The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II, Part 149

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co
Number of Pages: 1345

USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II > Part 149

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In two respects, Mr. Shearman has succeeded in making a marked change in the discussion of these questions. He was the first apeaker who analyzed the effects of the tariff, so as to ahow the relative burdens of the rich and the poor under it. The broad general statement, that tariffs pressed more severely upon the poor than upon the rich, had of course been made a thousand times; but the exact manner and proportion had naver, we believe, been stated prior to Mr. Shearman's address before the Revenue Reform Club in 1882, when he put it in aobatance as follows :

" All indirect taxes impose a burden which is heavy or light, exactly as peraonal or family expenses are heavy or light. The man whoas income is $100,000 a year, and spends only $10,000, will not pay one penny more under indirect taxation than the man whoaaincome ia $10,000, but who spends it all. All thetaxa- tion imposed for the Federal Government is indirect, and a large part of local taxation is really indirect, although usually sup- posed not to be. The annual taxation of this country is $700,000,000 ; while the extra cost of goods caused by the pro- tective featurea of the tariff and by the necessary profits paid to dealers on the amount advanced by them, for duties or high pricea caused by duties, must amount to fully $800,000,000 mora. The entire income of our people is about $7, 500,000, 000, making the annual burden upon incomes, as a consequence of taxation, about 20 per cent.

But taxation cannot be paid out of anything except savings ; and the aavings of the great maas of men whose incomes are small, ara necessarily much smaller, even in proportion to their in- comea, than the possible savings of the wealthiest classes. Thua a man with an income of $100,000 per annum can live in luxury and yet save nine-tenths of his income. But the man who earna only $300 per annum finds it almost impossible, even apart from taxation, to save as much as one-fifth of his income. A tax of 20 per cent. on the expenditures of the former would therefore amount to only two per cent. of his savings, while a lika tax on the expenditures of the latter would exhaust 80 per cent of his savings.

Estimating the number of persons engaged in daily business at 15,000,000, and the annual income of 14,000,000 as less than $400 (which the census shows it to be), and assuming that all classes would save the money now paid by them in taxes, if nona were levied, the figures show that the annual savings of our people would be over $2,200,000,000, and that more than $1,400,000,000 of this amount would be saved by the vast mass

of parsons whose incomes are less than $400 a year. But our system of indirect taxation bears so heavily upon the poor, that the annual savings of the 14,000,000 persons with small in- comas ara reduced to $280,000,000, while the annual savings of the 1,000,000 persons receiving larger incomes are reduced to $485,000,000. Thus, while under a system of equal taxation the small farmers and mechanics would secure a constantly increas- ing share of the national wealth, the effect of indirect taxation is to reverse this result, and to concentrate the wealth of the country, at an ever-increasing rate, in the hands of a small minority of the people."

He was also among the first who succeeded in impressing the public mind with a belief that protection did not increase the nominal amount of wages; the general opinion, even among free-traders, having been that wages were increased by protec- tion in nominal amount, although diminished in purchasing power. He insisted that wages must necessarily advance under free trade, and that their natural tendency to rise is retarded by all protective tariffs. His reasoning appears in this extract from his address to the Congressional Committee, in February, 1884:

"Assuming that the average rate of manufacturers' profit in 1880 was 10 per cent. on the amount expended, the census shows the following to be a fair statement of the different elements of the average cost of each $100 worth of manufactures in 1880:

COST UNDER PROTECTION.

Materials

$63 21

Wages.

17 65

Renta, repairs, insurance, interest, &c 10 00

Profit, 10 per cent. on outlay .. 9 14

$100 00

A reduction of 15 per cent. in the price of finished articles would increase the demand at home by at least 25 per cent., as the goods would come within the reach of a much larger pro- portion of the community-by a well-known law of trade, that there are at least four persons who can afford to buy an article at one dollar to one who can buy it at two dollars.

Now, the rate of wages depends upon the demand for work- men; and this depends upon the amount of work to be done, and not upon the profit made. If more goods are sold, wages must rise. If fewer goods are sold, even at a larger profit, wages must fall. Therefore, an increase of 25 per cent. in the amount of goods manufactured, even though the goods are sold at cheaper rates, must compel the employment of 25 per cent. more workmen, and thus raise wages 25 per cent.

Under absolute free trade, therefore, there would be a decline of 25 per cent. in the cost of materials and of 15 per cent. in the collective cost of rent, repairs, insurance, interest, &c., an increase of over 25 per cent. in the amount of goods sold, and a consequent increase of 25 per cent. in wages, without any reduction in the manufacturers' rate of profits. The result would be as follows:

COST UNDER FREE TRADE.

Materials.

$47 41

Wages

22 06

Rent, repairs, &c ..

8 50

Profit (10 per cent.). 7 80

Total. $85 77

The correctness of this theory is proved by the history of these United States. A high tariff was imposed in 1816, a higher one in 1824, and a still higher one in 1828. No speech in Congress has been found by us, and no protectionist book or pamphlet, dating prior to 1842, in which it was even claimed that wages advanced under any of these tariffs. On the con- trary, a tract issued by the Iron and Steel Association states that in 1829 the wages of farm laborers were $7 to $10 a month with board, and those of mechanics 50 cents to $1 a day without board. The same tract quotes the late Vice-President Wilson to prove that, in 1832 and 1833, under the highest tariff ever known in this country, he worked from daylight until dark, at the hardest kind of work, for $6 a month; that the highest wages paid. even in harvest time, were 50 to 66 cents a day, and that the best wages paid to bright women for housework and weaving were 50 to 66 cents a week.

On October 2, 1819, a protectionist meeting in Philadelphia issued a report upon manufactures and wages, in which the average wages paid to mechanics were given at one dollar a day. Yet, after nine years of the highest protection, mechanics' wages were, as already shown, less than one dollar a day.

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HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

In 1842, a strongly protectionist committee of Congress examined witnesses on this subject; and their report showed that in the iron manufacture there had been ne advance in wages since 1828; and the average rate for unskilled labor generally was stated at 75 cents a day. In 1845, an opportunity was given to manufacturers all over the country to report upon wages under 'the beneficent tariff of '42.' Many reports were sent into the Treasury Department. Not one of thein claimed to have increased the rate of wages under that tariff; while several admitted that they had cut down wages. The usual rate of wages for labor in iron furnaces and foundries was stated at 87 cents; and no ordinary workman, even in that exhausting business, was reported at over $1 a day.

The tariff of 1846 was passed, reducing duties about one-third. Wages began to rise everywhere, and in all departments of business. Farming wages, which had fallen to between $5 and $10 a month, under the tariff of 1842, rose to $12 and $16. Manu- facturing wages advanced even before the census of 1850; and the advance from 1850 te 1860 is a matter of record, amounting to 17 per cent. The average increase in the iron trade was even greater than this.

Thus we find that, down to 1860, the only advances in wages occurred under the reduction of the tariff, and that under high tariffs wages had remained stationary or declined.

During the late war, however, wages were largely advanced in nominal value; and this is the period to which protectionists now triumphantly refer. But, stated in gold, the average wages were, in 1850, $247; in 1860, $289; in 1870, $302; in 1880, $346. In purchasing power, the wages of 1870 were worth only $242, com- pared with $289 in 1860. But let us come down to the present time. It is universally admitted that wages have been cut down 20 to 30 per cent. since 1880. Take the average reduction at 25 per cent. as a medium rate, and wages are only $259, being less to-day than twenty years ago, under the lowest tariff known since 1812. Can any further demonstration be needed that every step towards protection depresses wages, while every step towards free trade raises them ?"

We do not undertake to decide whether the reasoning upon either of these points is correct; our purpose being simply to shew Mr. Shearman's views and the effect produced by his ex- pression of them. It is certain that the analysis which he made of the relative effect of the tariff upon the savings of the few wealthy men and the vast mass of persons with small incomes, has taken hold of the public mind, and that the idea is now found in many Congressional speeches and in most of the popular arguments upon this question. So the whole tone of the advocates of free trade, upon the wages question, has changed. They have assumed an aggressive position on this point, and their argument is very different now from what it was only four or five years ago-no longer admitting that wages are in any sense raised by protection, but insisting that they are cut down by it.

Mr. Shearman's interest in these and similar questions has no element of personal ambition in it. He knows very well that his views are not in harmony with the aims of any existing political party; he does not seek to make them so; and he takes pains to emphasize the points of difference between his ideas and those of professional politicians. He knows how little can be accomplished by any one man in actual legislation, and pre_ fers to influence it from without, rather than to conceal the least principle for the sake of trying to shape it from within.

The old-fashioned house on Columbia Heights in which Mr. Shearman lives, is one of peculiar historic interest to a lawyer, having been the residence of Judge Radcliff until his death, nearly forty years ago. It was the injury done to these premises by the opening of Furman street, in 1838, which gave rise to the cases, famous among lawyers, Re Furman St. (17 Wend., 649), and Radcliff v. Brooklyn (4 N. Y., 195), in which the rule that ne compensation can be recovered for damage incidental to a pub- lic work was first authoritatively decided in this State. The latter is the leading case on this point, and has been followed by the courts all over the Union. (See Important Trials.)

The case of Furman St., which was fiercely but unsuccess- fully contested by Judge Radcliff in his lifetime, shews more plainly than the other the great injury which he suffered from the premature opening of the street, under the influence of the

speculative mania of 1836, when real estate in Brooklyn was in- flated to prices which in some instances have never since been reached. All the natural beauty of Brooklyn Heights was sacrificed to the absurd expectation of an immediate rush of commerce to Furman street, making lots on the land side very valuable; an expectation which even yet has not been realized, and probably never will be.

BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT.

BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT was born at Boston, Mass., June 4, 1830. His father was Jacob Abbott, distinguished as a writer of the "Young Rollo" books, " Young Christian," and other well- known valuable works. The talents of this estimable man seem to have descended as an inheritance to his son. He married Harriet Vaughan, daughter of Charles Vaughan, an eminent citi- zen of Hallowell, Me. Both the Vaughans and Abbotts are old, prominent and highly respected New England families.

Young Abbott's boyhood was passed in Farmington, Maine; he attended the schools at that place, and gave evidence of the scholarly traits which have distinguished him in his maturer years.

Early in 1844, he lost his admirable and greatly beloved mother, and soon after that event his father removed to the city of New York, and young Abbott at an early period in his life be- came a resident of the metropolis. He became a student in the Grammar School of the New York University, where he com- pleted the under-graduate course. Thus prepared, he entered the New York University, from whence he was graduated in 1850.

As his views were early turned toward the legal profession, immediately after graduating, he entered Cambridge Law School, spending one year in that celebrated seminary in the diligent study of law. Leaving Cambridge, he became a student in the office of Richard M. Blatchford and John P. Crosby, where he completed his legal studies, and in November, 1852, took his degree as an attorney and counsellor-at-law, beginning his prac- tice in the city of New York.

In 1853, Mr. Abbott was united by marriage to Miss Elizabeth Titcomb, daughter of Hon. John Titcomb, of Farmington, Me., distinguished as a pioneer in the early Anti-Slavery and Republi- can parties of that State. Miss Titcomb, new Mrs. Ahbett, is a grand-daughter of Stephen Titcomb, the first settler of the town of Farmington.

Mr. Abbott's practice in the city of New York was eminently successful, and he pursued it actively for fifteen years, as the senior member of the distinguished firm of Abbott & Brothers.

He early evinced marked abilities as a writer, and his pen has been directed to works connected with his profession, and he has attained the reputation of being one of the ablest, most successful and useful of American legal writers. Perhaps the legal profession, and we may say the judiciary, are quite as much indebted to him for works that tend to the advancement of legal learning as to any other living author.

One of his characteristics is unwearied industry; while at the head of a prominent legal firm, his time largely occupied with an extensive practice, he found leisure to devote to the congenial labers of an author.

He had been in practice but a short time when he published. his work on the Admiralty Decisions of Judge Betts, then United States District Judge of the Southern District of N. Y., includ- ing what is now the Eastern District. This work was soon followed by a New York Digest, in which he devised several features, then new in such works, but widely approved and republished since. In the writing of this extensive and valuable work, his brother was associated with him. Abbott's Digest is one of the most elaborate and valuable works of that kind now extant. After the appearance of this work Mr. Abbott's talents and learning were directed almost solely to the pursuits of legal authorship.

1243

BENCH AND BAR OF BROOKLYN.

In recognition of his abilities, he was appointed secretary of the New York Code Commissioners, and personally drafted, under general directions of the board, the report of a Penal Code submitted to the Legislature in 1865, and which afterwards be- came the basis of the present Penal Code.

Continuing his labors, he published several other works in succession, most prominent of which were a Digest of the Laws of Corporations, and a Treatise on the United States Courts and their Practice. These works received a warm welcome from the profession throughout the republic, and gave their author a na- tional reputation. Such was the prominence they gave him that, in 1870, he was appointed by President Grant one of the com- missioners to revise the statutes of the United States. There is a circumstance connected with this appointment that happily illustrates the practical ability of Mr. Abbott. A commission had been previously appointed, composed of distinguished law- yere, but who had accomplished very little in the work commit- ted to them. Mr. Abbott entered upon the discharge of his duties with such energy, learning and success, that he soon became the chief dependence of the friends of the revision for the rapid prosecution of large, laborious and complex compilations, committed to the new commission. Their expectations were not disappointed. His great industry seemed to rejoice in the accu- mulation of toil, and he applicd himself with unremitting per- severance to every minute portion of his duty with great energy and success. The entire body of the statute laws of the United States was examined, clause by clause; its unimportant parts re- written and embodied in one volume, within the three years allowed the commissioners for the completion of the work.

These statutes had been printed without regard to order, about as they were passed, chronologically, with very little system of ar- rangement. There was a great variety of subjects, and enactments on the same subject dispersed over an immense extent. Many of these statutes were temporary in their nature; many of them were partially or wholly repealed, some by express enactment, othere only inferentially; so that it was a work of great difficulty to discover what provisions were in force and what had been modified or repealed.

Like Justinian, the commissioners undertook the great work of methodizing voluminous laws scattered through so many volumes, that they might well be compared to the " load of many camels."

It will thus be seen how immense was the labor performed. It facilitated many of the operations of law, and reduced the l'ederal statutes to a practical system.

Soon after the completion of this work, Mr. Abbott was en- gaged by Little, Brown & Co. to revise and edit a consolidated edition of the United States Digest, which task, together with annual volumes for the current years-twenty-three in all-was completed during the four or five years following the revision of the United States statutes. The great labor and responsibility which this work demanded, and its vast importance, will be more fully understood when it is remembered that the last fifty years have added more reports of decided cases in the United States than can be found in several preceding genera- rations. The difficulty in discovering what was good law in this vast agglomeration was felt by the experienced lawyer and the judge, weighing with tenfold force upon the student. No power of assimilation could keep pace with such rapid production of precedent. The area of the law was a tangled thicket, requiring the application of unceasing energy and industry to collect cases in point, and to bring anything like order out of the confusion.

Whatever tends to simplify the law, whatever renders it cognizable and easy of access, tends also to diminish the heavy fees, the vexatious delays and repeated miscarriages which are BO often complained of. Mr. Abbott's United States Digest, and we may say his Digest of our State Reports, with their admir- able analysis, methodical arrangement, and their plenary syl-

labus, have done much to simplify both the Federal and State laws. That which is settled and proclaimed as authority, and which had to be worked out by turning the pages of hundreds of volumes, has, by these Digests, been worked out and system- atized so that each authority is easy of access and ready for use.

A Law Dictionary, in two volumes, on a new plan, followed this last digest ; Vol. 1 of a National Digest, to be completed in four or five volumes, is (at the date of this writing) on the eve of publication ; it gives in one view the statutory and judicial law of the Federal Government. Mr. Abbott has also written a popular volume of explanations of legal subjects, entitled " Judge and Jury," and a school book or volume for youth, entitled " Traveling Law School," explaining the theory of American government and law to the young. He has also written a great number of contributions, mostly on legal sub- jects, for periodicals.

From what we have seen, the question may well be asked: Can a more active, energetic, able and useful pen be found than that of Mr. Abbott's ?

No class of men more fully appreciates this language of the elegant Roman scholar, "Mira quedam in cognoscendo suavitas et delectatio," than lawyers; no lawyer has reason to understand this more fully than Mr. Abbott ; and no writer has rendered the task of acquiring legal knowledge, and of adapting it to practice, more easy and pleasant than he. He is plain, easy, compact, and at the same time sufficiently luminous. "The action of his mind is always to discover how much he can prune, and brush away of that which is extrinsie, and to reduce adverse matter to its least practical dimensions." Not an idea is excluded which can promote his object ; everything is there, but in the narrowest compass. As was said of another : " He has given us the best specimens in our language of that rich economy of expression which was so much studied by the writers of antiquity." His books are found in nearly every law library in the nation.

At the time of his marriage he became a resident of Brooklyn, and he has lived there most of the years of his married life. Absorbed in the duties of his profession, with the subjects of his pen, in the retiracy of his study, he has taken little part in the local affairs of the city. Much of his time has been spent in other cities, to which his engagements as an author have drawn him.

His family consists of a wife, a son-Arthur Vaughan Abbott, a civil engineer, who is professionally employed in the construc- tion of the Brooklyn Bridge -- and a daughter.

As we have seen, Mr. Abbott is still actively engaged in preparing works which are anxiously looked for by the profes- sion and public, and which will add new honors to the many that he so deservedly enjoys.

DANIEL P. BARNARD.

DANIEL P. BARNARD was born at Hudson, N. Y., December 23d, 1812. His parents were Timothy and Mary Barnard. His ancestors on the paternal side were the first settlers of Nan- tucket, Mass. His maternal grandfather, Daniel Paddock, was one of the first settlers of Hudson, N. Y.

Mr. Barnard was educated partly at Hudson and partly at Baltimore, under private tutors. He studied his profession in Baltimore, Md., with Judge William L. Marshall; was admitted to the Bar in July, 1836, at Baltimore, and in 1839 removed to Brooklyn and entered upon the practice of his profession, where he has continued ever since.

Mr. Barnard is regarded as one of the ablest real estate law- yers at the Kings County Bar. His knowledge of titles to the real estate of the county is very great, and has been gained by the most intimate and thorough examination through the course of forty years. He has devoted himself entirely to his profes-

1244

HISTORY OF KINGS COUNTY.

sion, never holding any office except by election to the City Council of Baltimore in 1838, and to the Common Council of Brooklyn in 1854-55. In the latter year he was President of the Common Council. He represented the County of Kings in the Constitutional Convention of this State in 1867, proving to be an able, effective and influential member of that body.

ABRAHAM H. DAILEY.

ABRAHAM H. DAILEY was born in Sheffield, Berkshire County, Mass., October 31st, 1831. His father was born in the town of Fishkill, N. Y. He is of English, Irish, Scotch and German ex- traction.

He thoroughly prepared to enter college, but 'a severe and protracted illness prevented this. After his recovery he decided to commence the study of law. Accordingly he entered the office of ex-Gov. George N. Briggs, of Massachusetts, where he studied lsw. He was admitted to practice in 1855 st Lenox, Berkshire County, Mass. After practicing for awhile in Great Barrington, Mass., he removed, in 1858, to New York, where he has continued the practice of his profession with great success down to the present time.

In 1863 he was elected Justice of the Fourth District Court, Brooklyn, for the term of four years; but the duties of a large practice compelled him to resign.

In 1871 he was nominsted by the Republicans for District Attorney of Kings County, but was declared defeated by Mr. Winchester Britton. Four years later, in the fall of 1875, he was nominated for the office of Surrogate of Kings County by the Democrats, but his opponent, Mr. Walter L. Livingston, was declared elected. Mr. Dailey brought an action to oust him, and obtained & judgment of ouster May 12th, 1877, and took imme- diate possession of the office, holding it for about three years. On appeal to the General Term, this judgment was reversed and a new trial ordered. The judgment granting a new trial gave Mr. Livingston the office while it was pending. This brought the contestants to s mutual agreement, by the terms of which the action was discontinued, without costs. Mr. Dsiley surren- dered all claim to the office. He is an advocate of brilliancy and distinction, controlling s large and highly respectable legal business.

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The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884, Volume II, Part 149

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co Number of Pages: 1345

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York, W. W. Munsell & Co
Number of Pages: 1345