St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-01-09

treasury and placing the. responsibility
for Its present straits where that re.
sponsbiity justly belonged. During
we had
PLUNGED HEADLONG
from an overt1oWing treasury TO bank
rupt treasury, and that, too, without
any lessening of the burdens of taxation
upon the people, but rather by most
substantial and oppressive increase of
Inc taxes. The last report of Secretary
Fairchlld estimated the surplus revenue
for the year 1889 at $1O4, 900, 900.
The first report of Secretary Window
acknowledged surplus revenue for
that year of $105.O0O. 900. When the
Cleveland administration went out of
office on the 4th day of March, 1889, 1t
turned over to its successors an availa-
Die cash balance amounting, in the form
or treasury statement used in the past
two years, to slS5. 200, 900. During the
Harrison administration the form of
treasury statement was twice changed
lrst by Mr.. Window, who succeeded to
TINS cash balance, to canceal the sur
plus, and later by Mr.. Foster, to conceal
the bankruptcy of the treasury. The
Flfty-first conhress dealt with the
treasury surplus after the true and ira
dltional methods OF protection, which
was to lessen or abolish those taxes
WHICH pass directly and undiminished
from the pockets of the taxpayer to the
public treasury, and to increase those
taxes which were intercepted in their
passage from the pockets of the tax
payer to the public treasury by the
PRIVATE TOLL GATHERER.
The Mckinley bill reduced the in
ternal revenue taxes on manufactured
tobacco, aDollshlng special taxes on
dealers and manufacturers of tobacco
and wiped out the duties on raw sugar.
which for years past had been our chief
revenue-producing article OIL the Gus
toms list. Both of these taxes were in
Just and proper sense revenue taxes,
and neither of them should have been
ouched SO long as the rates upon cloth
Ing and other necessary articles of con-
SUMPTION were so enormously Cypress
I've. Tobacco taxes were reduced under
the theory that tobacco had become
necessity for the poor as we'll as the
rich. but new and heavier taxes were
laid ON the WOODEN clothing of the poor
man, so indispensable to his health and
his productive energy. Sugar was I'M
taxed to give the American workingman
free breakfast table, but new taxes
were placed on his cups and saucers,
his plates and dishes. his coffee
pot, his knives and forks, his food and
his table cover. In word, he was re-
lleved from the taxes he paid his gov
eminent in order that he might be made
to pay much greater taxes to the bene-
taxes would have yielded us in the
interval since their omission more than
Sl50,0O0,000, and would have saved us
from any danger of
TREASURY DEFICIT.
The magnificent surplus turned over
by the Cleveland administration was
thus scattered. A large portion of it
was used to purchase at high premiums
bonds not yet due. In the first seven
months of the HARRISON administration
S70.O00,OO0 bonds were thus purchased
at premiums ranging from 5 to s per
cent on the bonds of 1891, and from
q to 20 per cent on the bonds due in
1907. In the first five months of the
fiscal year beginning july |, 1890, over
S9S, 600, 900 was disburSed in the payment
OF bonds and in the prepayment of in
terest not yet due. But even this did
not dissipate the surplus, and the Fifty
first congress was obliged to try its hand
upon it. 1t refunded the direct tax to
the states, a mere lOg-rOlling scheme to
get at the treasury surplus, which Mr..
Cleveland had vetoed when attempted
in the previous congress. This was
pure gratuity, but it has taken out of
the treasury over S14,000.000. Next
came the sugar bounty act, unier which
sums amounting to SIS, ZOO, 900 have been
paid to sugar growers. Last Of all, as
the chief means of distributing the
surplus, was the dependent pension
bill, under which our annual pension
expenditure has risen more than $780,
100000. Whatever right or justice there
might have been in this bill, it is very
certain it would never have become a
law but that those
OTHER PENSIONERS,
our protected industries might have the
first pull and the largest profit out OF
the taxes gathered to pay the pension
ers. Neither must it be forgotten in
this story of depleted treasury that
the Sherman law turned over to the
last administration as available cash, a
trust fund of S54,OO0,OOO deposited by
national banks to redeem their notes,
nor that Secretary Foster changed the
forms of treasury statements by adding
to it $50, 100000 of subsidiary and minor
coins as part.of its available cash. If,
then, to the more than $500, zoo, 900 thus
made away with by the last administra-
ton we should add the $3.50. 900 loss
of revenue by the omission of taxes on
tobacco and sugar alone, we should have
a clear idea of the rapid and headlong
steps by which we have been brought to
our present empty treasury. He did
not believe those who voted to put the
last administration in power expected
any revision from it in the direction of
increasing rates. The campaign of 1883
was fought on the question of reforming
and reducing the existing tariff, and not
Oh the question of revising and raising
the tariff of 1885,
No single interest in the country,
either i'll congress or elsewhere, had the
hardihood to assert that it meant to de-
mand any increase of the protection ac-
corded It by the bill of 1883. aud it was
ONLY THE wANToNNESs
of self-greed, rapacity and selfshness,
and the knowledge that their demands,
no matter how eXorbitant, would be
graclouSly accorded, that brought them
to Washington in 1880 to write upon
their own interests the successive
schedules of the Mckinley bill. Under
the operation of that bill taxes in every
one of the important schedules have
been mercilessly and needlessly in
creased. In manufactures of wool they
had been raised from an average of 10
to an average OF 100 per cent. In man.
ufactures OF glass they had been raised
fro m an average of "a to all aver
age of Ga per cent. In manu-
features Of iron and steel, although
the year of 1887 had been a
year o f immense production and pros
perity to those interests, the tariff was
raised from an average of SO to an aver
age of 63 per cent. On cotton goods,
although the tariff of 1888 had been
made by the manufacturers themselves,
duties were increased from an average
of 40 to an average of 81 per cent. Such
is the bill we have been called OIL to re-
wise in the interest of the people who
consume, of the people who labor and
of the people comprising the country in
general and of the prosperity of the
country Itself.
Mr.. Wilson, who is in poor health,
after speaking an hour ami half. sug-
gested to his colleague. Mr.. McMillin,
that he would like to finish his speech
tomorrow, and upon the latter's motion