a collector is appointed for each district. For a time X during and after the Civil War a large number of articles were taxed and the income from this source exceeded that from all others. The term internal revenue includes all taxes on the products or manufactures of the country, upon banks and bankers, the income from the sale of stamps, such as the stamp upon. bank checks, and licenses, or taxes upon occupations, and income taxes. It does not include the revenue from the sale of public lands or the revenue from postagestamps. The tax upon liquors and tobacco is paid by the manufacturers and dealers. Nearly all other forms of internal revenue have been abolished. - Customs. The revenue from duties imposed upon imported goods was, for the year 1888, $219,000,000. This was nearly twice the income from internal revenue for the same year, and was more than half the entire government income. Of this amount there was collected from duties on tobacco and liquors $16,000,000; from sugar $50,000,000; from iron and steel, $21,000,000; from wool and woollens, $32,000,000. The remaining part is collected from a multitude of articles. For the collection of the customs, the coast line, the banks of navigable rivers, and the boundaries between the United States and Canada and Mexico are divided into collection districts. Ports of entry are established by law, through which all imported goods are required to pass. A large proportion of the revenue from customs is collected at the single port of New York. Commerce and Navigation. To attend to the collection of revenue from imports, the government has to maintain officers at all the ports of entry. To prevent smuggling, guards are necessary along the coast. On account of the nature of the business of the Treasury Department, it is entrusted with the execution of the various laws on commerce and navigation, such as laws for the inspection of ships and steamboats to determine whether they should be permitted to go upon the water, the laws to maintain lighthouses and buoys along the coast, the life-saving corps and the coast-survey, the laws for the preservation of seals in Alaska, and the laws to prevent the introduction of diseased animals. The department also has charge of hospitals for the use of seamen. Public Improvements. Since 1853 there has been connected with the department an office for superintending architecture. It supervises the erection of all buildings for the department, such as custom-houses, mints, assay offices, marine hospitals, and, in addition, post-offices and court-houses. Skilled engineers from the War Department are employed in this office. The improvement of rivers and harbors is also under this department. Sub-Treasuries. During the years from 1792 to 1812, and from 1816 to 1836, when there was a national bank, the Treasurer was required to deposit the funds with the bank. During President Jackson's administration the funds were distributed, without warrant of law, to certain state banks. By their failure in the great financial crisis of 1837, the treasury incurred loss. In 1840, a law was passed for keeping the funds without depositing in any bank, state or federal. It was provided that sub-treasuries should be established in certain cities for the receiving and holding of funds, subject to the order of the Treasury Department at Washington. This law was repealed in 1841, was re-enacted in 1846, and is still in force. Assistant, or sub-treasurers, are located at Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Washington. CHAPTER XXVI. MONEY AND COINAGE. Origin of Money. It is probable that in the earliest times governments had nothing to do with the selection of a commodity to be used as money. People, without any aid from the government, selected whatever valuable thing was most convenient, and used it in setting prices in their exchanges. In this way, all sorts of things have been used as money. Among the multitude of the things which have been thus used, gold and silver are the principal materials which have survived. These were originally used for money just as iron was used for ploughs, wool for clothing, and wheat for bread, not because of any statute made by governments, but because of their fitness for the use. Governments have recognized and adopted what the common sense of mankind had already fixed upon as the best measure of value. Coinage. In early times gold and silver were weighed out in exchange. The knights of the middle ages carried scales at their sides for the purpose of weighing the silver. But silver can be so mixed with other metals, that it is difficult to determine how much there is. Persons who become skilled in assaying and mixing gold and silver have great advantage over the rest of the community. To protect the community from fraud, it is desirable that the government provide for assaying the metal and dividing it into pieces of uniform sizes, convenient for use. Each piece is stamped to make it evident that the work has actually been done by government officers. The object is to adopt such a stamp and employ such methods as will make counterfeiting difficult. Money of the Colonists. The first English colonists in America were obliged to live in that rude, primitive condition, in which some more bulky form of property is better fitted than gold and silver to be a medium of exchange. Tobacco, furs, wampum, salt, codfish, cattle, and other things were at different times and in different places used as money; and these various kinds of extemporized currency were made legal tender by the colonial governments. In course of time, the accumulation of wealth in the colonies was such that they could command a portion of the silver of commerce. The silver which came to them was largely in Spanish coins. The first effort at coining in this country was made by the colony of Massachusetts, in 1652. The English government did not allow the colonies to coin money. They were expected to use English coins, and to trade only with England. Not much was done in the way of coining money in this country until the Revolutionary War. The colonists had various disastrous experiences in their attempts to make money out of paper. The Money of the Revolution.— With the opening of the Revolutionary War the various colonies came into the possession of full power in the matter of monetary legislation. Under the stress of the times, the Continental Congress fell into the habit of issuing paper money; this was made by the states a full legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private. One result was that no money of real value could remain in circulation. The people were left to the distressing experience of carrying on a great war with a worthless currency. Before the war ended the money had become entirely valueless. Pelatiah Webster, the financial historian of the Revolution, said of this money, "We have suffered more from this cause than from every other cause or calamity." The Articles of Confederation assumed that the separate states had a right to coin money, and they provided that the Continental Congress might also do the same; but they gave to Congress alone the power to regulate the alloy and the value of all coins made by either state or federal government. The Constitution provides that the federal government alone shall have power to coin money. The states are expressly prohibited from coining, and from making "anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."1 This makes it possible always to secure a uniform currency for all parts of the country. Difficulties with the Standards. Our government at first made both gold and silver coins a full legal tender in the payment of debts. But in fixing the weight of the coins, it chanced that the gold coin was worth more than the silver; and the result was that gold would not circulate, and we had only silver as money. By the legislation of 1834 and 1837 the gold coin was made 1 Art. I. sec. 10. |