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SILVER question, MONETARY policy, GOLD coins, INTERNATIONAL relations, CONSTITUTIONS, EQUALITY, CIVIL rights, and ECONOMIC policy

In this article, the author examines the implications of the Silver Question before the U.S. Congress of 1886 to the history of monetary policy in the U.S. The Sections of the Act of February 28, 1878, calling a Monetary Conference, made the U.S. the champion and advocate in the community of nations of the restoration of civil order in dealing with money. Concurrent regulation of metallic money by a competent majority of nations, and on the basis of equality of legal right between the two metals, became by this Act a fixed object of the foreign policy. As for the time consumed and to be consumed in passing from this turning point of history to the success of the policy, it is well to mark that it is not uncommon for men to wait a long time for the attainment of a great end. The United Colonies suffered under the Confederation for many years before they adopted the Constitution. The restoration of greenbacks to par with gold was a struggle of many years. The diplomatic successes of this country have usually required a long time for their attainment; and in the rare instances when Americans had a foreign policy in the specific sense, when there was some important object to be gained through the action of several foreign powers, the lack of a continuing, organized, high-grade civil service has naturally unfitted Americans from advancing a meritorious cause with the maximum of speed.

BANK deposit laws, MONEY, PUBLIC opinion, and LEGAL tender

The article presents a discussion related to the consideration of deposits as currency in the U.S. In the discussions upon the various phases of the currency question during the last twenty years, the popular dread of contraction and its consequences has seldom been appealed to in vain. The U.S. Congress has been a good index of public opinion in this respect, and in the Congress there has steadily been an element which seemed to have grasped the idea of a connection between contraction and falling prices, as the one and sufficient key to the practical questions which were to be settled. To this fact were due the weak legislation of 1874, to go back no further, and the necessity in 1875 of so framing the Resumption Act as to leave its meaning open to opposite constructions and its operation uncertain. Nothing else than a deep conviction in Congress that the people would not stand contraction can explain the fact that the act of May 31, 1878, to forbid the further retirement of legal tender notes, was carried through the House of Representatives.

TARIFF laws, CONFERENCES & conventions, COMMERCIAL treaties, FREE trade, and LEGISLATIVE bills

The article focuses on proposed tariff legislation since 1883 in the U.S. During the last two U.S. congresses, several attempts have been made to secure modification and reduction of the customs duties as they were left by the act of 1883. The first session of the Forty-eighth Congress lasted from December 3, 1888 to July 7, 1884. The Democrats were in a decided majority in the House, having 198 members, against 126 Republicans and Independents. On March 21, a conference of "free trade" Democratic leaders was held, at which it was decided to call a general party caucus to decide what action should be taken on the bill. On April 15, the motion to go into Committee of the Whole, for the consideration of the tariff bill, was carried without division. At the same session of the Congress, three attempts at special tariff legislation are worthy of notice: the Converse wool bill, to restore the duties of 1867 on raw wool; Amendment to the shipping bill; A bill on reducing the duty on works of art from 20 to 10 per cent.

COMMITTEES, TRUSTS & trustees, UNITED States manufacturing industries, COMPETITION, RESTRAINT of trade, COMMERCIAL policy, and INTERNATIONAL competition

The article reports that the U.S. House of Representatives of the Fiftieth Congress passed a resolution directing its Committee on Manufactures to inquire about associations, trusts or others like titles, alleged to exist in the country for purpose of controlling or curtailing production or supply of various products on January 25, 1888. Authority was given the committee to sit during sessions of the House, to compel the presence of persons and papers, and to swear and examine witnesses. A number of litigations involving the nature and doings of trusts, monopolies, and the like, have recently come to judgment in the courts; and the findings upon them are now of record. Profits may also be distributed as a particular means of maintaining the combination intact. It is every wise extremely confusing to class all the above-named enterprises as trusts. They have in common only the single feature of excluding more or less perfectly old-fashioned individualism of management. It will be noticed that the industries surest to have such an evolution are precisely those among which international competition now prevails. The interest hitherto centered in the tariff question will then go over to that of trusts.

TAX laws, DIRECT taxation, INDIRECT taxation, WEALTH tax, and TAX accounting

This article presents information on the Direct Tax of 1861, an act passed by the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1861. The direct tax laid by the act of Congress of August 5, 1861, was the fifth levy which has been made under the provisions of the Constitution, requiring that representation and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers. There would be little risk in predicting that this will also be the last resort to a method of taxation which the framers of the Constitution thought important enough to hold a place in one of the difficult compromises embodied in that instrument. The distinction between direct and indirect taxation, resting upon the supposed method of incidence upon a single class of persons, is fully developed. It was a necessary result of their reasoning, became familiar in all the discussions of the school in France, and, was carried to the knowledge of readers in political science in other countries, during the short-lived pre-eminence of the physiocrats.

SILVER coins, TREASURY bills, GOVERNMENT securities, GOLD standard, CURRENCY question, and BANK deposits

This article focuses on the silver situation in the United States. The laws of the United States authorize the U.S. Treasury Department to receive deposits of standard silver dollars and to issue certificates therefore in denominations of one dollar and upwards, and to receive gold coin and to issue certificates therefore in denominations of twenty dollars and upwards. The premium on gold or the discount on silver may be arrested, if it comes, by fresh legislation. The people who have silver dollars, silver certificates, greenbacks, and national bank-notes in their pockets or on deposit in bank, for which they have paid, in labor or property, one hundred cents per dollar gold value, may demand of Congress that their money be restored to that value. If they do so demand, in some way it will be done. The banks cannot hold the immense mass of deposits and clearings at the gold standard, when the government's legal tender notes are redeemed only in silver. The premium on their gold will be the property of their shareholders, and may be applied to an extra dividend or added to their surplus.

TOBACCO taxes, TAX laws, INTERNAL revenue law, and CIVIL war

This article focuses on taxation of tobacco in 1891. New systems of taxation and the extension of old ones are the invariable accompaniments of great wars. By the Civil War in the U.S. an enormous strain was put on a fiscal system that for nearly half a century had been on a peace footing. The tariff was quickly increased, but a disturbed foreign trade proved to be a poor source from which to draw the sinews of war. Early in 1862, the U.S. Congress entered upon the subject of laying internal taxes, but found itself in dangerous and unknown fields. Such taxes had always been unpopular. Thus there were no guides to the problem, what taxes were best adapted to American conditions of scattered population and aversion to restrictions, or what were most likely to meet public favor. The internal revenue act of July 1, 1862, was distinctly a war measure, drafted under the pressure of needs almost overwhelming. In European governments, tobacco was already among the chief sources of revenue, being taxed both in the leaf and in the manufactured forms.

PUBLICATIONS, BOOKS, PERIODICALS, MONETARY policy, and FINANCIAL management

The article presents a lists of books and periodicals on different topics of economics. Some of the books listed here are "On the Principle of Wealth Creation: Its Nature, Origin, Evolution, and Corollaries"; "Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices"; and "Dictionary of Political Economy." Some other publications are "Economic Causes of Moral Progress"; "Methods of Industrial Peace"; "Capital and Labor: Their relative Strength"; "General Booth's Social Work"; "Taxation and Work: A Series of Treatises on the Tariff and the Currency"; "The Tariff: What it Is, and What it Does"; "The Economy of High Wages. An Inquiry into the Comparative Methods and Cost of Production of Competing Industries in the United States and Europe"; "The Case against Bimetallism"; "The Monetary Question in 1892"; "The World's Exchanges of Standard Metals"; "A New Standard of Value"; "Fancy Monetary Standards"; "Influence on Business of the Independent Treasury" and "History of Banking Under the Continental Congress and Federal Constitution."

WOOL textiles, TARIFF, COMMERCIAL policy, EXPORT subsidies, and IMPORTERS

The article discusses the effects of the policy related to duties on wool and woolens in the U.S. followed during the last twenty-five years and the probable effects of the policy which is to come. In the quarter of a century which has now elapsed since the passage of the wool and woolens tariff act of 1867, the system of duties then established, and since maintained in its essential features, has gradually come to be the crucial part of the protective policy. The bill presented in 1877-1878 session proposed to put wool on the free list and to reduce correspondingly the duties on woolens. Whatever uncertainty there may be as to the disposition of other parts of the protective system at the hands of the present Congress, it may be assumed as settled that the wool duty will go, and that the system of 1867 will be replaced by a fundamentally different regime. The questions to be asked in considering the effects of a given duty are as to the domestic production and the imports, and the relative importance of these two sources of supply.

BIMETALLISM, COINAGE, COMMITTEES, and WORKS councils

The article focuses on the bimetallist committee of Boston, Massachusetts and New England. The Committee is formed for the purpose of promoting the establishment of international bimetallism upon the general plan of the Latin Union, but with a broader basis. Those concerned in the movement, while earnestly opposed to the free coinage or to any increased use of sliver by this country independently of international action and agreement. A number of associate members have been admitted from other portions of the country, and it is likely that co-operating committees will be created in several cities. The Committee does not propose to make use of any political agency, or to attempt to influence, otherwise than through public opinion, the action of the administration or of Congress. Its work is to be educational. It will endeavor to instruct the community in what it considers the only sound theory of hard money, that of international bimetallism, preparing the public sentiment of the country for the adoption of this so soon as Great Britain's concurrence can be secured. For this the committee does not think that the United States ought to sue.

CIVIL war, REVENUE, TAXATION, LEGISLATIVE bills, DIRECT taxation, and INTERNAL revenue law

The article examines the impact of the Civil War on financial legislation in the U.S. There were measures which the boldest innovator would hardly have dared propose in time of peace; but under the stress of war they were enacted, sometimes with little opposition and little discussion. The income tax was the first of these innovations to be adopted and was among the first to disappear. Such taxes, however, were familiar enough in England and other European countries; and it is not strange that Congress should have thought of taxing incomes at a period when its policy was to tax everything taxable. The House Committee of Ways and Means followed out the recommendations of the Secretary. They prepared two bills, one of which dealt with the proposed tariff changes, imposing duties on tea, coffee and sugar. The other was the internal revenue measure. It imposed license taxes and taxes on whiskey, beer, porter, carriages, promissory notes, and bank bills. But Congress could not take it for granted that the States would all assume the tax; and, where they did not, it was to be collected by federal machinery and assessed on real estate.

BOOKS, ECONOMICS, and LABOR

The article presents a list of recently published books on economics. Some such books are: "Contributions of the United States Government to Social Science," by C.D. Wright; "Political Economy for High Schools and Beginners," by R.E. Thompson; "Buckle and his Critics: A Study in Sociology," by J.M Robertson; "Practical Christian Sociology," by W.F. Crafts; "Our Industrial Utopia and its Unhappy Citizens," by D.H. Wheller; "The Social Question in the Catholic Congresses," by J.G. Brooks; "The General Election, and the Prospects of Social Legislation," by W. Cunningham; "The Referendum and Initiative: Their Relation to the Interests of Labor in Switzerland and in America," by A.L. Lowell; "The Present Position of Adult Male Labor in New Zealand," by E. Reeves; "The Evolution of Agricultural Science," by R.M. Garnier; "The Probability of a Cessation of the Growth of Population in England and Wales During the Next Century," by E. Cannan; "Decrease in Interstate Migration," by W.F. Willcox; "An Interoceanic Canal in the Light of Precedent," by T.D. Woolsey; and so on.

ECONOMICS, COST, TAXATION, BUSINESS insurance, and DIRECT taxation

The article focuses on various topics related to economics such as industrial costs, taxation, business insurance etc. The word "cost," as is well known, has at least four different senses: expense, waste, pain, and loss of opportunity. Wealth may be regarded either in its public or private aspect. In the former it is an aggregate of things, goods, or services. In the latter it consists of titles or rights to some of those things. Furthermore, wealth, whether public or private, may be measured in two ways--as a flow or as a fund. In the one case it takes the form of a rate, and is measured as income: in the other case it takes the form of a quantity, and is measured as capital. The payment of the direct tax in 1861 was effected in California under unusual conditions and by an irregular and curious process; and some account of the episode may be of interest to students of financial history. It will be remembered that Congress had allowed any State to assume its quota of the direct tax, and that California, like almost all the loyal States, took advantage of this option; though, unlike other States, which satisfied their quotas by an offset of their claims against the United States, California levied and collected her tax, and paid it in cash to the federal treasury.

TARIFF laws, MCKINLEY tariff, PROTECTIONISM, TARIFF on cotton, TARIFF on textiles, and UNITED States economy

The article discusses the Tariff Act which was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1897. The reasons for the enactment of the law have been highlighted. The Act was against the protectionist policies which saw a great reversal in the U.S. presidential election of 1896. The efforts of U.S. President William McKinley were instrumental in devising the Act. The provisions of the Act entailed revised rates on wool, cotton and textiles. The free admission of wool and the remodeling of the duties on woolen goods were resultants of the Act. The effects of the Act on the U.S. economy are also discussed.

UNITED States economic policy, LEGISLATIVE bodies, PUBLIC administration, FEDERAL government, ECONOMIC policy, and ECONOMICS

The article reports on the establishment of a commission, under an act of Congress, for the purpose of studying problems relating to industry with a view to formulating remedial legislation. The federal government has undertaken to follow the example of England, France, and Belgium. The commission consists of five members each from the Senate and House of Representatives, and nine other persons, who shall fairly represent the different industries and employments, appointed by the President. The five sub-commission that have been created are enumerated, including the Agriculture and Agricultural Labor with Andrew Harris as chairman.

UNITED States politics & government, 1897-1901, UNITED States railroad law, MUNICIPAL reports, CITIES & towns, MUNICIPAL government, LEGISLATIVE bills, and CENSUS

The article presents information on the activities of the United States government. New railway legislation has been enacted in Kansas, that eradicates the Board of Railroad Commissioners substituting it with a Court of Visitation consisting three judges. The U.S. Department of Labor has been authorized by the Fifty fifth U.S. Congress to prepare an annual report of the official statistics of all the cities of the U.S. Previous attempt on municipal statistic in the U.S. encircled wealth, debt, taxation, and social statistic of cities.

INHERITANCE & transfer tax, PROPERTY, and EXPORTS

Examines the constitutionality of the inheritance tax in the U.S. Grounds for denying the constitutionality of the law; Lack of Congress of power to levy any tax on the transmission of property upon the death of the owner; Prohibition of tax on exports.