ties were higher than it now is. In the expansion of the cotton-tie industry in our own country the South ought to largely share, for it possesses all the raw materials of their manufacture, and the market for their sale and use is at its own door. But the bill of the majority announces that the manufacture of cotton ties is not to be tolerated in the North or established in the South, and that such machinery as we now possess for the manufacture of cotton ties is to be thrown upon the scrap pile. British manufacturers are invited to make all our cotton ties, and of course they will then charge us what they please for them.

Why this article, used for baling cotton, should be admitted free of duty, and when used for any other purpose dutiable at 14 cents a pound, is not manifest upon any principle of fair play or economic science. There may be some reason known to the majority which they have failed to disclose to the minority; we know of no reason why cotton should enjoy this extraordinary and exceptional legislative favor.

Iron and steel beams and other structural iron and steel are forms of these metals, which are largely used in the erection of public and private buildings, and in the construction of bridges, ships, etc. These forms are more expensive, because requiring more labor, than ordinary bar-iron. Yet the bill of the majority recklessly subjects these more costly forms to lower duties than it imposes on ordinary bars of iron. The very low rates provided in the bill for beams and other structural forms of iron and steel will give great encouragement to the beam manufacturers of Belgium, which country now ships these products to the United States in considerable quantities.

Steel Rails.

If the majority desire to insure the handing over of our steel-rail market to our English rivals, the proposed duty of $11 will accomplish this purpose, unless the workingmen who are employed in producing the raw materials and finished products of our steel-rail works are willing to accept still lower wages than they are now receiving, and the railroad companies which transport the raw materials are willing to greatly reduce their freight rates. Have the majority ahy assurance that the workingmen and the railroad companies are willing to accept these conditions? Neither were

heard before the committee.

The supply of steel rails to the Pacific coast is now in the hands of foreigners, because of the cheap transportation by water from foreign ports, the existing duty of $17 not being sufficient to enable our manufacturers to compete for that trade. In the New York Iron Age for March 8, 1888, it is stated that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad Company had lately purchased 10,000 tons of foreign rails to be delivered at San Diego, Cal., and it is also mentioned that another lot of 2,500 tons of foreign rails had recently been sold by foreign makers for a Pacific coast railroad.

In proposing to seriously cripple, if not to destroy, the manufacture of steel rails in this country the majority probably do not realize the full significance of the results which they invite. It should be remembered that our manufacturers of steel rails consume almost one-half of all the iron ore, and almost one-half of all the pig-iron that the country produces. If this great market for American iron ores and pig-iron is to be destroyed the country need not be told of the distress which will come to labor, and the bankruptcy which will come to producers.

A flagrant defect of the bill of the majority is its preference for ad valorem over specific duties, although the testimony of almost every Secretary of the Treasury since the foundation of the Government has been recorded against the frauds upon the Treasury which

ad valorem duties invite and foster. Hon. Daniel Manning, the first Secretary of the Treasury under the present Executive, stated, in a circular letter issued July 17, 1885, that "investigations of the methods of entry and appraisement of imported merchandise have shown that the tariff laws are largely evaded by undervaluation wherever the duties are levied ad valorem." In a subsequent special report on the revision of the tariff, dated Feb. 16, 1886, the same official elaborately presented the objections of many of his distinguished predecessors against ad valorem duties, upon the ground that they encouraged fraudulent entries of imported goods. In closion his report the Secretary

"One bears it often said that if our ad valorem rates did not exceed 25 or 30 per cent undervaluation and temptation to undervaluation would disappear, but the records of this Department for the years 1817, 1840, and 1857 do not uphold that conclusion. Of course I am very far from advocating the universal application of specific rates, but I do believe it to be possible for the more experienced and conscientious of our appraising or examining officers in different parts of the country, and for the experts in this Department, to prepare a plan for the prudent enlargement of specific rates which will greatly promote the welfare of the Government of the country.'

Notwithstanding this deliberately expressed opinion by one of the most painstaking of our Secretaries of the Treasury, the bill of the majority continues many of the objectionable ad valorem rates of the present tariff and introduces others. Here, again, we detect a manifest purpose to favor foreign manufacturers at the expense of our own people, for if ad valorem duties have so operated in the past as to encourage fraudulent importations of foreign goods they may be expected to do so again. The majority must have known, for instance, that on steel-wire rods entered at ad valorem rates the invoices have been systematically undervalued during the past two years, so much so that the importations of steel in this form have in the period mentioned been enormous and en. tirely unprecedented. In the fiscal years 1886 and 1887 the imports of steel-wire rods under ad valorem rates amounted to 200,728 tons.

As this country possesses ample facilities for the manufacture of steel-wire rods, there must have been some special cause for the larger part of the heavy importations of the two years mentioned, and this cause is found in undervaluations. Instead of proposing to prevent the evil of undervaluations in the future by substituting specific duties, the majority recognize and condone it by recommending a conpossible. In this matter the majority not only favor tinuance of the ad valorem system which has made it foreigners at the expense of our own people, but they strike a serious blow at an honest administration of our customs laws.

Other features of the metal schedule of the bill of the majority are just as objectionable as those we have mentioned. Many of them would increase importations, and thus increase the surplus. The importations of iron and steel have been so large in the last two endar year 1887, the foreign value of which was nearly years, amounting to nearly 1,800,000 tons in the cal$50,000,000, that further encouragement to foreign iron and steel manufacturers to ship their products into our markets, as provided in the bill of the majority, is a matter of such serious moment that the attention of the country needs to be specially directed to it, and to the sweeping destruction which would be sure to follow in its path.

We have not felt called upon to present all the questions involved in this bill. If we did, volumes would be required, not pages. It would be an account of the whole business of the country. Lumber is put upon the free list, although the duty is only 18 per cent., or Planed lumber is still dutiable. What great principle rather, to be more exact, sawed lumber is so placed. relegates labor used in sawing to the limbo of free trade and places the panoply of protection over labor used in planing is known only to the majority, and they have made no disclosures. The lumber belt extends across the whole continent, exposed to Chinese labor competition in British Columbia and to Canadian labor competition all along the line. The addition of salt to the free list is but another blow at the lumber interest, for the manufacture of salt in many places is but an adjunct to the lumber manufacture, utilizing waste products and cheapening both.

The Surplus.

If it be the purpose of the majority to reduce the income of the Government from customs sources, we beg to remind them that that purpose will not be accomplished by the scaling down of duties, as proposed in the bill. It is well known and supported by almost universal experience that a mere diminution of duties tends to stimulate foreign importations and thereby increase the revenue. This is shown by the reports of importations since 1883 of those articles upon which reductions were made by the law of that year. For example: The duty on window-glass by the tariff of

creased from 50,947,890 pounds under the old law to 61,627,948 pounds in 1887 under the new law, and produced to the Treasury an increased revenue in the latter year over the former of upwards of $200,000.

The duty on braid, plaits, laces, and trimmings were reduced by the act of 1883 from 30 to 20 per cent. ad valorem, and the sum paid in duties in 1887 was $114,482.76 more than in 1883. The reduction on tinplate under the act of 1883 was one-tenth of a cent per pound, while the duty collected in 1827 was $715,468.57 greater than in 1883. Bronze in powder was reduced by the law of 1883 from 20 to 15 per cent., yet the sum received by the Government for duty in 1887 was $14,000 more than was received from the same source in 1883. The duty on writing paper was reduced from 85 per cent. to 25 per cent. ad valorem. The receipts in 1883 under the higher duty were $19,406.87; under the reduced duty in 1887 the receipts were $242,216.27, showing an excess of duties of $222,000 in 1887 over 1883. The duty on wool was reduced by the act of 1883, and the increase of importations and revenue is probably the most striking of any in the schedule. The importations in 1882 were 63,016,769 pounds; in 1887, 114,404,174. The duty collected in 1882 was $3,854,653.18; that in 1887, $5,899,816.63.

These illustrations clearly demonstrate that a simple scaling down of duties from 20 to 30 or 40 per cent., more or less, will only increase revenues and therefore augment the surplus.

If "the absolute peril" to the business of the country described by the President in his message last December as resulting from an existing and increasing surplus was imminent and well founded, how easily he could have averted it by the purchase of outstanding bonds with the surplus money in the Treasury, a power which he possessed clear and undoubted under the act of March 3, 1881, which is as follows:

"That the Secretary of the Treasury_may, at any time, apply the surplus money in the Treasury not ⚫ otherwise appropriated, or so much thereof as may be considered proper, to the purchase or redemption of United States bonds."

To have thus used the surplus would have been direct and business-like; just what a prudent business man would have done with his idle money - called in his creditors and applied it to his debts. The President failed to do this, and when Congress assembled "the condition" confronted it. If the House had even then appreciated the situation, how promptly and easily it could have, in part, at least, relieved it. It could have been done in the first week of December by abolishing the entire tobacco tax, amounting to $30,000,000 annually, and thereby removed a great burden from the agricultural producers of the country, by releasing also from taxation alcohol used in the arts and manufactures, which it is estimated would amount to six millions more.

This simple proposition would have received a practically unanimous vote in the House and the approval of the country, and have stopped the collection of $3,000,000 a month, and if it had been promptly done there would now be $12,000,000 less of surplus in the Treasury, and we venture to predict that the reduction that could have been thus secured was greater than the reduction which will be accomplished by this bill. The majority failed to seize the opportunity. It seems impossible for the party of the majority in the House to pass a revenue bill and reduce taxation; this has been its almost unvarying experience while in control of the House.

What reductions have taken place. It is a striking fact that all of the reductions of taxation which have occurred since the conclusion of the war, with the exception of the trifling ones made by the acts of March 1, 1879, and of May 28, 1880, aggregating a little over $6,000,000, were accomplished while the party now in the minority was in the majority and in control of legislation.

A brief summary of what has been done in this regard will be both suggestive and instructive. By the act of July 14, 1870, the reduction of the

revenue from customs duties was: Free list... $2,403,000 Estimated reduction from dutiable list...... 23,651,748 Total. 26,054,748

By the act of May 1, 1872, tea and coffee were placed upon the free list, making a

This we present as the result of Republican legislation from July 13, 1866, down to and including March 3, 1883.

The Republican party was in control of the House of Representatives from the first-named date to March 4, 1875. During that period it will be observed that taxation was reduced and revenue diminished in the aggregate sum of $284,421,260. On the 4th of March, 1875, the control of the House passed to the Democratic party, and remained with it until the 4th day of March, 1881, a period of six years. During these years the internal revenue was reduced $6,368,935. On the 4th day of March, 1881, the Republican Party was re-invested with control of the House of Representatives, holding it for two years, during which time it reduced taxation and the revenues from customs sources in the estimated sum, $20,855,799, and upon internal revenue, $40,677,682, a grand total of $61,432,481.

Since the 4th day of March, 1883, the House of Representatives has been dominated by the present majority party, a period of five years, and no taxes have been reduced, and no curtailment of the revenues has taken place, although warned of a threatened surplus, not only by the present administration, but by the preceding one of President Arthur. It will be observed that from 1866 to 1888, a period of twentytwo years, the control of the House of Representatives has been equally divided between the two political parties, each having eleven years. During the eleven years of Republican control the revenues were reduced (estimated)... During the eleven years of Democratic control the revenues were reduced...... 6,368,935 Difference in favor of the present

$362,504,569

minority party in the House of..... $356,135,634 If it be claimed that for the most part during the Democratic control of the House, the Senate was dominated by the Republican Party, and therefore, the responsibility of failure to reduce the revenues should be alike shared by them, we answer, that under the Constitution of the United States the House alone can originate bills to reduce taxation, the Senate having no jurisdiction of the subject, until it is given to it by a bill which passes the House, and that during all these years no such bill has gone from the House to the Senate, and, therefore, the sole responsibility for failure rests with the present majority in the House of Representatives.

If disaster results from the failure of the President to use the surplus now in the Treasury, as the law authorizes him to use it, in payment of our existing debts, and if the majority in the House, which alone can originate a bill to reduce the revenue, fails to send to the Senate a bill of that character, the responsibility will rest with them. The minority are powerless; they are neither in control of the House nor the com

port a bill or give direction to legislation which shall surely accomplish results so much desired. They sought by amendments in Committee on Ways and Means to make this bill reasonable, just, and practical; failing there, they will seek to amend and modify it in the Committee of the Whole House, and if their efforts there are unavailing, they will seek as a last resort an opportunity to offer a substitute, which will assuredly diminish the revenues without any impairment of the American system of protection.

It is therefore manifest that the responsibility for the present monetary condition which so alarms the country does not rest with the minority party in the House, but with the President and the majority in Congress. They cannot escape it. The President has for three years failed, while having the power, to avoid the financial condition he now complains of. The majority in the House for six years has signally failed to provide for a reduction of the revenue. They can not avoid responsibility for the evils which are now upon us, and while these are beyond their power to retrieve, they can, by courage and wisdom, and goyerned by business principles, provide against like evils in the future. They must now act or make public confession of failure.

The minority regard this bill not as a revenue. reduction measure, but as a direct attempt to fasten upon this country the British policy of free foreign trade. So viewing it, their sense of obligation to the people, and especially the working people, employed in manufacturing and agriculture in all sections of our common country, impel them to resist it with all their power. They will assist the majority in every effort to reduce the redundant income of the Government in a direct and practicable way, but every effort at fiscal legislation which will destroy or enfeeble our industries, retard material development, or tend to reduce our labor to the standard of other countries, will be met with the persistent and determined opposition of the minority represented in the House.

WM. D. KELLEY. THOS. M. BROWNE. T. B. REED.

WM. MCKINLEY, Jr. J. C. BURRows.

PART XXV.

Sunn, sisal-grass, and other vegetable fibres.

Burlaps, not exceeding sixty inches in width, of flax, jute, or hemp, or of which flax, jute, or hemp, or either of them, shall be the component material of chief value. Bags of jute for grain.

Machinery designed for the conversion of jute or. jute butts into cotton bagging, to wit, cards, roving frames, winding frames, and softeners.

Iron or steel sheets, or plates, or taggers iron, coated with tin or lead, or with a mixture of which these metals is a component part, by the dipping or any other process, and commercially known as tin plates, terne plates, and taggers tin. Beeswax.

Glycerine, crude, brown, or yellow, of the specific gravity of 1.25 or less at a temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit, not purified by refining or distilling. Phosphorus.

Soap-stocks, fit only for use as such.

Soap, hard and soft, all which are not otherwise specially enumerated or provided for. Sheep-dip.

Extract of hemlock, and other bark used for tanning.

Indigo, extracts of, and carmined.

Iodine, resublimed.

Oil, croton.

Hemp-seed and rape-seed oil.

Petroleum.

Alumina - alum, patent alum, alum substitute, sul

Bill as it passed the House of Representatives-Vote on its passage in the

House.

After a very protracted and memorably able debate, the Mills Anti-Protective Tariff Bill was somewhat amended, and on the 21st of July, 1888, passed the House by a vote of 162 yeas to 149 nays, -14 Representatives not voting, in the following shape:*

A Bill to reduce taxation and simplify the laws in relation to the collection of the revenue.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That on and after the first day of October, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, the following arti. cles mentioned in this section, when imported, shall be exempt from duty :

Timber, hewn and sawed, and timber used for spars and in building wharves.

Timber, squared or sided.

Wood unmanufactured, not specially enumerated or provided for.

Sawed boards, planks, deals, and all other articles of sawed lumber.

Hubs for wheels, posts, last-blocks, wagon-blocks, oar-blocks, gun-blocks, heading-blocks, and all like blocks or sticks, rough, hewn, or sawed only. Staves of wood.

crystals or ground.

All imitations of natural mineral waters, and all artificial mineral waters.

Baryta, sulphate of, or barytes, unmanufactured.
Boracic acid, borate of lime and borax.
Copper, sulphate of, or blue vitriol.
Iron, sulphate of, or copperas.

Potash, crude, carbonate of, or fused and caustic potash.

Chlorate of potash and nitrate of potash, or saltpetre crude.

Sulphate of potash.

Sulphate of soda, known as salt cake, crude or refined, or nitre cake, crude or refined, and Glauber's salt.

Nitrite of soda.

Sulphur, refined, in rolls. Wood-tar.

Coal-tar, crude.

Aniline oil and its homologues.

Coal-tar, products of, such as naphtha, benzine, benzole, dead oil, and pitch.

All preparations of coal-tar not colors or dyes, and not acids of colors and dyes.

Logwood and other dyewoods, extracts and decoctions of.

Alizarine, natural or artificial.
Spirits of turpentine.

Ocher and ochery earths, umber and umber earths. Olive-oil, salad oil, cotton seed oil, whale oil, seal oil, and neat's-foot oil.

All barks, beans, berries, balsams, buds, bulbs, bulbous roots, and excrescences, such as nut-galls,

fruits, flowers, dried fibres, grains, gums, and gum resins, herbs, leaves, lichens, mosses, nuts, roots, and stems, vegetables, seeds, and seeds of morbid growth, weeds, woods used expressly for dyeing, and dried insects, any of the foregoing which are not edible and not specially enumerated or provided for.

All non-dutiable crude minerals, but which have been advanced in value or condition by refining or grinding, or by other process of manufacture, not specially enumerated or provided for.

All earths or clays unwrought or unmanufactured. Glass plates or disks, unwrought, for use in the manufacture of optical instruments, spectacles, and eye glasses.

Opium crude and not adulterated, containing nine per centum and over of morphia, for medicinal purposes.

Iron and steel cotton ties or hoops for baling or other purposes, not thinner than number twenty wire gauge.

Needles, sewing, darning, knitting, and all others not specially enumerated or provided for in this act. Copper, imported in the form of ores, regulus of, and black or coarse copper and copper cement, old copper fit only for remanufacture.

Antimony, as regulus or metal.
Quicksilver.

Chromate of iron or chromic ore.

Mineral substances in a crude state and metals unwrought not specially enumerated or provided for. Brick, other than fire-brick.

German looking-glass plates, made of blown glass and silvered.

Vegetables in their natural state or in salt or brine, not specially enumerated or provided for.

Chiccory root, ground or unground, burnt or pre

· pared.

Acorns and dandelion root, raw or prepared, and all other articles used, or intended to be used, as coffee or substitutes therefor, not specially enumerated or provided for.

Cocoa, prepared or manufactured.

Dates.

Currants, Zante or other.

Figs.

Meats, game, and poultry. Milk, fresh.

Egg yelks.

Beans, pease, and split pease.

Bibles, books, and pamphlets, printed in other languages than English, and books and pamphlets and all publications of foreign governments, and publications of foreign societies, historical or scientific, printed for gratuitous distribution.

Bristles.

Bulbs and bulbous roots, not medicinal.

Castor oil, forty cents per gallon.

Flaxseed or linseed oil, fifteen cents per gallon. Licorice, paste or rolls, five cents per pound. Licorice juice, thirty-five per centum ad valorem. Baryta, sulphate of, or barytes, manufactured, oneeighth of one cent per pound.

Chromate of potash, two and one-half cents per pound.

Bichromate of potash, two and one-half cents per pound.

Acetate of lead, brown, two cents per pound. Acetate of lead, white, three cents per pound. White lead, when dry or in pulp, or when ground or mixed in oil, two cents per pound.

Orange, mineral, and red lead, one and one-half cents per pound.

Litharge, one and one-half cents per pound.
Nitrate of lead, two cents per pound.

Magnesia, medicinal, carbonate of, three cents per pound.

Magnesia, calcined, seven cents per pound. Magnesia, sulphate of, or Epsom salts, one-fourth of one cent per pound.

Prussiate of potash, red, seven cents per pound. Prussiate of potash, yellow, three cents per pound. Nitrate of potash, refined, or refined saltpetre, one cent per pound.

Salsoda, or soda crystals, one-eighth of one cent per pound.

Bicarbonate of or super-carbonate of soda, and salaratus, calcined or pearl ash, three-fourths of one cent per pound.

Hydrate or caustic soda, one-half of one cent per pound.

Soda silicate or other alkaline silicate, one-fourth of one cent per pound.

Sulphur, sublimed or flowers of, twelve dollars per

ton.

Ultramarine, three cents per pound.

Paris green, twelve and one-half per centum ad

valorem.

or manufactured.

Proprietary preparations, to wit: All cosmetics, pills, powders, troches or lozenges, sirups, cordials, bitters, anodynes, tonics, plasters, liniments, salves, ointments, pastes, drops, waters, essences, spirits, oils, or preparations or compositions recommended to the public as proprietary articles or prepared accord

Rags, of whatever material composed. Rattans and reeds, manufactured but not made up into finished articles.

Stones, unmanufactured or undressed, freestone, granite, sandstone, and all building or monumental stone.

All strings of gut or any other like material.
Tallow.

Waste, all not specially enumerated or provided for.

SEC. 2. That on and after the first day of October, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, in lieu of the duties heretofore imposed on the articles hereinafter mentioned, there shall be levied, collected, and paid the following rates of duty on said articles severally:

Glycerine, refined, three cents per pound.

Acid, acetic, acetous, or pyroligneous acid, exceeding the specific gravity of 1.047, five cents per pound. Castor beans or seeds, twenty-five cents per bushel

for any disease or diseases or affections affecting the human or animal body, including all toilet preparations whatever used as applications to the hair, mouth, teeth, or skin, not specially enumerated or provided for, thirty per centum ad valorem.

Morphia or morphine and all salts thereof, fifty cents per ounce.

Acid, tannic or tannin, fifty cents per pound. China, porcelain, parian, and bisque, earthen, stone, or crockery ware composed of earthy or mineral substance, including plaques, ornaments, charms, vases, and statuettes, painted, printed, enamelled, or gilded, or otherwise decorated in any manner, fifty per centum ad valorem.

China, porcelain, parian, and bisque ware not decorated in any manner, forty per centum ad valorem.

White granite, common ware, plain white or creamcolored, lustred or printed under glaze in a single color; sponged, dipped, or edged ware, thirty-five per centum ad valorem.

Brown earthenware, common stoneware, gas-retorts, and roofing tiles, not specially enumerated or provided for, and not decorated in any manner, twenty per centum ad valorem.