Read Ebook: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly January 1899 Volume LIV No. 3 January 1899 by Various Youmans William Jay Editor

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he story told by the individual plant, or animal, or stone, or wind, or cloud. A special effort is made to teach them to interpret everyday Nature as it lies around them. For this reason frequent short excursions into the city streets are made. Those who smile and think that there is not much of Nature to be found in a city street are those who have never looked for it. Enough material for study has been gathered in these excursions to make them a feature of this work, even more than the longer ones which they take twice a year into the country.

Last year I made not less than eighty such short excursions, each time with classes of about thirty-five. They were children of from seven to fourteen years of age. Without their hats, taking with them note-books, pencils, and knives, they passed with me to the street. The passers-by stopped to gaze at us, some with expressions of amusement, others of astonishment; approval sometimes, quite frequently the reverse. But I never once saw on the part of the children a consciousness of the mild sensation that they were creating. They went for a definite purpose, which was always accomplished.

The children of the first and second years study nearly the same objects. Those of the third and fourth years review this general work, studying more thoroughly some one type. When they enter the fifth year, they have considerable causal knowledge of the familiar plants and animals, of the stones, and of the weather. But, what is more precious to them, they are sufficiently trained to be able to look at new objects with a truly "seeing eye."

The course of study now requires general ideas of physiology, and, in consequences, the greater portion of their time for science is devoted to this subject. I am glad to be able to say, however, that it is not "School Physiology" which they study, but the guinea-pig and The Wandering Jew!

In other words, I let them find out for themselves how and what the guinea-pig eats; how and what he expires and inspires; how and why he moves. Along with this they study also plant respiration, transpiration, assimilation, and reproduction, comparing these processes with those of animals, including themselves.

The children's interest is aroused and their observation stimulated by the constant presence in the room with them of a mother guinea-pig and her child. Nevertheless, I have not hesitated to call in outside materials to help them to understand the work. A series of lessons on the lime carbonates, therefore, preceded the lessons on respiration; an elephant's tooth, which I happened to have, helped to explain the guinea-pig's molars; and a microscope and a frog's leg made real to them the circulation of the blood.

In spite of the time required for the physiology, the fifth-year children have about thirty lessons on minerals; the sixth-year, the same number on plants; and the seventh-year, on animals; and it would be difficult to decide which of these subjects rouses their greatest enthusiasm.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

BY THE LATE HON. DAVID A. WELLS.

No attempt ought to be made to construct or formulate an economically correct, equitable, and efficient system of taxation which does not give full consideration to the method or extent to which taxes diffuse themselves after their first incidence. On this subject there is a great difference of opinion, which has occasioned, for more than a century, a vast and never-ending discussion on the part of economic writers. All of this, however, has resulted in no generally accepted practical conclusions; has been truthfully characterized by a leading French economist as marked in no small part by the "simplicity of ignorance," and from a somewhat complete review of the conflicting theories advanced by participants one rises with a feeling of weariness and disgust.

With this premise, let us next consider what facts and experiences are pertinent to this subject, and available to assist in reaching sound conclusions; proceeding very carefully and cautiously in so doing, inasmuch as territory is to be entered upon that has not been generally or thoroughly explored.

The facts and experiences of first importance in such inquiry are that the examination of the tax rolls in any State, city, or municipality of the United States will show that surprisingly small numbers of persons primarily pay or advance any kind of taxes. It is not probable that more than one tenth of the adult population or about one twentieth of the entire population of the United States ever come in contact officially with a tax assessor or tax collector. It is also estimated that less than two per cent of the total population of the United States advance the entire customs and internal revenue of the Federal Government.

The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact, as John Adams once remarked, that "if the Creator had given man a reason that is fallible, he has also impressed upon him an instinct that is sure." And this instinct teaches the masses everywhere, though they have never read a book on political economy, or heard any one discourse learnedly on the principles of taxation, that if taxes are increased, either by a lawful or unlawful expenditure of public money, they can not in any possible way avoid paying some portion of its increase; or, in other words, that increased taxes meant increased cost of living, through increased rents, increased price of fuel, clothing, and provisions, and possibly diminished opportunity to labor through such increased cost of the products of labor as would limit and restrict markets or consumption. In short, that taxes inevitably fall upon them through the increased price of all they consume, even if they pay nothing to the tax collector directly. A large proportion of the masses of the city of New York in 1871-'72, who paid no taxes directly, accordingly and spontaneously joined hands with the comparatively few of their fellow-citizens who did pay in resisting extravagance and corruption.

The following incident may here be cited as instructive: In one of the recent official hearings before a legislative committee of one of the States, a strenuous advocate of the popular doctrine that there was and could be no such thing as equality in taxation except by rigidly taxing everybody directly for all his property, of every description, both real and personal, and that to not tax immediately and directly was, in at least a great degree, to exempt from taxation, expressed himself as entirely opposed to any system of restricting assessments to a comparatively few things, on the ground that it would be a recognition in the United States of a system which in Great Britain had ground down the masses into poverty. He, however, obtained some new light on the subject of nondiffusion by being reminded that if the masses of England had been grievously oppressed by taxation, it had been under a system of many years' standing, which never in any way brings the tax collector in direct contact with nineteen twentieths of the entire population; the customs taxes of Great Britain being practically levied on only four articles--spirits, tea, coffee, and tobacco; and the inland revenue also on practically four--spirits, beer, legacies and successions, and stamps . Generalizing, then, on the basis of so broad a fact, how illogical and unscientific was the assumption that whatever persons, property, or business are not taxed directly are exempt from taxation!--and yet the practical exemplification of such a system, in the case of England, was a most efficient instrumentality for grinding the masses of her people down to poverty.

Henry Clay, in a celebrated speech in the United States House of Representatives in 1833, in advocacy of a protective tariff policy, candidly admitted that "in general it may be taken as a rule that the duty upon an article forms a portion of its price." But he subsequently qualified such admission by claiming that it does not follow that any consequent enhancement of its price is a tax on consumers, inasmuch as "directly or indirectly, in one form or another, all consumers of protected articles, enhanced in price," will get an equivalent. But this may be equally affirmed of all necessary and equitable taxation, and does not in any way antagonize the theory that the final incidence of the class of taxes under consideration falls on consumption.

But, notwithstanding these conclusions and the incontrovertible evidence by which they are supported, not a few persons occupying places of great legislative influence, and no small part of the general public, hold to the view that taxes on imports are really in the nature of premiums paid by foreigners for the privilege of selling their goods in the markets of the importing country, and do not fall on its people who consume them. That means that if the foreigner has a yard of cloth, or other commodity, which he sells at home for one dollar, and the United States imposes a tariff of fifty cents on it, he will then sell it for export to America at fifty cents. There is no instance mentioned in history where this has ever been done, but history unfortunately is rarely taken into account by the public in the discussion of these questions. In this connection the following historical incident is interesting and instructive: In 1782 an attempt by the Congress of the Confederation of the several American States to provide a system of revenue to defray the general expenses of the Confederation by duties on imports, which then was not permissible, was blocked by the refusal of the State of Rhode Island to concur in it, the Legislature of that State unanimously rejecting the measure for three reasons--one of which was that it would bear hardest on the few commercial States, particularly Rhode Island, which in virtue of their relations with foreign commerce monopolize imports, and lightest on the agricultural States, that directly imported little or nothing. Congress appointed Alexander Hamilton to draft a reply to Rhode Island, and in his answer he relied mainly on what he regarded as an incontrovertible fact, that duties on imports would not prove a charge on an importing State, but on the final consumers of imports, wherever they may be located.

If the theory and assumption so confidently and generally asserted are to be accepted as correct, that the foreigner pays the protective taxes which a country levies on its imports, and that they do not fall upon or are not paid by its people who consume them, then it must follow that to the extent that a country taxes its imports it lives at the expense of foreign nations; and that, as Great Britain is the country with which the United States has the largest foreign trade, it must pay the largest share of the customs taxes of the United States, or a good share of its annual revenue from all sources. Attention is further asked to the exact practical application of this theory. Thus, the United States in 1895 imported ,438,196 worth of woolen manufactures, on which it assessed and collected duties to the amount of ,698,264, or 56.80 per cent of the value of such imports. Certainly this was a pretty heavy tax on foreign nations in respect to the sales of only one class of these commodities; but it represented but a tithe of what the tariff taxes of the United States, if paid by foreigners, cost them. Thus they had to sell their woolens to the people of the latter country at less than half their value in order to compensate for the 56.8 per cent tax. But a nation engaged in foreign trade can not as a rule have two prices for the product of its industries; or one price for what it sells at home and another and different price for what it sells to foreigners. So the fifty-six per cent deducted from the cost of the woolens sold by foreigners to the United States necessarily had to be deducted not only from so much of their product consumed at home, but also from what they sent for sale to all foreign countries. A further practical application of this theory is worthy of consideration. As Great Britain imposes no protective duties or taxes on its imports, it evidently can not collect anything from other nations by the system of taxation under consideration. On the other hand, the aggregate value of its exports sent to foreign nations during the year 1892 was ,135,000,000, and if these several nations taxed this value at the average rate which the United States imposed in 1894 on all its dutiable imports--namely, fifty per cent--Great Britain obviously had to pay some 7,000,000 in that year for the support of foreign governments; and while this has been the experience of Great Britain for more than forty years of this century, she has as a nation been increasing in wealth during this whole period.

Some of the recent official experiences of the Government of the United States that are pertinent to the topic under consideration are sufficiently curious to make them worthy of an economic record. In a speech introducing a bill into the United States House of Representatives, which subsequently resulted in the tariff act of 1890, the then chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means laid down the following proposition: "The Government ought not to buy abroad what it can buy at home. Nor should it be exempted from the laws it imposes upon its citizens."

This would seem to warrant the characterization of a discovery that the United States had some reliable and important source of revenue independent of taxation, and that, by compelling the application of a part of this income to the payment of taxes to itself, the Government is placed upon an equality with the citizens. A legitimate criticism on this proposition is that the idea that all the income of the Treasury is derived from the people, and that to transfer portions of this income from one official recipient to another can have hardly any other result than an additional cost of bookkeeping, seems never to have entered the mind of the speaker.

FOOTNOTES:

On the Shifting and Incidence of Taxation, by Prof. Edwin R. Seligman, 1892.

The assertion would not be warranted that the masses of New York were wholly unanimous in condemning Tweed, for a portion of them were undoubtedly well content with the situation. He had curried favor with the very poor and ignorant by distributing coal and flour, and making ostentatious presents of money; and these "charities" are remembered to this day in the poorer parts of New York city, and Tweed is esteemed by many as the victim of injustice, and a man who suffered because he was the friend of the people.

Of the net ordinary receipts of the Federal Government in 1893, only about ,000,000 was derived from sources that could not be regarded as taxes, and were mainly receipts from the sales and surveys of public and Indian lands and of other Government property.

In 1897 the merchant tailors of the United States, who ought to know something about the incidence of a custom tax on imported clothing, united in a petition to Congress asking that Americans returning from Europe be permitted to introduce only two suits of foreign-made clothes free of duty; and in support of their request they comment as follows on a ruling of the Treasury in respect to this matter: "Under this ruling it was possible to enter free of duty vast quantities of foreign-made garments which had never been actually in use, and which were so imported solely because there exists a relative difference of at least fifty per cent in values between the cost of made-up garments in the United States and Europe, thus saving to the purchaser of garments abroad one half of their actual value upon arrival within the United States duty free." But if the foreigner who made and sold the goods in question was liable to pay the duty on dutiable clothing, and attended to his duty, there would be no profit to the returning tourist in importing clothing free of duty. It is further evident also that American tailors agree in opinion with Alexander Hamilton that the consumers of imported articles pay the customs taxes.

The records of the commercial relations between the United States and Canada are exceedingly instructive on this matter. They all show that for the products which the Canadian sends to the United States, and on which somebody pays the duty, he receives exactly the same price as for those products which he sends to England, on which nobody pays any duty. This experience is exactly the same as that of the farmers of the Northwestern States of the Federal Union, who usually get the same price for their wheat furnished to a Minnesota flour mill, or for shipment to free-trade England, as to countries like France and Germany, where heavy duties are assessed upon its import. The term "usually" is employed, for producers in the United States and Canada alike do not always get as large a price for the articles they export as for the same articles they sell to their fellow-countrymen. Again, if it be true, as the advocates of extreme protection assert, that the foreign exporter and not the consumer pays the duties on goods sent by him for sale in this country, how does it happen that it is not true concerning the farm produce and live stock exported from Canada? And why should American farmers be exempt from this rule in sending their grain to Europe? Has anybody ever known of England buying American products any cheaper in New York than France or Germany, and is it not also true that the French or German or Italian consumer usually pays at least the amount of the duty levied by his Government more for American products than his English competitor has, whose imports are subjected to no duty? During the period from 1854 to 1866 there was, under the reciprocity treaty, practically free trade between Canada and the United States in live stock, wool, barley, rye, peas, oats, and other farm products, while subsequent to 1866, when the reciprocity treaty had been repealed, duties were imposed on all these articles on their import from Canada into the United States. During the first period Canadian horses, for example, sold under free trade for shipment to the United States at from sixty-five to eighty-five dollars each, while during the years next subsequent to 1866 the value of the Canadian horses imported into the United States was returned at from ninety-two to one hundred and four dollars each; thus showing that the United States tariff did not force the Canadian horse breeders to lower their prices in order to compensate American purchasers for the duties exacted. And as regards the other products mentioned, the official data show that in no case did the imposition of duties under the United States tariff reduce the prices paid by American purchasers to the Canadian farmers for their products. These are very commonplace, very familiar, and very convincing facts which ought to silence all this talk about the foreign exporter or anybody else but the consumer paying the duty; but it is not at all probable that they will.

OUR FLORIDA ALLIGATOR.

An alligator is not an attractive creature. He has not a single virtue that can be named. He is cowardly, treacherous, hideous. He is neither graceful nor even respectable in appearance. He is not even amusing or grotesque in his ungainliness, for as a brute--a brute unqualified--he is always so intensely real, that one shrinks from him with loathing; and a laugh at his expense while in his presence would seem curiously out of place.

His personality, too, is strong. Once catch the steadfast gaze of a free, adult alligator's wicked eyes, with their odd vertical pupils fixed full upon your own, and the significance of the expression "evil eye," and the mysteries of snake-charming, hypnotism, and hoodooism will be readily understood, for his brutish, merciless, unflinching stare is simply blood-chilling.

One would suppose the saurians, or crocodilians, from their general appearance to be huge lizards, but the resemblance is superficial. The whole internal structure differs widely, and, subdivided into gavials, crocodiles, and alligators, they form a family by themselves which is widespread, extending into considerable areas of the temperate regions.

All crocodilians are great, ungainly reptiles, having broad, depressed bodies, short legs, and long, powerful, and wonderfully flexible tails which are compressed--that is, flattened sideways. Upon the upper surface of the tail lie two jagged or saw-toothed crests, which unite near the middle of the appendage, continuing in a single row to the extremity.

All have thick necks and bodies protected by regular transverse rows of long, horny plates or shields, which are elevated in the center into keel-shaped ridges, forming an armor that is quite bullet-proof. The throat, the under side of the neck, and belly are not thus protected, and it is at these places, as well as at the eyes, and also just behind the ears, that the hunter directs his aim.

The principal points of difference between a gavial and a crocodile are these: the former has very long, slender jaws, set with twenty-seven teeth in each side of the upper jaw and with twenty-five teeth in the under, while at the extremity of the snout there are two holes, through which pass upward the lower large front teeth, but all the remaining teeth are free, and slant well outward; whereas a crocodile has a head that is triangular, the snout being the apex; a narrow muzzle, and canine teeth in the lower jaw, which pass freely upward in the notches in the side of the upper jaw.

An alligator has a broad, flat muzzle, and the canine teeth of the lower jaw fit into sockets in the under surface of the upper jaw. It is strictly an American form of the family. Its feet being much less webbed, its habits are also less perfectly aquatic, and, preferring still or stagnant fresh-water courses or swamps, it is rarely found in tide-water streams.

The mouths of all these reptiles, which are large and extend beyond the ears, present a formidable array of sharp, conical teeth of different sizes, set far apart in the crocodile and the alligator, some being enlarged into tusks. All are implanted in separate sockets, and form a single row upon each jaw. When a tooth is shed or broken, a new one promptly comes up beneath the hollow base of the old one; and in this way, all ready for the need, sometimes three or four waiting teeth, packed together like a nest of thimbles, may be seen in the jaw of a dead alligator.

The alligator is at best an awkward brute. Slow and ungainly upon land--although even there his powerful tail can, when necessary, assist the scuffling paws to an astonishing extent if the creature is in haste--he shows to better advantage in the water. There he turns his clumsy body with wonderful dexterity and swiftness, when, at the sight of a swimming muskrat or a wading dog, he instantly changes from what has resembled a drifting log idly floating upon the calm surface of the swamp, into a thing of life--fierce and horrible.

The general food of an alligator is fish, turtles, and frogs, with an occasional heedless dog or fowl. A number of adult alligators will quickly deplenish a small, clear-water lake of its finny inhabitants, which statement to would-be Florida fishermen will readily account for the lack in many localities. There is also a curious belief in the South that the creature has an especial liking for a "darkey steak," and for this reason he is feared by the negroes. That he becomes carnivorous to a dangerous extent when pressed by hunger, there is no doubt, for, the supply of fish exhausted, he must look for larger game.

Alligators drown their prey. Their own nostrils and throats are so arranged that they themselves can sink to the bottom without danger of suffocation, although their mouths, or rather their jaws, may be widely stretched with the body of their victim. Indeed, they can reascend to the surface to breathe without releasing the prize; and, as this power is so closely connected with their method of killing the larger animals, a description of the latter, repulsive though it is, may not be out of place.

The teeth of an alligator are better adapted for crushing and crunching than for biting. Therefore, for him to eat a struggling animal would be difficult. Instinct teaches him that it must first be killed.

To dispose of a dog or a chicken is a small matter, for when the alligator meets it upon the bank one strong, far-reaching sweep of the powerful tail tosses it far out upon the lake. The alligator simply follows, grasps the half-stunned creature in his jaws, and disappears beneath the surface, where he remains until all is quiet. With a larger animal, however, he proceeds differently, for the reason that a yearling, a colt, or a razorback is not so easily handled. First, therefore, a description of an alligator's cave must be given, since it is to this grewsome retreat that the hideous brute takes his booty.

Selecting some spot where the water is deep--usually beneath some overhanging bank--an alligator excavates what is called a "cave." Any one, standing upon the border of a lake or swamp in Florida, may, all unconsciously, be directly over one of these places. He makes it sufficiently large to accommodate one or more of his kind, by dragging out the mud and roots with the strong claws or nails that arm his fore paws or legs. These "caves" serve in winter for hibernation, and at other times for the purpose that will be explained.

Once in the water, then--to return to the unhappy razorback--the alligator does not rely wholly upon his teeth and jaws to hold the desperate animal. He can not yet sink, for the victim is too strong. It must first be drowned, and a furious struggle for the mastery then begins.

One might naturally ask just here whether or not this scene would be the same were a human being the victim. The reply would be--precisely.

The alligator undoubtedly prefers his food in a partly decomposed condition, although it is an undecided point whether this preference arises from a natural taste, or for the reason that food in that state is softer and more easily torn apart. Whichever may be the case, Nature unasked supplies the remedy, and the alligator takes advantage of her assistance, and deposits his victim in his hiding place, confident that at the proper time it will rise to the surface in the condition best adapted to his needs.

Although by nature the alligator is amphibious, he passes the greater part of his time upon land during the breeding season. At such times, also, he migrates from one clear-water lake or swamp to another, should he not find a mate in his own locality, and he may not infrequently be met in his overland journeyings. Alligators are not strictly gregarious, although large numbers are found in the same body of water; while, on the contrary, there will often be but one or two that will haunt a certain tract for a long period.

During this season the bull alligator is very noisy, and his deep bellowing may be heard for a long distance. To state that this noise causes the ground to vibrate may seem an exaggeration, but the fact may easily be proved by visiting a swamp where the reptiles have congregated. The water in the vicinity will plainly show the jarring of the ground.

This bellow is a thundering, rumbling sound; and when it is combined with the startling hisses, blowings, sighs, and deep-breathed snorts which the creature can produce at will, no one will be likely to dispute that his collection of diabolical noises is quite complete.

During the period of incubation the female alligator is a devoted mother. She does not desert her nest from the time that the eggs are laid until they are hatched--lying concealed in the scrub close by--and she is naturally, at this time, most dangerous to approach, although her vigilance does not always save a portion of her unhatched progeny from the numerous enemies that have a fondness for alligator omelet.

The nest is a large, well-rounded heap or mound, composed of sand and rubbish, which she drags and pushes together with her claws. Throughout this mound she deposits her eggs, from forty to seventy and over. These eggs resemble those of a goose, only that they are larger; they have a thick, tough shell, and are of about the same size at both ends. In about sixty days, the heat of the sun, combined with the warmth and moisture generated by the fermentation of the rubbish, completes the process of incubation, and the little ones begin to come forth.

Forcing their way through the sand, they hurry down the sloping sides of the mound, straightway seeking the water by instinct. While these baby 'gators are thus kicking and flinging off their shell overcoats as they emerge from their incubator, perfect little duplicates of their mother--only that they are rather pretty in their clean, glossy, black or dark-brown skins, which have orange-colored stripes that completely ring their miniature tails and bodies--she wanders anxiously about, probably wondering how many of her family will succeed in running the very uncertain gantlet of life.

For, eaten while in the egg stage by birds and animals, and swallowed by open-mouthed, expectant fishes, and by other alligators--often led, if the truth must be told, by the interesting father himself--as soon as they reach the water, the early days of an alligator are full of trouble. That enough escape to prevent extinction, however, goes almost without saying.

Alligators are hunted for their teeth, which find a ready market when made up into pretty ornaments; and of late years extensively for their hides, which make a very handsome leather. For this purpose the older specimens are not valuable, their hides being too gnarled, knotty, and moss-grown to tan well. After ten or fifteen years the hide coarsens. It is always the skin from the under side of the body and head which is used, that from the back being so heavily armored with tough, horny plates and shields as to be practically useless. The flesh for food finds but few admirers. Like the eggs, it is permeated by a strong, musky flavor, too rank to find appreciation from a refined palate; but in some places the steaks from the reptile are eaten by the negroes and pronounced good.

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