USA > Connecticut > Representative men of Connecticut, 1861-1894 > Part 48
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For a congressman spending his first winter at the national capital, Mr. Sperry had his full share of official social life. His re-nomination was a foregone conclusion, and the Demo- cratic congressional convention simply carried out the wislies of his constituents in making him a candidate for a second term. His speech in accepting the nomination showed a thoughtful consideration for the interests of his district. No Democrat had ever been elected to this district in a presidential year, and it was also a peculiar condition of affairs that no congressman ever succeeded himself. First a Democrat, then a Republican, and then another Democrat, and then another Republican, consequently all the precedents of the past pointed to a Republican victory. With the chances apparently against him, and the district alinost a tie between Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Sperry won by the hand- some majority of 540. Party lines were closely drawn in the rest of the district, but his personal following in Hartford carried the day. As his first term was in the nature of an official education, he is doing better in the present Congress than in the previous one. He has been made chairman of the sub-committee on banking and currency, charged with the investigation of the question of increasing the national bank circulation.
The Baltimore Sun of Aug. 2, 1893, contained the following bit of news: "Representa- tive Lewis Sperry inade to-day one of the best speeches for the repeal of the Sherman act which has been heard in the House since it mnet in extraordinary session." Mr. R. E. Preston, the acting director of the Mint, said that two most valuable speeches delivered in Congress on the silver repeal bill were those of Mr. Sperry of Connecticut and Mr. Catchings of Mississippi. Mr. Preston has supplied himself with a number of copies of each, and uses them freely in answering questions received by him from all over the country. Congress- man Helborn of California, a Republican and a free silver inan, whose views are diametrically opposed to those of Mr. Sperry, said : "I regard Mr. Sperry's speech as the ablest pre- sentation of the arguments used on the other side. The statistical information gathered by the Connecticut congressman is wonderful in its completeness, and I have sent copies of the speech to every banker, and every other man directly interested in financial matters in my district, because there is no other manner in which I can supply them with the information they should have in such complete and concise forin."
At an annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce in New Haven, Nov. 21, 1893, he said: "I fear that the ways and means committee will report a bill that I shall refuse to vote for." This speech was reported throughout the country, and he was looked upon as the leader of the party opposition to the Wilson bill. This position he maintained and was one of the seventeen Democrats who voted against the bill. A storm of censure raged through the newspapers, and he was vehemently called upon to resign. The New York World said editorially : "No such man has a right at this time to call himself a Democrat." The St. Louis Republican wrote: "Of all the men who deserted their party to-day only one will be missed and that is Sperry of Connecticut."
The New York Sun (Dem. ) and the Republican papers approved his course. His reasons for his opposition were fully given in his speech delivered in the House, Jan. 17, 1894, and
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can be summed up in the words: "It is not a revenue measure," and in his plea that the high tax on Sumatra tobacco be retained he stood firmly on the statement he made in his speech accepting his re-nomination for Congress. He then said: "The policy of the Demo- cratic party has always been to tax the luxuries, the unnecessaries of life, so to speak, as dis- tingnished from the necessaries. Silks, and imported liquors and wines, and tobacco have always been considered legitimate objects for heavy taxation." This plain statement of his political or tariff beliefs seems to have been forgotten by inost of the newspapers, when they accused him of caring more for his own district, where tobacco was raised, than for the welfare of the country at large.
But a great deal of inisrepresentation could be borne with equanimity when the veteran leader of the Democratic party in Connecticut, the Hartford Times, thus justly and unequivocally defended the young statesman, in its editorial columns :
Washington despatches speak of special efforts made to induce the Hon. Lewis Sperry to agree to forward the Wilson bill by voting to-day to make a quorum. Both Speaker Crisp and Mr. Wilson are said to have urged him to this, not necessarily in order to secure a quorum, but to be in line with the Democratic side and help make a solid front in favor of the bill. But Mr. Sperry is said to have stood his ground firmly, and to have told these gentlemen that the bill as it now stands with the large reduction on Sumatra leaf tobacco, is against the interests of his district, against the sentiment of a majority of the voters of the district, and against his own view of what is right, and that unless it is modified he will vote against it.
Mr. Sperry also holds,-and in this position he has others who will stand with him- that the proposed bill is not an adequate revenue bill. This we judge is to be the main point in his opposition to a bill framned especially and wholly "for revenue," but which will, it is admitted, involve a vast loss in revenue to start with.
He is not a "Cuckoo" congressman; he does his own thinking. And he will have the approval of the majority of the voters of the First District of Connecticut. It will strengthen instead of harmning him to stand firmly by his own principles. Mr. Sperry is 110 mere echo of anybody's orders. He has the brain and the nerve to see his way clear, and to stand firmly by his own convictions. Such a man, in either party in Congress, wins respect. He has more influence than any merely "Me, too," congressman would have, in the House as well as at home. At the time of this writing the fate of the Wilson bill is undecided. Mr. Sperry has already announced that he will not stand for a re-nomination to Congress, but that he will return to Hartford and devote himself to the practice of his profession, inasmuch as his duty to his family is now more pressing than his public duties. What his future has in store therefore, cannot be even guessed at.
Nov. 7, 1878, he married Elizabeth Ellsworth, only daughter of Dr. William Wood of East Windsor Hill. Their children are, Mary Elizabeth, born Jan. 1, 1880, and Ellsworth, born June 30, 1881.
W ELLS, DAVID AMES, has long been the representative economist of the United States, and a thinker whose vast information, fearlessness, and thoroughly judicial mind, have won him fame among economists the world over, says an excellent article in the Popular Science Monthly. He has proved his ability and sagacity in the successful management of large business interests. While most economic teachers have been confined to class-room and text-book, it has been his exceptional good fortune to practically apply his science to the reform of fiscal errors. Since vacating his high office under the federal government, he has exerted wide and growing influence upon the legislators of the nation.
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Mr. Wells was born in Springfield, Mass., June 17, 1828, and is a lineal descendant on the father's side of Thomas Welles, governor of tlic Colony of Connecticut, 1655-1658, and on the mother's side of David Amics, who, under Washington, built and established the National Armory at Springfield. He and his brother Oliver were the founders and progenitors of the well-known manufacturing and railroad-building family of Massachusetts. After graduating at Williams College in 1847, and writing and publishing his first book, entitled "Sketchies of Williams College," David Ames Wells was for a time (1848) an assistant editor with thic late Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican. While thus employed, Mr. Wells suggested the idea, and was associated in the invention, of folding 11cwspapers and books by machinery in connection with power printing-presses; and the first inachine ever constructed and successfully operated was built at his expense and worked under his direction in the office of the Republican. Having, however, a taste for scientific pursuits, and being now in the possession of some means through the sale of his interest in the above invention, he quitted the pursuit of journalism, and, in 1849, entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, becoming also at the same time a special pupil of Professor Agassiz, who had then recently arrived in this country. Graduating in the first class that completed a course of study in the Scientific School in 1851-52, he immediately received the appointment of assistant professor in this institution and also that of lecturer on physics and chemistry in Groton Academy, Massachusetts. During his resi- dence in Cambridge, Mr. Wells, in association with George Bliss (late United States district attorney for New York), commenced, in 1849, the publication of an annual report 011 the progress of science and the useful arts, which, under the name of the "Annual of Scientific Discovery," was continued for many years.
Between 1857 and 1863, Mr. Wells was engaged in the preparation of a series of scientific school-books, which at one time attained a very extensive circulation, two of the series having been translated by missionaries into the Chinese language, while a third - an elementary treatise on chemistry - was adopted as a text-book at West Point.
Mr. Wells, however, first came prominently into public life in 1864, while residing in Troy, New York, through the publication in that year of an essay on the resources and debt-paying ability of the United States, bearing the title of "Our Burden and Strength." This essay was first read at a literary and social club in Troy, then published privately, then reprinted and circulated by the Loyal Publication Society of New York, and, receiving at the same time the approval of the federal government, it became one of the most noted publications of the war period. It was reprinted in England and translated into French and German, and had a circulation which is believed to have been in excess of two hundred thousand copies. Coming at a period when the nation was beginning to be alarined at the prospective magnitude of the public debt, and apprehensive of an impending crushing burden of taxation, its publication and circulation proved a most effective agency for restoring public confidence and maintaining the credit of the federal government.
The perusal of this pamphlet inade a great impression upon President Lincoln, and in January, 1865, he sent for Mr. Wells to come to Washington and confer with him and Mr. Fessenden, then secretary of the treasury, on the best methods of dealing, after the termination of the war, then evidently at hand, with the enormous debt and burden of tax- ation that the war had entailed upon the nation. The result of this conference was the passage by Congress of a bill, in March, 1865, creating a commission of three persons for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting "on the subject of raising by taxation such revenue as may be necessary in order to supply the wants of the government, having regard to and including the sources from which such revenue should be drawn, and the best
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and most effectual inode of raising the same." Of this commission, Mr. Wells was appointed chairman by the then secretary of the treasury, Hon. Hugh McCulloch; and its report, in 1866, which was mainly the work of Mr. Wells, presented for the first time a full and exact statement of the curious and complex system of internal and customs revenue which had grown up during the war, when the necessities for raising immense sums of money with the utmost promptness and regularity were so great as to transcend all ordinary considera- tions, and justify the maxim, "Whenever you find an article, a product, a trade, a profession, or a source of income, tax it." How wonderfully successful this system of taxation proved, is shown by the circumstance, that for the last year of its full operation- 1865-66 - it yielded from internal revenue sources alone $310,000,000, and front internal revenue, customs, and other sources, the aggregate suin of $559,000,000, drawn from a tax-paying population not much in excess of twenty-two millions. In addition to this feature of the Revenue Commission Report in 1866, it also contained elaborate reports on sugars, tea, coffee, cotton, spices," proprietary articles- patent medicines and the like - petroleum, fermented liquors, and distilled spirits as sources of revenue, with estimates as to the amount of revenue which the treasury might expect if taxation on them, at various rates, was to be continued; the whole being really the first practical attempt in the United States to gather and 11se national statistics for great national purposes.
On the termination of the Revenue Commission in January, 1866, by limitation of service, Congress was so well satisfied with the work that Mr. Wells had performed, that he was immediately appointed, for a terin of four years, to an office created for him, under the title of "Special Commissioner of the Revenue," the duties of which were thus defined by the enacting statute : "He shall from time to time report, through the secretary of the treasury, to Congress, either in the form of bill, or otherwise, such modifications of the rates of taxation, or of the methods of collecting the revenues, and such other facts per- taining to the trade, industry, commerce, or taxation of the country as he may find by actual observation of the operation of the law to be conducive to the public interest."
In this office, and invested with large powers, Mr. Wells entered with ardor upon the work of reconstructing and repealing the complex system of internal taxation, which had become terribly oppressive, and the longer continuance of which had become unnecessary ; and, under his initiation and supervision were originated nearly all the reformns of importance in our national revenue system-internal and customs- that were adopted by Congress between the close of the war in 1865 and the year 1870, namely : the re-drafting of the whole system of internal revenue laws, the reduction and final abolition of the cotton-tax, and the taxes on manufactures and crude petroleum ; the creation of supervisory districts and the appointment of supervisors; the origination and the use of stamps for the collection of taxes on tobacco, fermented liquors and distilled spirits, and the creation of the Bureau of Statistics. To the head of this bureau Mr. Wells called, from the office of the Spring- field Republican, its assistant editor, Gen. F. A. Walker; and under his management the bureau was first efficiently organized.
Up to the year 1867, Mr. Wells, who was born and reared a member of one of the largest manufacturing and Whig families of New England, was an extreme advocate and believer in the economic theory of protection. In1 1867, Congress having instructed the secretary of the treasury to present at its next session a draft of a new tariff looking to reductions of war-rates, and the business of preparing the same having been turned over to the office of the special commissioner, Mr. Wells, with a view of qualifying himself for the work, visited Europe under a government commission, and investigated, under alinost unprecedented advantages, nearly every form of industry, competitive with the United States, in Great Britain and on the Continent. These personal experiences in respect to
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European industry, coupled with a subsequent study of our customs system, and a complete re-drafting of our whole tariff rates under instructions from Congress through the secretary of the treasury, gradually, and greatly against all his preconceived ideas, led Mr. Wells to a complete abandonment of his original position as a strong protectionist, and to the adoption of the belief that free trade, made subordinate to revenue and progressively but tentatively entered upon, was for tlic best interest of the whole country.
The announcement of these views, and especially the publication of his report for 1869, created great opposition among the protectionists, and Horace Greeley publicly charged that Mr. Wells had been corrupted through British gold distributed through the agency of Mr. A. T. Stewart. Mr. Stewart, exceedingly angry at being brouglit into this inatter, desired that Mr. Wells should at once institute proceedings for libel, and several leading members of the New York bar volunteered to take charge of the case. But Mr. Wells felt that it was not necessary to vindicate his public or private character by any such action, and refused to become a party to it. The story, nevertheless, found extensive credence, and is undoubtedly believed by many persons at the present time who are unable otherwise to account for such a change in the economic opinions of the commissioner so shortly after liis return from Europe. A draft for a very complete revision of the tariff, prepared by Mr. Wells in accordance with instructions, together with a full and elaborate report on the existing revenue resources and condition of the country, submitted to Congress through Secretary McCulloch, and with his hearty indorsement, in December, 1867, nevertheless found great favor, and, embodied in a bill, with slight modifications, came very near being successful.
When the office of special commissioner expired by limitation in 1870, President Grant, giving the personal dislike of the secretary of the treasury at that time-Mr. Boutwell - to the commissioner as a reason, refused to reappoint Mr. Wells in case of a renewal of his office. On his retirement in July, 1870, a large number of members of both houses of Congress, without distinction of party, united in a letter headed by Messrs. Sumner, Trum- bull, Carpenter, Henry Wilson, Buckingham, Anthony, Thurman, Schurz, Bayard, Edmunds, Fenton, and others, on the part of the Senate, and Messrs. Blaine, Garfield, Logan, Allison, Cox, Hooper, B. F. Butler, Kerr, Dawes, Eugene Hale, Banks, Poland, Oakes Ames, Niblack, Randall, Brooks, Beck, J. A. Griswold, James Brooks, A. A. Sargent, J. F. Wilson, F. Wood, Noah Davis, D. W. Voorhees, W. H. Barnum and others, on the part of the House-of which the following is an extract : "The undersigned, members of the Forty-first Congress, who have been cognizant of your labors as special commissioner of the revenue, take the occasion of your retirement from public duties to express to you their appreciation of the work you have accomplished, and the great ability with which you have discharged the duties of your office. How much soever they may perhaps have differed with you touching the matter of your conclusions upon particular points, they desire nevertheless to bear testimony to the great value of your work, and to the honesty and the faithful and untiring zeal which have characterized your whole public career." At the same time a committee of citizens of differ- ent states, members of both parties, presented to Mr. Wells several testimonials of great value; one of which, a superb bronze statuette, some thirty inches high, representing " Labor," in the form of a fully developed workinan, leaning upon his sledge-hammer, bears upon a silver plate the following inscription :
PRESENTED TO HON. DAVID A. WELLS, ON HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE OFFICE OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF THE REVENUE, BY CITIZENS OF NEW YORK AND NEW ENGLAND, AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR HIS UNSULLIED INTEGRITY AND HIGH PERSONAL CHARACTER; AND AS A SLIGHT RECOGNITION OF HIS INESTIMABLE SERVICE TO HIS COUNTRYMEN.
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Commenting on the discontinuance of the office of special commissioner of revenue, the North American Review used at the time the following language : "The system of taxation, by which the government has been in receipt of its enormous income, was estab- lished during the war; and the man who deserves the mnost credit for its reform is Mr. David A. Wells, whom General Grant and Secretary Boutwell united in bowing coldly out of public service. It was he who proved the capacity of the country to stand an enormous taxation, and pointed out the most convenient and legitimate sources of revenue; and the most continuous changes and improvements in our revenue system, including even those under the administration that dismissed him, were but the following out of the suggestions and the line of argument which he had presented while in the Treasury Department. To him and to Congress, and to a generous and patriotic people does the country owe the proud exhibition of debt and tax reduction."
As soon as it was known that Mr. Wells was to retire from his office at Washington, the appointment as chairman of a state commission for investigating the subject and the laws relating to local taxation was tendered him by the governor (Hon. John D. Hoffman) of the state of New York and accepted ; and in this new position Mr. Wells prepared and submitted to the legislature two reports (in 1872 and 1873,) and a draft of a code of laws. Both of these reports were subsequently reprinted in the United States and in Europe; and one of the first acts of the French minister of finance (M. Wolowski), after the conclu- sion of the Franco-German War, was to order the translation and official publication of Mr. Wells's report as special commissioner of revenue for 1869. This compliment was further supplemented in the spring of 1874, by the election of Mr. Wells, by the French Academy, to fill the chair made vacant by the death of John Stuart Mill, and. also in the same year by the voting to him of the degree of D. C. L. by the University of Oxford, England. The honorary degree of LL.D. had been previously given to him by the col- lege of his graduation (Williams), and that of M.D. by the Berkshire Medical College in I863. In 1873, on invitation of the Cobden Club, Mr. Wells visited England and deliv- ered the address at the annual meeting and dinner of the club. In 1872, he was invited to lecture on economic subjects at Yale College. In 1875, he was elected president of the Democratic State Convention of Connecticut; and he has served twice as delegate at large from Connecticut to presidential nominating conventions, in 1872 and in 1880. In 1876, Mr. Wells, after refusing to accept a regular nomination for Congress in the third district of Connecticut, was put upon the course by resolution of the Democratic convention, with the result, in the face of conditions otherwise wholly favorable to the Republicans, of reducing a hitherto impregnable Republican majority from 1, 176 to 40.
In 1870, Mr. Wells was elected a member of the Cobden Club; in 1871, honorary member of the Royal Statistical Society of England; in 1875, president of the American Social Science Association, succeeding Dr. Woolsey of New Haven; in 1877, a foreign associate member of the Regia Academie dei Lincei of Italy; in 1880, president of the New London County (Conn.) Historical Society ; and in 1881, president of the American Free-Trade League. In 1878, Mr. Wells was appointed by the President a member and subsequently elected president of the National Board of Visitors to the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1876, he was appointed by the United States court one of three trustees and receivers of the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, and in the course of the following fourteen months rescued the corporation from bankruptcy, and expended a considerable sum for improvements and repairs, without incurring an additional dollar of indebtedness. In 1877, he was appointed by the State Board of Canal Commissioners chairman of a commis- sion to consider the subject of tolls on the New York canals, and in the next year made an exhaustive and acceptable report.
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In 1879, in connection with the late E. D. Morgan of New York and J. Lowber Welsh of Philadelphia, and as trustees of the bond-holders, he bought under foreclosure and sale, and reorganized thic New York & Eric Railroad, and served for some time as a member of the finance committee of the board of direction of thic new company. I11 1879, lic was elected by the associated railways of thic United States, in connection with Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts and John M. Wright of Philadelphia, a member of a board of arbitration, to which the associated railroads agreed to refer all their disputes and all arrange- inents for pooling or apportioning their respective competitive earnings. For two years the efforts 'of this board were successful and acceptable; but, at the commencement of the third year, from causes to which the board was not a party, arbitration was refused by certain roads, and the arrangement was first suspended, and finally terminated. Pending final action as to the continuance of the board, Messrs. Wells and Adams voluntarily relinquished the $11111 of ten thousand dollars each, that was due them, on the ground that no service having been required of them or given, they were not honorably entitled to compensation for doing nothing.
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