivers’ fees had decreased $931,907. 
The consular fees in 1895 amounted to $938,765, 2 an increase of 
over $150,000 in five years. The Patent Office fees vary quite 
extensively, owing to differences in industrial and inventive ac¬ 
tivity of the community. 
B. REVENUES FROM FEES IN THE STATES. 
In most of the states the amounts which are accounted for as 
fees, are surprisingly small. There are, in the first place, a 
large number of states whose receipts from fees include only the 
ordinary office receipts of their state officers, the total amount 
of which constitutes but a very small per cent, of the total 
state revenues. Among the members of this class may be men¬ 
tioned the following: North Carolina received $13,715 in fees 
from all sources, and of this amount $13,192 were the receipts 
of the secretary of state’s office. Arkansas collected $26,466 
from all sources, of which over $18,000 was from the secretary of 
1 Report Sec. of Treas., 1895, p. 15. For the fiscal year 1896 the total 
fees amounted to over $86,000,000, while the total revenue from all sources 
was $409,000,000. 
2 Report of Sec. of Treas., 1895, p. 701. 
