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pending bill is, I repeat, the early exclusion from our revenue system of customs duties which may by any possibility be protective of American industry, and the substitution therefor of internal taxes, and duties upon tea, coffee, spices, and raw materials, which are now on the free list. Should the bill as it now stands become a law, it will by its incongruities inflict fatal injury upon the protective system. Sequence in degree, or the increase of duties in proportion to the amount of labor expended in the production of material for manufacture, whether it be hoopiron for cotton-ties or broadcloth for a lady's habit, has not been regarded in its preparation. The gentlemen who are pressing its adoption prefer direct taxes to customs duties, including President Cleveland, Speaker Carlisle, and the members of the junto, who, having usurped the functions of the Committee on Ways and Means, presented it to the House as the result of the labors of the committee.

So convinced has the President been, by his recent preliminary studies of political economy, of the greater fairness of direct taxation, that, disregarding uniform precedent as to the topics worthy of notice in an annual message, he greeted this Congress with a paper treating but a single topic, and which was so full of declarations of the woes that must come upon us if we maintain our wicked tariff, as to remind aged people of the terrible sermons preached by fanatical revivalists in the days when the doctrine of imputed sin doomed the tenderest infants of unregenerate parents to eternal torture in the burning lake. This unique message shows why the President prefers such taxes to our " vicious, inequitable, and illogical tariff laws," by which, as he has been made to believe, our manufacturers are enabled to add to the price of their productions the amount of duties levied on like articles when imported. But let him speak for himself:

"Our scheme of taxation, by means of which this needless surplus is taken from the people and put into the public treasury, consists of a tariff or duty levied upon importations from abroad, and internal-revenue taxes levied upon the consumption of tobacco and spirituous and malt liquors. It must be conceded that none of the things subjected to internal-revenue taxation are, strictly speaking, necessaries: there appears to be no just complaint of this taxation by the consumers of these articles, and there seems to be nothing so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people.

"But our present tariff laws, the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unnecessary taxation, ought to be at once revised and amended. These laws, as their primary and plain effect, raise the price to consumers of all articles imported and subject to duty, by precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of the duty measures the tax paid by those who purchase for use these imported articles. Many of these things, however, are raised or manufactured in our own country, and the duties now levied upon foreign goods and products are called protection to these home manufactures, because they render it possible for those of our people who are manufacturers to make these taxed articles and sell them for a price equal to that demanded for the imported goods that have paid customs duty. So it happens that while comparatively a few use the imported articles, millions of our people, who never used and never saw any of the foreign products, purchase and use things of the same kind made in this country, and pay therefor nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the imported articles. Those who buy imports pay the duty charged thereon into the public treasury; but the great majority of our citizens, who buy domestic articles of the same class, pay a sum at least approximately equal to this duty to the home manufacturer. This reference to the operation of our tariff laws is not made by way of instruction, but in order that we may be constantly reminded of the manner in which they impose a burden upon those who consume domestic products as well as those who consume imported articles, and thus create a tax upon all our people."

In his newly inspired zeal for revenue reform the President illustrates his ignorance of the solidarity and interdependence of our industries, by which the welfare of each is dependent on the prosperity of all, by telling the more than 17,300,000 of our people who are engaged in all kinds of industries" that there are but 2,623,089 of them who can be benefited by a protective tariff. In support of this absurd suggestion he says:

"By the last census it is made to appear that of the 17.392,099 of our population engaged in all kinds of industries, 7,670,493 are employed in agriculture, 4,074,238 in professional and personal service (2,934,876 of whom are domestic servants and laborers), while 1,810,256 are employed in trade and transportation, and 3,837,112 are classed as employed in manufacturing and mining.

"For present purposes, however, the last number given should be considerably reduced. Without attempting to enumerate all, it will be conceded that there should be deducted from those which it includes, 375.143 carpenters and joiners, 285,401 milliners, dressmakers, and seamstresses, 172,726 blacksmiths, 133,756 tailors and tailoresses, 102,473 masons, 76,241 butchers. 41,309 bakers, 22.083 plasterers, and 4,891 engaged in manufacturing agricultural implements, amounting in the aggregate to 1.214,023, leaving 2,623,089 persons employed in such manufacturing industries as are claimed to be benefited by a high tariff."

If Mr. Cleveland would realize the magnitude of this error, let him turn to William Cobbett's picture of Philadelphia in 1822, on page 589 of the FORUM for February last. He will there discover that, in the presence of a revenue tariff which permits our markets to be glutted with foreign wares and fabrics, in exchange for which our money has been exported, farmers, carpenters, and joiners, milliners, dressmakers, and seamstresses, blacksmiths, tailors, and tailoresses, masons, butchers, bakers, plasterers, and makers of agricultural implements share in equal degree the idleness and want which tariffs for revenue only have always inflicted upon our people.

In organizing the committees of the House, the speaker gave the President's project effective support. New England, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio have able Democratic representatives in the House; but, as they are all manufacturing States, he gave no Democrat from any of them a place on the Committee on Ways and Means, but gave the controlling power of the committee to representatives of five undeveloped districts of the old slave States, whose constituents will not annoy them. by expressions of dissent or threats of the withdrawal of political support, as those from manufacturing States would certainly do.

Of the courage with which this work was done by Mr. Carlisle I submit a single illustration. The production of cornstarch cannot be regarded as one of our staple manufactures. There are but twenty-four establishments producing this article, and they employ only about eleven millions of dollars of capital; yet, in framing this bill, the junto thought the industry important enough to merit their condemnation, and accordingly they inserted a fatal reduction of the duty by the fostering influence of which the industry had been created. It is a significant fact that one of the twenty-four factories, that of the Glen Cove Company, employs a larger invested capital than all the manufacturing establishments reported by the last census in the Ninth District of Texas and the Second District of Arkansas, and consumes more fuel than could have been consumed by the steam engines used in the factories of the two districts, the former of which is represented on the committee by its chairman, and the latter by Mr. C. R. Breckenridge.

The whisky trust, which is now the dominant power in Democratic politics, demands not only protection for itself, but the guarantee of perpetuity by the substitution of internal taxes for customs duties. The managers of this trust recognize the fact, which, unhappily, the body of the producers of the country do not perceive, that it is the maintenance of two streams of revenue that is gorging the Treasury with money, the circulation of which should be vitalizing our industries and enhancing the wages of labor. They also know that the revenues from existing sources of internal taxation, with the receipts from public lands and miscellaneous sources, will soon suffice to defray the cost of an economic administration of the government.

The taxes on tobacco, spirits, and malt liquors yielded $112,498,725 in 1885, $118,835,757 in 1887, and those for this year will largely exceed $126,000,000, as for the first nine months they show an increase of $7,803,670.40. These gentlemen, therefore, perceive that if a deficit in the revenue derived from internal taxes, land sales, and miscellaneous sources should occur, it could be made good by the imposition of duties on tea, coffee, spices, and crude drugs.

I regret that space will not permit me to recapitulate the provisions of sections 28 to 34, inclusive, of this bill. I must, however, content myself with inviting attention to the fact that they are skillfully devised measures for removing southern hostility to internal taxes; and with adding, in verification of this assertion, that when a leading member of the Committee on Ways and Means was asked why so sweeping an abrogation of the restraints and penalties now imposed on "moonshiners" and other violators of these laws was proposed, he replied that, as the internal-tax system was the fairest system of revenue, these changes were designed to soothe the discontent of the poor people on whom existing penalties are needlessly severe.

In conclusion I would say, that, in my judgment, no legislation on the tariff and the surplus will be had during this Congress, if the junto will not consent to correct the inequalities of the tariff, and to reduce the surplus by putting the internal-tax system in the process of rapid extinction.

WILLIAM D. KELLEY.

CHANGES OF LEVEL OF THE GREAT LAKES.

THE following pages are devoted to the physical history of the lakes of the northern States. As avenues of commerce, as preserves of food fishes, as reservoirs of pure water, as resorts for the artist, the pleasure seeker, and the health seeker, their description is left to other pens. They are here treated only as physical features, the endeavor being to set forth their origin and the series of physical changes, past, present, and future, that constitute their history.

Rivers are the mortal enemies of lakes. The river that flows into a lake brings stones and sand and fine mud, and dropping these into the quiet water endeavors to fill the earth cup that holds it. The year's tribute of sediment may have as little apparent effect as the year's tribute of water, which quietly escapes to atmosphere and ocean; but the river is long of life and steadfast of purpose, and if years and centuries prove too short, it resolutely persists through geologic ages. The river that flows away from a lake constantly deepens its channel of escape, and thus attacks the lake's rampart at its weakest point. If the rampart is of loose earth, this is rolled and floated away bit by bit, and the work goes on merrily; if it is of firm rock, this is dissolved, and then the process is exceedingly slow. But time is long, and even by solution the rampart may be channeled to its base and the whole lake drained away.

Nevertheless, in spite of this warfare of extermination, waged in all lands and through all time, there continue to be lakes, and so there must be in nature lake-producing as well as lake-destroying agencies. There are indeed many such, but a few only need be appealed to to explain the great majority of lakes, and the chief are upheaval and glaciation.

Some parts of the earth's surface are known to be rising and others to be sinking. Usually such changes are of impercepti

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