Posted on 09/10/2005 4:46:12 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Lincoln holiday on its way out
By Phil Kabler Staff writer
A bill to combine state holidays for Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays into a single Presidents’ Day holiday cleared its first legislative committee Wednesday, over objections from Senate Republicans who said it besmirches Abraham Lincoln’s role in helping establish West Virginia as a state.
Senate Government Organization Committee members rejected several attempts to retain Lincoln’s birthday as a state holiday.
State Sen. Russ Weeks, R-Raleigh, introduced an amendment to instead eliminate Columbus Day as a paid state holiday. “Columbus didn’t have anything to do with making West Virginia a state,” he said. “If we have to cut one, let’s cut Christopher Columbus.”
Jim Pitrolo, legislative director for Gov. Joe Manchin, said the proposed merger of the two holidays would bring West Virginia in line with federal holidays, and would effectively save $4.6 million a year — the cost of one day’s pay to state workers.
Government Organization Chairman Ed Bowman, D-Hancock, said the overall savings would be even greater, since by law, county and municipal governments must give their employees the same paid holidays as state government.
“To the taxpayers, the savings will be even larger,” he said.
The bill technically trades the February holiday for a new holiday on the Friday after Thanksgiving. For years, though, governors have given state employees that day off with pay by proclamation.
Sen. Sarah Minear, R-Tucker, who also objected to eliminating Lincoln’s birthday as a holiday, argued that it was misleading to suggest that eliminating the holiday will save the state money.
“It’s not going to save the state a dime,” said Minear, who said she isn’t giving up on retaining the Lincoln holiday.
Committee members also rejected an amendment by Sen. Steve Harrison, R-Kanawha, to recognize the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Lincoln Day.”
“I do believe President Lincoln has a special place in the history of West Virginia,” he said.
Sen. Randy White, D-Webster, said he believed that would create confusion.
“It’s confusing to me,” he said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, suggested that the state could recognize Lincoln’s proclamation creating West Virginia as part of the June 20 state holiday observance for the state’s birthday.
Proponents of the measure to eliminate a state holiday contend that the numerous paid holidays - as many as 14 in election years — contribute to inefficiencies in state government.
To contact staff writer Phil Kabler, use e-mail or call 348-1220.
$362,163,941
Well, the consumption figures were what we were all questioning. I don't think anyone challenged the overall import number.
As for the Encarta information, it still doesn't stand the smell test because it still means that southerners, with one fourth the population, were consuming ten times the imports--a per capita consumption 40 times greater. But what's more interesting to me in the article is this: "During 1860 the imports of the South were valued at $331 million; those of the North at $31 million. It was thus obvious that the South was dependent on Europe and on the North for material goods." Does this mean that the total for imports to the south includes goods "exported" from the north? If so, the numbers make a great deal more sense.
You might want to consult the Treasury Department for that information.
""Why couldn't Southerners build their own warehouses to compete with the mighty Yankees?""
Here is your answer:
"New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, was able to control the movement of Southern goods."
Some background may help you understand the undercurrents of the period:
The success of the shipping trade of New England in the early 19th century was a deliberate effort of mercantilism, in which the South at first willingly participated.
The federal government set out deliberately to encourage the commercial trades there, especially ship-building and shipping. The raw material for Northern factories, and the cargoes of Northern merchantmen, would come from the South.
The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. But in addition to the new duties, it reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving only in American craft.
It also required domestic construction for American ship registry. Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.
This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States.
The navigation act of 1817 had made it official, providing "that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power."
The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels. American ship owners' annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.
New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, in part because the British had been feeding cargoes to Boston all through the war to encourage anti-war sentiment in New England.
New York was the more starved, therefore it became the port of choice. The dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. In the decades to come. New Yorkers made the most of the situation.
Four Northern and Mid-Atlantic ports still had the lion's share of the shipping. But Boston and Baltimore mainly served regional markets. Philadelphia's shipping interest had built up trade with the major seaports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially as Pennsylvania's coal regions opened up in the 1820s.
But New York was king. Its merchants had the ready money, it had a superior harbor, it kept freight rates down, and by 1825 some 4,000 coastal trade vessels per year arrived there. In 1828 it was estimated that the clearances from New York to ports on the Delaware Bay alone were 16,508 tons, and to the Chesapeake Bay 51,000 tons.
Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on "packet lines" -- groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the Atlantic.
The reason for success was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.
So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.
Since this "triangle trade" involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition.
By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it.
This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way.
To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.
Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.
The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton.
But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.
As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.
Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.
U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.
This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.
According to a Treasury report, the net revenue of all the ports of South Carolina during 1859 was a mere $234,237; during 1860 it was $309,222.
New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, was able to control the movement of Southern goods.
So basically you've been playing word games with this information for the last week or more. You tell us that Lincoln was obsessed with collecting the tariff from the southern ports because the south imported so much (and that's where you started throwing out the $332 million number), but now it turns out that that number includes "imports" from the north which weren 't subject to tariff anyway. So now we arrive at the conclusion that the per capita consumption of actual tariff-subject imports was probably more in line with that of the north, meaning that of the $53 million in tariffs collected in 1860, probably about $10 million would have been on goods destined for consumption in the south.
No, it's you that's been obfuscating and distorting, attempting to maximize the importance of tariff revenues on goods bound for the south by conflating them with non-tariff-subject goods from the north. And now you're trying to make it sound like we were dumb for taking the word "import" at it's accepted meaning as goods originating in a foreign country.
I'm going to go "import" some lunch from the place across the street.
"You also cited the 1860 Treasury report from the State of the Union address as the source for the numbers,"
I did, and it gave you the import number to begin. I told you that it would take some work.
"giving a general link and telling us"
The link was specific, and I told Grand Old the topic to search for.
"Well, we did find it, only to discover that those numbers were nowhere in that document."
The import/export and tariff data were and are all there.
"Nor could they be extrapolated through any amount of interpretation and study, as you suggest."
It can and does with the right study.
"No, the closest that document comes is in giving the total collected tariffs for each quarter of the preceding year. So why did you tell us all that was the place we could find the numbers?"
Tell us all? Who are you representing?
I told you the source of the data on import value. I told you that the value of import consumption could be determined. I have even explained it to you in a post above.
You still don't get the point do you?
"First off, the original warehousing act was passed in 1846. The 1854 act only changed the place of storing imports for up to three years before the tariff was paid from government customs houses to private bonded warehouses. Second, the bill was heartily approved of by the southern agricultural interests, as reported by DeBow:"
That must mean something to you.
Prostitutes and politicians make that much? ;o)
New York Mayor Fernando Wood once wrote,
When Disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master – to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self—government, and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, as a Free City, may shed the only light and hope of a future reconstruction of our once blessed Confederacy.He, and many other northerners understood that the residual states of the union would lose millions and millions of dollars that went to Atlantic shipping and manufacturing interests, that Northern 'imports' would now face tariffs (or possibly export duties if the Confederacy voted to enact them). Without a commercial fleet and laws mandating yankee ships/crews to transport Southern exports, the British and other shippers were poised to take the shipping business out of Northern hands. Southern exporters would see a rise in net profits with the reduction in tariffs, and the average Southerner's standard of living would rise accordingly.
Conversely, millions of dollars of 'protection' money would be lost to Northern interests, their costs would rise, and many industries would simply fold in the ensuring meltdown. The Panic of 1857 would be a picnic in comparison.
The point I get is that you're trying to maximize the importance of tariff income on foreign goods bound for the south by conflating them with non-tariff-subject goods from the north. Then, when you're called on it, you attempt to cover a vague source (Encarta????) by sending anyone looking to verify your numbers on a series of wild goose chases into historical documents. And when someone does run down those documents and finds that they don't say what you said they would, you play the o-so-superior "Well, you're just not smart enough to understand" card.
That's the point I get. Now if you've actually got a source for this stuff, post it. Post the actual documents like I did with the 1860 Treasury report. Otherwise, your credibility with these "facts" is shot.
free dixie,sw
otoh, don't confuse the members of the DAMNyankee coven with FACTS. they can't handle the TRUTH.
soon, they'll be accusing you of lying, just because they can't.
free dixie,sw
UNtruthfulness, SPIN,artful evasions & DIShonesty is his JOB as Minister of DAMNyankee Propaganda.
we/you shouldn't knock him for doing his JOB.
free dixie,sw
as i've said @ zillion times, "DIShonest Abe" was motivated ONLY by $$$$$$$$$$$$ and POWER. nothing more, nothing less.
free dixie,sw
In 1789 tariff legislation gave American built and owned vessels a preferred tariff. This presumably included vessels built and/or owned in the South. The "triangle trade" you described provided the South with a natural advantage, as the cotton bound for England was closer to southern ports than northern ones. Southern entrepreneurs could have loaded ships with cotton from Savannah to Liverpool, returned to New York with manufactured goods and wares, and completed their "triangle" with northern domestic goods, some imports, and passengers.
Pea, you really should stop thinking about the Northern United States as being a foreign country. It would greatly help you overcome your historical myopia.
Well, they can't accuse me of lying since I 'borrowed some of that". Anyway, thanks.
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