“I mean,” said Mr. Blaine, “that for the first time in the history of the United States the President recommends retaining the internal tax in order that the tariff may be forced down even below the fair revenue standard. He recommends that the tax on tobacco be retained, and thus that many millions annually shall be levied on a domestic product which would far better come from a tariff on foreign fabrics.”
“Then do you mean to imply that you would favor the repeal of the tobacco tax?”
“Certainly; I mean just that,” said Mr. Blaine. “I should urge that it be done at once, even before the Christmas holidays. It would in the first place bring great relief to growers of tobacco all over the country, and would, moreover, materially lessen the price of the article to consumers. Tobacco to millions of men is a necessity. The President calls it a luxury, but it is a luxury in no other sense than tea and coffee are luxuries. It is well to remember that the luxury of yesterday becomes a necessity of to-day. Watch, if you please, the number of men at work on the farm, in the coal mine, along the railroad, in the iron foundry, or in any calling, and you will find 95 in 100 chewing while they work. After each meal the same proportion seek the solace of a pipe or a cigar. These men not only pay the millions of the tobacco tax, but pay on every plug and every cigar an enhanced price which the tax enables the manufacturer and retailer to impose. The only excuse for such a tax is the actual necessity under which the government found itself during the war, and the years immediately following. To retain the tax now in order to destroy the protection which would incidentally flow from raising the same amount of money on foreign imports, is certainly a most extraordinary policy for our government.”
“Well, then, Mr. Blaine, would you advise the repeal of the whiskey tax also?”
“No, I would not. Other considerations than those of financial administration are to be taken into account with regard to whiskey. There is a moral side to it. To cheapen the price of whiskey is to increase its consumption enormously. There would be no sense in urging the reform wrought by high license in many States if the National Government neutralizes the good effect by making whiskey within reach of every one at twenty cents a gallon. Whiskey would be everywhere distilled if the surveillance of the government were withdrawn by the remission of the tax, and illicit sales could not then be prevented even by a policy as rigorous and searching as that with which Russia pursues the Nihilists. It would destroy high license at once in all the States.
“Whiskey has done a vast deal of harm in the United States. I would try to make it do some good. I would use the tax to fortify our cities on the seaboard. In view of the powerful letter addressed to the democratic party on the subject of fortifications by the late Samuel J. Tilden, in 1885, I am amazed that no attention has been paid to the subject by the democratic administration. Never before in the history of the world has any government allowed great cities on the seaboard, like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, and San Francisco, to remain defenceless.”
“But,” said the reporter, “you don’t think we are to have a war in any direction?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Blaine, “Neither, I presume, did Mr. Tilden when he wrote his remarkable letter. But we should change a remote chance into an absolute impossibility. If our weak and exposed points were strongly fortified; if to-day we had by any chance even such a war as we had with Mexico our enemy could procure ironclads in Europe that would menace our great cities with destruction or lay them under contribution.”
“But would not our fortifying now possibly look as if we expected war?”
“Why should it any more than fortifications made seventy or eighty years ago by our grandfathers when they guarded themselves against successful attack from the armaments of that day. We don’t necessarily expect a burglar because we lock our doors at night, but if by any possibility a burglar comes it contributes vastly to our peace of mind and our sound sleep to feel that he can’t get in.”