Mr. STEWART. We pay a great deal of the whisky tax, perhaps not greater in proportion to our numbers than others, but more in amount, because we drink a better quality, probably. [Laughten] 3% is t a eavy tax upon the net product of the mines. The man who has found a mine has aid for it 4 times as well, before he pays a ollar into the national Treasury, as the man who goes and improves a farm. You allow the man who goes upon land and improves it to have a homestead, and require him to pay nothing. It takes him 5 years, under your law, to acquire the title. It takes on the average 15 ears of labor and even more to find a mine. Taking the aggregate labor engaged in finding mines, it costs at least 15 years of actual labor to find ii. mine, and I believe I should not exaggerate if I said 20 5years of actual a or for every mine fodiid. You say to a farmer that if he will go and live upon a tract of land for 5 years he shall have a form. You say to the miner after he has spent most of his life huntin for a mine and he has found one, that you will encumber him beyond a reason able amount. The former after he has lived 5 years upon his land and got it free, is not taxed on the net product. He pays simply an income tax. This adds to the income tax paid by the miner a tax upon net products. It is an additional tax clearly beyont that paid by other producers, and an additional tax on a.class of men whose property costs them more than any other class of men who hunt for property; on additional tax on that product which you need more than you do any other; an additional tax on property, one dollar of which is worth at least 2 dollars, and I think 3 or 4 dollars of a perishable commodity; an additional tax a on that which will relieve your national burdens by increasing the amount of metallic currency. There oughtto be no tax even upon the net product, an it is very much for us to consent to be discriminated against to the extent of 3%., when our property has cost as ten times as much as the property of any other class of the community has cost them. If you would tell the miner before he prospects the history of what he has got to encounter. if you would lay it all plainly before him, nobody would think of prospecting; but because there are occasional gains, because then: is occasional success, a large number of enterprising people have traversed this desert and found these mines. at the cost of almost everything, so that there is no reason why you should discriminate against them.