income or principal of the same did not appear unreasonable, especially in the case where no exemption from taxation was stipulated in the contract for these issues. But neither the author of the report nor its indorsers could have anticipated that within little more than five years after it was submitted to Congress, the Federal Government could have borrowed $185,000,000 at four and a half per cent interest; and that twenty-five years afterward would be able to renew a debt of $25,364,500 at two per cent per annum, or at a rate fifty per cent less than loans on the best corporate or private securities would have at the same time commanded.
The method of prosecuting the work contemplated by Congress of the Commission was at the outset a matter of no little embarrassment. There was practically no material or basis to work on, except the bare statutes authorizing war taxes, and no official collection of these was published by the Government until two years after the commencement of the war. There was no bureau of statistics in the Treasury, and in this department of the Government the officials to whom was assigned the duty of collecting and publishing reliable data relative to the trade and commerce of the country were untrained. No full and reliable statistics concerning any branch of trade or industry in the United States, with possibly a very few exceptions, were then, or ever had been, available. The Treasury received returns of the aggregate of revenue collected and the sources whence it was derived; but these returns were rarely, if ever, accompanied by any suggestions, derived from administrative experience, of any value. The commercial returns from the customs were hardly worth the paper on which they were written. Thus, for example, when the duty on the importation of coffee came up for consideration as a source of revenue, the value of the coffee imported during the fiscal year 1864–'65 was officially returned at ten and a half cents per pound, while its average invoice price, according to the trade of New York for the same period, was not less than thirteen cents. Again, according to the Treasury statement, the aggregate imports of coffee for the same year, were 104,316,581 pounds. Of this amount 82,353,000 pounds, which were retained for domestic consumption, had a returned value of only six and four tenths cents per pound, while the value of 21,962,000 pounds of the same imports which were exported during the same year, had the extraordinary value of nearly twenty-five cents per pound. For the year 1863 the Treasury reported an aggregate import of spirits distilled from grain of 1,064,576 gallons, but of this quantity only 45,393 gallons were entered at the ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and San Francisco, leaving an inferential import of 1,019,183 gallons at other ports of the loyal States that practically had no foreign commerce.
