Speeches, Addresses and Letters on Industrial and Financial Questions

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1872 edition. Excerpt: ... country is expanding in resources and taxable population beyond the degree in which any country or people ever before expanded. Six hundred miles, said the gentleman from New York, Mr. Brooks, into the Indian territory your Pacific railroad now runs. Yes, sir; in the midst of what but last year were plains and hills, to which civilization was a stranger, is now the flourishing city of Cheyenne, with its tax-paying population thriving and prospering, and along the whole six hundred miles of that road beyond the infant city of Omaha are people who, two years ago, were citizens of other lands or among the landless laborers of this country, who this year in their new and independent homes, will contribute to the revenues of the country through the various departments of the internal tax law and by the generous consumption of dutiable goods. 11 Three-fifths of all other persons, is the language with which the Constitution refers to four million of our people--those four millions who hitherto lived without the use of money, and were habitually clad in such garments as are given the pauper and prisoner, where these unfortunates receive least sympathy--to-day walk erect in manhood and womanhood. They handle money which their labor earns. They occupy homes. Many thousands of them own lands, and standing up under their own vine and figtree acknowledging no man as master, and asking no man to supply their wants, they contribute to the revenues of the Government. Four million additional consumers of taxable and dutiable goods. They are using the matches which pay the Government a penny a box; and no longer going barefoot they contribute to the income of the Government when they buy the blacking with which to polish their boots. And, sir, there are...