The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-21
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 81, 1859.
REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITS
ISTONER RELL3 .r.

Hon. DAVID A. WELLS, Special Commissioner
of the Revenue, sent his annual report to
Congress yesterday. While it contains, as
usual, some valuable statistics its conclusions
and recommendations are tinged by the free
trade and hard money theories of which he is
devoted advocate, and they must be received
with many grains of allowance.
Mr.. Wells is an inveterate pessimist. He
is always dissatisfied with the position of in
dustrial and monetary affairs, and he is in
capable of comprehending that his proposed
remedies would create the evils he proposes
to cure. When he comes to figure up the
cost of the war, he is not satisfied with an
enumeration of the actual expenditures of
selves an aggregate fearful enough
to frighten the souls of ordi-
nary alarmists, but by capitalizing
the pensions, estimating the local war ex-
penditures, and adding the losses of the
South, he reaches sum total approximating
$4,000, 600, 900, which, as he tells us, is ga
sum nominally in excess of the entire increase
of wealth, as returned by the census, for the
whole country from 1850 to 1862" He fails
W oWOAt hOWONOA, uPSi o1O OeitOA oiuO oh ehO
picture, which he could not, in candor, en-
tirely omit, viz, an estimate that the valua-
tion of the real and personal property of the
whole nation in 1870, in spite of the war, will
reach $24, 1875, ,OOo, 900; and this estimate is
much lower than that given by other autho-
rites as well informed as himself; for Secre-
tary Boutwell,, in a speech delivered in this
city in October, alleged that the accumulated
wealth of this country was not less than fifty
thousand million of dollars; and he is quite
as apt to be correct as the Special Commits
sioner.
Mr.. Wells estimates the gross annual pro-
duct of the country at Sc, 825, 900, 900 in cur
rency, which is certainly no mean sum, but
when he contrasts this with the adverse
foreign balances, the large number of Ameri-
can securities held abroad, and our continu-
Gus loss of specie, his heart sinks again, and
he speedily satisfies himself that our condi-
tion is deplorable, and that "the general fnan-
cial result of the war was towards lmpoverish-
ment, and that to O degree which popular
Judgment has thus far not accepted" Gene
rally men know when they grow poor, but the
people obstinately refuse to recognize the fact
of their impoverishment, in spite of the Com
missioner's exposure.
1t is perhaps not singular that he should
persist, under these circumstances, in ad-
vising Congress to adopt measures which
would speedily compel the whole country to
adopt his views of the situation. He recon-
mends contraction, pure and simple, with
out artifce or indirection, and large reduc-
ton of the duties on imports, including, on
his revised free-trade lists such articles as
coal and pig iron. If these views prevail, we
cannot doubt that Wells will soon be able to
satisfy the most incredulous of their poverty
With an insufficient volume of currency to
meet the wants of trade and a destruction of
the protective policy, the nation will soon
grow poor enough. But is it worth while to
ruin millions of people that the malign pre-
dictions and stupid representations of one
official may be verified?