The imports and exports of the United States for the last two fiscal years are as follows: —
| 1889. | 1890. | |
| Imports, free | $256,487,078 | $265,588,499 |
| Imports, dutiable | 488,644,574 | 523,633,729 |
| Total | 745,131,652 | 789,222,228 |
| Exports | 742,401,375 | 857,824,834 |
| Gold and Silver, Imports | 28,963,073 | 33,976,326 |
| Gold and Silver, Exports | 96,641,533 | 52,148,420 |
| Total Imports | 774,094,725 | 823,198,554 |
| Total Exports | 839,042,908 | 909,973,254 |
There two or three noticeable points from this table. First, the large relative increase of free imports over those of former years. Free articles in 1867 were less than 5% of the whole; in 1882, 30%; and in 1890, 33.9%. The Free List, so-called, has indeed been enlarged in the interval, but free goods tend naturally to swell over the taxed goods, so that in 1890 the free were almost exactly one-half of the taxed. Second, of the large total of merchandise exports, it is to be sorrowfully noted, that more than 82% of the whole is made up of the products of agriculture and forests and mines (not gold and silver); while manufactures compose only 17.8%. What ails our manufactures, that we cannot sell them abroad? We have been for 30 years under a vaunted scheme warranted to develop manufactures,—expressly designed and recommended to make them cheap and good,—under an elaborate and artificial scheme that makes everything bend, even the backs of the toiling millions, to foster and propel manufactures! But we do not succeed in selling much of them abroad, except some fractions of them to Canada. The ratio of them to the total of exports of merchandise seems to be growing less: in 1889, 18.9%; in 1890, 17.8%.
The simple truth is, that we are able to sell abroad even this beggarly proportion of manufactures to the total exports of merchandise, only in consequence of a shrewd device working within the Grand Device, namely, the so-called "Free List." Some of the little wheels within the big wheel revolve rapidly. Manufacturers do not like to pay protectionist tariff-taxes themselves any better than other people like to pay them. They have by their own open confession in overt act precisely the same opinion of their deadening influence, that other people have. If, however, they can escape such taxes on the things they have to buy, especially their raw material, and keep them on their own finished goods offered for sale in a monopoly market, they would be happy. Hence, the Free List. Hear Senator Dawes before the Paper-makers' Convention at Saratoga in 1887: "There is one other feature of tariff revision much discussed at the present time which must not escape our attention, and that is free raw material. No industrial policy will promote the highest prosperity of both labor and capital in this country, which fails to lay down the raw material at the door of the manufactory at the lowest possible cost. In any new revision of the tariff this rule of preference for our own raw material must be adhered to by those who do not propose to give up the American for the indifferent policy in legislating between ourselves and foreigners. It will be found, however, to add very few raw materials to the free list, for the revisions of 1874 and 1883 have already made free all such non-competing raw materials as at the time of the passage of those acts were entering to any considerable extent into the consumption or production of the country."
Till now, we have been dealing in facts, and figures, and in careful generalizations after the inductive manner: let us, at the very last, indulge in a freak of fancy. Suppose for a moment, that all taxes of every name could be abolished instantaneously, and the Governments, like the Israelites, live on manna for forty years. What harm would ensue? What industry would decline? Who would be impoverished? What stimulus to work and save and grow rich would be weakened thereby? Would not wages, and profits, and rents, all be lifted thereby, with no damage to anybody? A child can see that Taxes from their very nature are a burden, are a subtraction from income, are a minus and not a plus. Who, then, except from sinister motives, can imagine and represent, that Taxes are a good in themselves, a positive blessing, a spur to the progress of Society?
Taxes of some sort there must be for the maintenance of Governments, which are established for the good of all. Why, then, should not the Taxes be just as few, just as simple, just as comprehensible, just as universal and equitable, as is consonant with the single end of their existence at all?
INDEX.
| [A] | [B] | [C] | [D] | [E] | [F] | [G] | [H] | [I] | [J] | [K] | [L] |
| [M] | [N] | [O] | [P] | [Q] | [R] | [S] | [T] | [U] | [V] | [W] | [Y] |