All duty paid upon such articles goes directly to the cost of the
article when manufactured here, and must be paid for by the consumers.
These duties not only come from the consumers at home, but act as a
protection to foreign manufacturers of the same completed articles in
our own and distant markets.
I will suggest or mention another subject bearing upon the problem of
"how to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to accumulate balances."
It is to devise some better method of verifying claims against the
Government than at present exists through the Court of Claims,
especially those claims growing out of the late war. Nothing is more
certain than that a very large percentage of the amounts passed and
paid are either wholly fraudulent or are far in excess of the real
losses sustained. The large amount of losses proven--on good testimony
according to existing laws, by affidavits of fictitious or unscrupulous
persons--to have been sustained on small farms and plantations are not
only far beyond the possible yield of those places for any one year,
but, as everyone knows who has had experience in tilling the soil and
who has visited the scenes of these spoliations, are in many instances
more than the individual claimants were ever worth, including their
personal and real estate.
Pages:
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713