SALT TAX: MR. BENTON'S FOURTH SPEECH AGAINST IT.
The amount which this tax brings into the treasury is about 600,000
dollars, and that upon an article costing about 650,000 dollars;
and one-half of the tax received goes to the fishing bounties and
allowances founded upon it. So that what upon the record is a tax
of about 100 per centum, is in the reality a tax of 200 per centum;
and that upon an article of prime necessity and universal use, while
we have articles of luxury and superfluity--wines, silks--either
free of tax, or nominally taxed at some ten or twenty per centum.
The bare statement of the case is revolting and mortifying; but
it is only by looking into the detail of the tax--its amount upon
different varieties of salt--its effect upon the trade and sale of
the article--upon its importation and use--and the consequences
upon the agriculture of the country, for want of adequate supplies
of salt--that the weight of the tax, and the disastrous effects of
its imposition, can be ascertained. To enable the Senate to judge
of these effects and consequences, and to render my remarks more
intelligible, I will read a table of the importation of salt for
the year 1835--the last that has been made up--and which is known
to be a fair index to the annual importations for many years past.
With the number of bushels, and the name of the country from which
the importations come, will be given the value of each parcel at the
place it was obtained, and the original cost per bushel.
Statement of the quantity of Salt imported into the United
States during the year 1835, with the value and cost thereof,
per bushel, at the place from which it was imported:
No. of Cost
Countries. bushels. p. bus.
Sweden and Norway, 8,556 $572 6 3-4
Swedish West Indies, 6,856 708 10 1-4
Danish West Indies, 2,351 386 16
Dutch West Indies, 141,566 12,967 9
England, 2,613,077 412,507 16 1-2
Ireland, 51,954 12,276
Gibraltar, 17,832 1,385 7 3-4
Malta, 1,500 118 7 3-4
British West Indies, 959,786 98,497 10
British Am. Colonies, 138,593 30,374
France on Mediterranean, 32,648 2,155 6 2-3
Spain on Atlantic, 360,140 16,760 4 3-4
Spain on Mediterran., 101,000 5,443 5 1-3
Portugal, 780,000 55,087 7
Cape de Verd Islands, 8,134 751 9 1-10
Italy, 36,742 1,580 4 1-3
Sicily, 5,786 156 2 2-3
Trieste, 7,888 255 3 7-8
Turkey, 9,377 984 10 1-10
Colombia, 17,162 1,227
Brazil, 250 68
Argentine Republic, 402 41
Africa, 5,733 615 10 2-3
--------- -------- ------
5,735,364 655,000
Mr. B. would remark that salt, being brought in ballast, the
greatest quantity came from England, where we had the largest
trade; and that its importation, with a tax upon it, being merely
incidental to trade, this greatest quantity came from the place
where it cost most, and was of far inferior kind. The salt from
England was nearly one half of the whole quantity imported; its cost
was about sixteen cents a bushel; and its quality was so inferior
that neither in the United States, nor in Great Britain, could it
be used for curing provisions, fish, butter, or any thing that
required long keeping, or exposure to southern heats. This was the
salt commonly called Liverpool. It was made by artificial heat,
and never was, and never can be made pure, as the mere agitation
of the boiling prevents the separation of the _bittern_, and other
foreign and poisonous ingredients with which all salt water, and
even mineral salt, is more or less impregnated. The other half of
the imported salt costs far less than the English salt, and is
infinitely superior to it; so far superior that the English salt
will not even serve for a substitute in the important business of
curing fish, and flesh, for long keeping, or southern exposure. This
salt was made by the action of the sun in the latitudes approaching,
and under the tropics. We begin to obtain it in the West Indies, and
in large quantity on Turk's Island; and get it from all the islands
and coasts, under the sun's track, from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Black Sea. The Cape de Verd Islands, the Atlantic and Mediterranean
coasts of Spain and Portugal, the Mediterranean coast of France,
the two coasts of Italy, the islands in the Mediterranean, the
coasts of the Adriatic, the Archipelago, up to the Black Sea, all
produce it and send it to us. The table which has been read shows
that the original cost of this salt--the purest and strongest in
the world--is about nine or ten cents a bushel in the Gulf of
Mexico; five, six and seven cents on the coasts of France, Spain
and Portugal; three and four cents in Italy and the Adriatic; and
less than three cents in Sicily. Yet all this salt bears one uniform
duty; it was all twenty cents a bushel, and is now near ten cents
a bushel; so that while the tax on the English salt is a little
upwards of fifty per cent. on the value, the same tax on all the
other salt is from one hundred to two hundred, and three hundred
and near four hundred per cent. The sun-made salt is chiefly used
in the Great West, in curing provisions; the Liverpool is chiefly
used on the Atlantic coasts; and thus the people in different
sections of the Union pay different degrees of tax upon the same
articles, and that which costs least is taxed most. A tax ranging
to some hundred per cent. is in itself an enormous tax; and thus
the duty collected by the federal government from all the consumers
of the sun-made salt, is in itself excessive; amounting, in many
instances, to double, treble, or even quadruple the original cost of
the article. This is an enormity of taxation which strikes the mind
at the first blush; but, it is only the beginning of the enormity,
the extent of which is only discoverable in tracing its effects
to all their diversified and injurious consequences. In the first
place, it checks and prevents the importation of the salt. Coming as
ballast, and not as an article of commerce on which profit is to be
made, the shipper cannot bring it except he is supplied with money
to pay the duty, or surrenders it into the hands of salt dealers,
on landing, to go his security for the payment of the duty. Thus,
the importation of the article is itself checked; and this check
operates with the greatest force in all cases where the original
price of the salt was least; and, therefore, where it operates most
injuriously to the country. In all such cases the tax operates as a
prohibition to use salt as ballast, and checks its importation from
all the places of its production nearest the sun's track, from the
Gulf of Mexico to Constantinople. In the next place, the imposition
of the tax throws the salt into the hands of an intermediate set
of dealers in the seaports, who either advance the duty, or go
security for it, and who thus become possessed of nearly all the
salt which is imported. A few persons employed in this business
engross the salt, and fix the price for all in the market; and fix
it higher or lower, not according to the cost of the article, but
according to the necessities of the country, and the quantity on
hand, and the season of the year. The prices at which they fix it
are known to all purchasers, and may be seen in all prices-current.
It is generally, in the case of alum salt, four, five, ten, or
fifteen times as much as it cost. It is generally forty, or fifty,
or sixty cents a bushel, and nearly the same price for all sorts,
without any reference to the original cost, whether it cost three
cents, or five cents, or ten cents, or fifteen cents a bushel.
About one uniform price is put on the whole, and the purchaser
has to submit to the imposition. This results from the effect of
the tax, throwing the article, which is nothing but ballast, into
the hands of salt dealers. The importer does not bring more money
than the salt is worth, to pay the duty; he does not come prepared
to pay a heavy duty on his ballast; he has to depend upon raising
the money for paying the duty after he arrives in the United
States; and this throws him into the hands of the salt dealer, and
subjects the country purchaser to all the fair charges attending
this change of hands, and this establishment of an intermediate
dealer, who must have his profits; and also to all the additional
exactions which he may choose to make. This should not be. There
should be no costs, nor charges, nor intermediate profits, on such
an article as salt. It comes as ballast; as ballast it should be
handed out--should be handed from the ship to the steamboat--should
escape port charges, and intermediate profits--and this would be the
case, if the duty was abolished. Thus the charges, costs, profits,
and exactions, in consequence of the tax, are greater than the tax
itself! But this is not all--a further injury, resulting from the
tax, is yet to be inflicted upon the consumer. It is well known
that the measured bushel of alum salt, and all sun-made salt is
alum salt--it is well known that a bushel of this salt weighs about
eighty-four pounds; yet the custom-house bushel goes by weight,
and not by measure, and fifty-six pounds is there the bushel. Thus
the consumer, in consequence of having the salt sent through the
custom-house, is shifted from the measured to the weighed bushel,
and loses twenty-eight pounds by the operation! but this is not
his whole loss; the intermediate salt dealer deducts six pounds
more, and gives fifty pounds for the bushel; and thus this taxed
and custom-housed article, after paying some hundred per cent. to
the government and several hundred per cent. more to the regraters,
is worked into a loss of thirty-four pounds on every bushel! All
these losses and impositions would vanish, if salt was freed from
the necessity of passing the custom-houses; and to do that, it must
be freed _in toto_ from taxation. The slightest duty would operate
nearly the whole mischief, for it would throw the article into
the hands of regraters, and would substitute the weighed for the
measured bushel.
Such are the direct injuries of the salt tax; a tax enormous in
itself, disproportionate in its application to the same article in
different parts of the Union, and bearing hardest upon that kind
which is cheapest, best, and most indispensable. The levy to the
government is enormous, $650,000 per annum upon an article only
worth about $600,000; but what the government receives is a trifle,
compared to what is exacted by the regrater,--what is lost in the
difference between the weighed and the measured bushel,--and the
loss which the farmer sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt
for his stock, and their food. Assuming the government tax to be ten
cents a bushel, the average cost of alum salt to be seven cents,
and the regrater's price to be fifty cents, and it is clear that he
receives upwards of three times as much as the government does; and
that the tribute to those regraters is near two millions of dollars
per annum. Assuming again that thirty-four pounds in the bushel
are lost to the consumer in the substitution of the weighed for
the measured bushel, and here is another loss amounting to nearly
three-eighths of the value of the salt; that is to say, to about
$250,000 on an importation of $650,000 worth.
These detailed views of the operation and effects of the salt duty,
continued Mr. B., place the burdens of that tax in the most odious
and revolting light; but the picture is not yet complete; two other
features are to be introduced into it, each of which, separately,
and still more, both put together, go far to double its enormity,
and to carry the iniquity of such a tax up to the very verge of
criminality and sinfulness. The first of these features is, in
the loss which the farmers sustain for want of adequate supplies
of salt for their stock; and the second, from the fact that the
duty is a one-sided tax, being imposed only on some sections of
the Union, and not at all upon another section of the Union. A few
details will verify these additional features. First, as to the loss
which the country sustains for want of adequate supplies of salt.
Every practical man knows that every description of stock requires
salt--hogs, horses, cattle, sheep; and that all the prepared food
of cattle requires it also--hay, fodder, clover, shucks, &c. In
England it is ascertained, by experience, that sheep require,
each, half a pound a week, which is twenty-eight pounds, or half a
custom-house bushel, per annum; cows require a bushel and a half per
annum; young cattle a bushel; draught horses, and draught cattle, a
bushel; colts, and young cattle, from three pecks to a bushel each,
per annum; and it was computed in England, before the abolition of
the salt-tax there, that the stock of the English farmers, for want
of adequate supplies of salt, was injured to an annual amount far
beyond the product of the tax.
Dr. Young, before a committee of the British House of Commons,
and upon oath, testified to his belief that the use of salt free
of tax would benefit the agricultural interest, in the increased
value of their stock alone, to the annual amount of three millions
sterling, near fifteen millions of dollars. Such was the injury of
the salt-tax in England to the agricultural interest in the single
article of stock. What the injury might be to the agricultural
interest in the United States on the same article, on account of
the stinted use of salt occasioned by the tax, might be vaguely
conceived from general observation and a few established facts.
In the first place, it was known to every body that stock in our
country was stinted for salt; that neither hogs, horses, cattle,
or sheep, received any thing near the quantity found by experience
to be necessary in England; and, as for their food, that little or
no salt was put upon it in the United States; while in England,
ten or fifteen pounds of salt to the ton of hay, clover, &c. was
used in curing it. Taking a single branch of the stock of the
United States, that of sheep, and more decided evidence of the
deplorable deficiency of salt cannot be produced. The sheep in
the United States were computed by the wool-growers, in 1832, in
their petitions to Congress, at twenty millions; this number, at
half a bushel each, would require about ten millions of bushels;
now the whole supply of salt in the United States, both home-made
and imported, barely exceeds ten millions; so that, if the sheep
received an adequate supply, there would not remain a pound for any
other purpose! Of course, the sheep did not receive an adequate
supply, nor perhaps the fourth part of what was necessary; and so
of all other stock. To give an opinion of the total loss to the
agricultural interest in the United States for want of the free use
of this article, would require the minute, comprehensive, sagacious,
and peculiar turn of mind of Dr. Young; but it may be sufficient for
the argument, and for all practical purposes, to assume that our
loss, in proportion to the number of our stock, is greater than that
of the English farmers, and amounts to fifteen or twenty times the
value of the tax itself!