made familiar. In practically carrying out this idea, the chairman of the commission put himself in direct and frequent communication with revenue officials and representative business men from every section of the country; and availing himself of the power to take testimony, under oath, he often came into the possession of important facts which in daily life had been screened from the eye of the public. The result was that the commission presented to Congress, in January, 1866, a report which gave for the first time a full, clear, and exact statement of the curious and complex scheme of internal and customs revenue that had been evolved, as it were, out of the financial necessities contingent on the prosecution of a gigantic war: which involved the raising by taxation during the war period (and exclusive of loans) of an aggregate of over $2,000,000,000, and a not infrequent daily disbursement (expenditure) of over two millions of dollars; and in addition to this feature the report contained special and elaborate exhibits on distilled spirits, fermented liquors, petroleum, cotton, tea, coffee, sugar, spices, proprietary articles, and patent medicines as sources of Government income, with estimates of the amount of revenue which the Treasury might annually expect if taxation at various rates on the same was to be continued; the whole being really the first practical attempt in the United States to gather and use national statistics for great national purposes.
On the termination by statute of the Revenue Commission, in January, 1866, its chairman was appointed to an office specially created by Congress, for a period of four years, with the title of "Special Commissioner of the Revenue" of the United States; and the duties of which were thus defined by statute:
"He shall from time to time report through the Secretary of the Treasury to Congress, either in the form of bill or otherwise, such modifications of the rates of taxation, or of the methods of collecting the revenues, and such other facts pertaining to the trade, industry, commerce, or taxation of the country as he may find by actual observation of the law to be conducive to public interest."
In this office, and invested with large powers, its incumbent entered upon the work of co-operating with the appropriate committees of Congress—"Ways and Means" of the House and "Finance" of the Senate—in reconstructing the then existing and extraordinary system of the United States internal revenue; and under his initiation and supervision were originated almost all the reforms in this department of the Government that were considered or enacted by Congress between the close of the war and the year 1870; namely, the redrafting of nearly the whole body of complicated and often conflicting statutes; the reduction and final abolition of the taxes on crude products—especially cotton, salt, lumber, petroleum, and the metals—and most of the taxes on manufactures;
