Some of the expenses of a country that must be met are the salaries of all the officers who preserve law and order, the judges, soldiers, sailors, and the police; the pensions of the old soldiers, and of their families; the building of forts and warships, and of the guns to arm them; the making and issuing of money, and the handling and delivering of letters.
Enormous sums of money are necessary to meet these expenses, and they are raised by taxes. A country has no right to spend more than it earns, any more than a man has, but there may come times in the history of a country when extra expenses are necessary, and then the Government taxes the people to meet them.
This is what President McKinley proposes to do now.
The new tax proposed is to be a revenue tariff on all articles of foreign manufacture that are brought into this country.
The extra session of Congress is to consider, and, if possible, pass the Tariff Bill, which it is desired shall go into effect May 1st of this year.
The bill is being introduced by Congressman Nelson Dingley of Maine, who is Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives. It is known as the Dingley Bill, and, it is said, will increase the income of the Government over one hundred millions.
It is said by people who are against the bill, that, if it passes, the cost of living will become much greater. People who are in favor of it say that by preventing goods of foreign manufacture from being brought into the country, our own industries will greatly increase and our trade be much benefited.
There is one section of the bill which will make it very unpopular to many of our citizens.
This paragraph states that tourists and people visiting foreign countries shall only be allowed to bring one hundred dollars' worth of wearing apparel into the country free of duty.
When you think that you can get little more than a whole change of costume, hat, boots, and gloves complete, for a hundred dollars, and that people who are rich enough to travel in foreign countries give three and four times that sum for a single outfit, you can understand just how much that paragraph is going to be liked.
It is true that the law says that people may bring back with them the articles they take away, provided they can prove that they took them out of the country. But think of the worry and annoyance of arguing with the Custom House officers as to where and when each garment in your trunk was bought.