The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1900-04-05

Il fiscal years financial opera
tions. there is talk Of be-
ginning to reduce the special bur
den of war taxation laid on TO
meet the exceptional costs OF the Span
ishAmcrican conflict. The plan most
favored at Washington is to abolish
the stamp taxes IN telegraph mes
sagCa and express company receipts.
These taxes represent to the great
mass of people perhaps more directly
than any other form of war levy an
annoyance out Of proportion to the
revenue raised by them. In either
ease, to be sure the tax is only cent.
out the addition of this cent to the
ordinary 25-ccnt charge for kilograms
and haulage of express packages
means difficulty i'm making change.
sense of evaporation when the neCes-
sary revenue stamps are misplaced or
forgotten, and, at the best. a feeling
that the game is not worth the candle.
- is doubtful if there will ever be
complete return To the revenue basis
which prevailed prior to the war. That
unexpected turn in our national for
tunes among other things produced
conditions which wifi doubtless necos-
state a permanent increase in direct
taxation. In the years that have gone
by,while we were exporting our 800. 900
to 2,O00,000 tons of sugar a year
from foreign countries, it was not re-
garded as a difficult matter to lay
upon those imports a revenue tariff
duty sufficient to pay from onc-siXth
to one-tenth of the entire expenses of
the federal government. Such tax
was not regarded as representing a
public hardship, for the reason that
economies in the processes of refining
the raw sugar and in the transporting
of it from place to place by boat and
rail continually forced the price of
sugar down While it carried with it, as
an inseparable addition to itself, the
duty levied at the custom house.
But henceforth this whole question
will stand before our people in new
aspect. Not only is the probability
small that there will be further mate
rial reductions in the cost Of refining
crude sugar, thus tending to make
any revenue tax upon the imported
product stand out more conspicuosly
than in the past, but there is also the
new political relationship to compli-
cate the question whether any tax at
all should be intcrpOsed at the custom
house between the American mainland
and the outlying American Dependent
cies. Our people may resolve at this
time to keep up the tariff barriers in
modified form, in order to meet pres
ent insular revenu" necessities and
also in order not to prejudice the con-
Stitutional issue involved in the ac-
QUESTION of these new island terri
tries; but it is plain from the public
opinion of today that there will al
ways be a strong demand in this coun-
try for the doing away of all customs
between mainland and dependencies,
and as the inhabitants of the latter
shall develop in civilization and Ameri-
can capital shall multiply it's invest
ments among them, the pressure for
iree trade Will Increase until it is easy
Ia foresee that at a not remote day it
will become irresistible.
All of this emphasizes the fact that
our ante-bellum revenue conditions, as
well as our ante bcllum territorial dip
lomatic status, have been subjected
by the war to a radical transforma-
tion. They belong, as it were, to the
past tense of American history and in
their place we shall see from year to
year increasing need for direct taxa
ton to supplement the diminishing
revenue available in the more fami-
liar indirect, methods of the past.
:
h'atrick Egan appears 10 have been