competing commodities, submitted the following statement: "The revenue from imports last year exceeded twenty-seven millions of dollars, of which, twenty-seven millions are paid to the Government upon imports, and forty-four millions in enhanced prices of similar domestic articles. This estimate is based upon the position that the duty is added to the price of the import and also of its domestic rival. If the import is enhanced in price by the duty, so must be its domestic rival, for, being like articles, their price must be the same in the same market." (Senate Document, First Session, Twenty-ninth Congress, 1845–’46.)[1]
In a debate in the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York in 1867–’68, the late Hon. George Opdyke, a member, and one of the best economic and fiscal authorities of his time, stated that his investigations had led him to the conclusion that consumers of imported articles in the United States are "charged with at least fifty per cent in addition to the duties actually received by the Government."
As the result of a careful study of the subject, based on the rates of duty imposed by the tariff law of March, 1883, Hon. William H. Springer (for a long time a prominent member of Congress) was led to the conclusion that the average increase in the prices of domestic commodities due to the duties imposed on the import of competitive products had not been less than $556,000,000 for every year of the twenty years next precedent to 1883, "making an aggregate of over eleven billions of dollars, not one dollar of which went into the national Treasury." (See North American Review, vol. cxxxvi, No. 319.)
The experience of the indirect taxation of commodities also shows that they favor the concentration of business in a few hands, or the creation of monopolies. Of this the experience of the internal revenue system of the United States has furnished some curious examples. Thus a tax was imposed in 1864 on matches at the rate of one cent per package of one hundred or less; and, although comparatively insignificant, it yielded at one time, by reason of the immense number of matches consumed, an annual revenue of over $3,500,000, which sum the manufacturer was obliged to advance by purchasing and affixing stamps to each package as a prerequisite to selling. To manufacturers furnishing their own design for the stamp, the Government allowed a discount of ten per cent on stamps of an aggregate value in excess of five hundred dollars purchased at any one time, and sixty days' credit to such manufacturers as could offer satisfactory security
- ↑ This estimates was founded on an apparently careful investigation of the prices "of sixteen leading domestic articles and the manufactures thereof, similar to those on which the present duties (1845) are imposed."
