Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1885-12-16
THE TREASURY.
First Annual Report of Secretary
Manning.
Receipts and Expenditures--Silver
and Tariff Questions

treasury embraces fifty pages of printed
matter, and is accompanied by special re-
port of ffty-six pages on the collection of
customs duties.
The ordinary revenues of the government
for the fiscal year 1885 were 1925, 500, FOG, and
the ordinary expenditures Including sinking
fund, s45, 64, O35) were S3O5, $50, 97O leaving a
surplus of SIT ,S59, 735. As compared with
the preceding year there was a decrease of
$24, S29, 1853 in revenue and an increase of
SIG, 100,6 800 in expenditures
The estimated revenues of the year 1886 are
s315, 100000, and the estimated expenditures,
including sinking fund $500, 750, 900. For the
year 1877 however, the secretary estimates
that there will be deficit of S24, $50, 552, the
revenue remaining at S315, 900 and the
expenditures reaching $685., $50, 552. Of this
estimated increase of S49, 900 in expendi-
lures SIS, 900 is for pensions, SIS, 100000
for the navy, and S4,000,000 for Notifications.
The interest bearing debt has been reduced
during the fiscal year S10,369, 100, and now
stands at 81 200, 77S, 1852, including the Pacific
Railroad bonds 1854, 623, 51l. The balance in
the treasury of assets over liabilities has been
increased SIS, 0533, 702 since March l, 1885, of
which SIG, 900, 900 is silver coin, S16000,000
gold coin, and $1,000 900 legal tender notes.
Eighteen pages of the secretary's report are
given to a theoretical and historical discus
sion of the silver question. The secretary
dollars by arbitrary purchases of bullion
without reference to the public demand for
such dollars must eventually make the
United States silver nono-metallic nation,
and put US out of harmony with the CONNER
cial world, and tend to defeat international
bi-metalism. He opposes the project for
making heavier dollar, since that would also
operate against international bi-metalism by
carrying us further away from the European
ratio, and because the adoption of a new
ratio would involve the coming of more dol
lars, whereas we have more than enough al
ready. Stoppage Of the coinage, in the Sec
retarys opinion, is the effectual and only
remedy for the evils existing and threatened.
On the subject of reform in taxation the
secretary says:
BESIDE the reforms which are desirable for
the effective administration of any system Of
taxation levied through imported merchan-
disc, and are indispensable for the admins
tration of custom laws, which, like our own,
are chaos rather than a system, venture
to hope that in due season it will be the pleas
ure of Congress to consider some other re-
forms, upon which, as is requisite, all parties
may agree and that are of different scope
Like our currency laws, our tariif4laws are a
legacy of war. Ii exigencies excuse their
origin, their defects are unnecessary after
twenty years of peace. They have been re-
tanned without sitting and discrimination, al
though enacted without Legislative debate, rrit-
icism or examination. A horizontal reduction
of ten per cent was made in 1872, bat was
repealed in 1875 and rejected in 1884. The-I
require at our custom houses the employment
of a force sufficient to examine, appraise, ana
levy duties upon more than 4, lS2 different ar
ticles. Many rates of duty begun In war
have been increased since, although the late
tariff commission declared them injurious to
the interests supposed to be benefited and
said that reduction would be conducive to
the general prosperity They have been re-
tanned, although the long era of falling prices,
in the case of specific duties, has operated
large increase of rates. They have been re-
tanned at an average ad valorem rate for the
last year of over forty-Six per cent, which Is
but two and half per cent. less than the
highest rate of the war period, and is nearly
four per cent. more THAI the rate before the
latest revision. The highest endurable rates
of duty, which were adopted 1921 to offset
internal taxes upon almost every taxable artl-
Gle, have in most cases been retained now
from fourteen to twenty years after such in
ternal tax has been removed. They have
been retained while purely revenue duties
upon articles not competing with anything
produced in the thirty weight States have been
discarded. They have been retained upon
articles used as materials for our own manu-
features lin 1884 adding $50, 900 to their
cost which, if exported, compete in other
countries against similar manufactures from
untaxed materials. Some rates have been re-
tanned after running the industries they were
meant to advantage Other rates have been
retained after affecting higher price for a
domestic product at home than it was sold
abroad for. The general high level of rates
has been retained on the theory of counter
vailing lower wages abroad, when, in fact,
the higher wages of American labor are at
once the secret and the security of our ca
pacity to distance all competition from pau
per labor in any market All changes have
left unchanged, or changed for the worse, by
new schemes of classification and otherwise,
laws which are not capable of being admins
tered with impartiality to all our merchants.
AS nothing in the ordinary course of bust
ness is imported unless the price here of the
domestic as well as the imported, articlegis
higher by the amount of the duty and the
cost of ea-transit than the price abroad, the
preference of the taxpayer for duties upon
articles not produced in the United States is
justified by the fact that such duties cost him
no more than the treasury of his country
gets As for duties affecting articles that are
also produced in the United States, the first
to be safely discarded are those, upon mate
rails used by our own manufactures, which
now subject them to hopeless competition at
home and abroad, with the manufacturing
nations, none OF which takes raw materials.
1t is not to be doubted that in any reform
which shall finally receive the approval of the
two houses of Congress, they will maturely
consider and favorably regard the interests
which can only gradually and carefully be
adjusted, without loss, to changes in the leg
islative conditions for their advancing pros
perity. With this view, 1 have invited in
some 1900 circular letters to our manufac-
turers and merchants, their enlightened CO
operation in the improvement OF our fiscal
policy, and the replies received will hereaf-
ter be submitted to the consideration of Con-
gress.
LIFE-SAvING SERVICE.
The usual beneficent results have attended
the operations of this service during the year.
The number of stations in commission at the
close of the year was 203. The number OF
disasters to documented vessels reported by
the district officers to have occurred within
their field of action is 256. The number of
persons on board these vessels was 2,206,
of whom 2,196 were saved and ten lost.
The value of the property involved IS
estimated at 4,604, Ass, of which So, S52, 760
was saved and s., PSI sos lost The number
of vessels totally lost was ffty-six. There
were beside rs disasters to smaller craft
such as sailboats, rowboats, ETC., on which
were 233 persons, 232 of whom were saved
and one lost. The value of property involved
in these minor disasters was So, 925, of which
$26, S23 was saved and SO, 102 lost.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS.
During the last year work has been in
progress upon forty mine buildings under the
IF no