Mr. KELLEY. I “do not avail myself of the privilege of the floor for the purpose of replying to the chairman of the ComWays&Means, nor of assailing the bill be has submitted. I agree, I think, with every principle enunciated by him. I find in this bill much to approve and admire. Pressed as the committee has been by the preparation of the tax bill and its grave general duties, and limited as the time has been which it has had to consider this complexsubject, I wonder that it has presented a bill so general in its scope and just in its provisions. There are, however. a few things in itwhich I feel called upon to bring to the attention of the House. While I find much to appreciate in the bill I find also inevitable evidences of haste and want of due consideration, and I avail myself of this early opportunity to point them out, in the belicf that the committee will correct them of its own motion. The chairman of the committee alluded to Pennsylvania when explaining the action of the committee on the question of coal, and I therefore beg the attention of the House 1st to that subject, and will be gratified if I can have the ear of the chairman of the committee for a moment or two. One of the palpable evidences of haste and want of consideration that appear in the bill is that it proposes a protection of $1 60 perton on anthracite coa. Now, I do not want the Legislature of this country to proclaim not only to the savans of the world, but to people of but partial information, that we do not know that we have in this country all the anthracite coal in the world. I do not want it to go to the world that we are giving legislative protection to anthracite coal when scientific men and half informed men the world over kuow that out side of 470 square miles of our territory within the limits of Pennsyl vania no anthracite coal has ever been found. Now, if there is no anthracite coal in the world but our own, why do the ComWays&Means propose to protect it by a duty of $1 50 perton? it is clearly an oversight which the committee will correct. It is intimated by my friend on my right that there is anthracite coal in Wales. I say no; there is what is called Wefh anthracite coal. It contains too much hydrogen or volatile matter for anthracite. Nor is it purely bitumine us. It is a bastard coal, and while it makes all the dust of anthracite, it produces all the smoke of bitumine us. It is, therefore, incapable of use for any of the purposes to which pure anthracite coal only can be up lied. I think it desirable that the word anthracite so inconsiderately inserted should be stricken out of the bill. The anthracite, which needs no protection, and which, were it constitutional, would hear an export duty, is the coal interest of Pennsylvania. It prefers no claim to pro ' tection, and I speak not for it but for those who are voiceless in this House, the deluded and poverty stricken people of the insurrectionary districts which it should be known is the preeminent bitumine us coal district of our country. Maryland has her own eloquent champions here. Kentucky is not without po tent voices; Missonri also has her champions in her able and faithful Representatives; and Tennessee, although her Representatives are not crmitted to participate in our debates, has them upon the floor, mingling freely with members and able to tell them of the rich treas ures of bitumine us coal in her hills, and how their products are excluded from their legitimate market on the Gulf coast by the British coal and that of the Provinces carried thither as ballast without charge of freight in vessels arriving for cargoes of cotton. My own State having no special interest in this question, I l argue it on)ehalf of the people of the wide and rich bitumine us fields of the South, and especially of those of Virginia and NCarolina. But, Mr. Chairman, let me remark that it is nota question of the cost of coal to the manufacturers of NewEngland. It does not touch the cost of their cool, as I will demon strate. Under the reciprocity treaty the coal of Nova Scotia came into oar ports duty free. Since the abrogation of‘that treaty $1 25 of duty has been collected upon every ton ofcoal that has arrived from Sydney or Picton. Where did that duty fall? At the door of the NewEngland manufactory, or at the entrance of the foreign mine? It did not fall at the door of the factory; nothing is more certain than that. No NewEngland manufacturer has paid more for his coal since that duty of $1 25 was put on than he paid before. The owners of Nova Scotia coal mines have paid into our Treasury the tens of 1000s of dollars we have collected as duties. I challenge any NewEngland man to refute that nsscrtion. Coal aying a duty of $1 25 a ton is delivered in ortlund, in Boston, in Providence, and in NewYork at precisely the price at which it was delivered when it came in duty free. We have, I repeat, made the owners of coal mines in the British Provinces pay into the Treasury of the U.S. $1 25 for every ton of their coal that we have consumed. Now, sir, let me tell you how it happens that our amiable and loving neighbors could add $1 25 to the cost of their coal perton, and still sell it at the same price as before. Sir, these American gentlemen, who the chairman of the committee tells us went to Nova Scotia and invested their capital in coal mines, did not go there blindfolded; and they will not be ruined if their dividends be reduced 50%. by the competition of Virginia and NCarolina coal in the markets of NewEngland. Let us consider that question calmly. What have their dividends been? Never below 50%. perannum, and they have not unfrequently risen to 175%. perannum. Their profits have long since reimbursed their original outlay; and all they had to do when the falsely called reciprocity treaty was abrogated was to conclude to put up with from 40 to 160%. perannum and pay the duty on the coal delivered in the U.S. Sir, it is my wish to stimulate and promote the manufacturing power of our country. I wish our country to achieve commercial inde ppndence, and to accomlish this we must give NewEngland cheap coa. To do this we must establish rivals to the provincial coal fields. We will clienpen NewEngl nd's supply of coal by dealing fairly and honeiy by the unrepresented people of the South, and by stimulating the development of the rich fields on the Dan, the Haw, and the Deep rivers, NCarolina, and the James river, Virginia. My colleague from the Pittsburg district [Min Mooansan] said it would be a hardship on NewEngland manufacturers to make them 01,000 miles to his district for their coa. Sir, accepting a point midway of the coast of NewEng land as the point of departure, they need not to obtain better American coal add a mile to the distance their coal is carried. It can be taken by water transportation from Richmond by a route as short as it is taken from Nova Scotia to the ports of Connecticut and Massa cliiisetts. The suggestion is fallacious; and unless gentlemen want to legislate against Virginia and NCarolina and in favor of Nova Scotia, they will strike from this bill that extraordinary clause which assumes an imaginary line in the middle of the ocean, the 32nd meridian cast; and provides, not like all previous American legislation, that goods coming from the floater distance, say east of the Cape of Good ope, shall pay but half the duties imposed on goods coming from nearer ports, but in violation of all recedent, and of all principle, provides that the coal which crosses the ocean shall pay $1 60 perton, while that which comes from just beyond our borders, and within that imaginary line and upon which the cost of transportation is little more than nominal, shall come in at 1/3rd of that duty, or 50 cents perton. The question before us is not between the Government and manufacturer, but between the interest of a few American gentlemen who went out of this count and invested their funds in an enemy’s territory, and these war trampled States whose people we are, while unrepentant of a great public crime, justly holding in political subjection, but whose may teriul interests we ought to foster and promote with ine re than a gnardian’s, with a brother’s or a father’s care. The true interest of the NewEngland manufacturer will be found in ro moti competition betweeen those patriotio Americans who during the war avoide our increasing taxes, and whose foreign investments. were earning average dividends of about 100%., and the present or future owners of the rich tide water coal fields of Virginia and NCarolina. Between these parties lies the whole question, and experience will prove that I am the friend and not the foe of the NewEngland manufacturer. Having said this much on the coal question, I invite gentlemen to ekamine the provisions under consideration, which they will find at the close of the 5th section, on page 25 of the bill; and I beg leave to say to the members of the committee that in attemptin to protect an investment of American capita in a foreign country they have fallen into error, and that ifI wanted to perpetrate a satire upon gentle men who have labored with such in just, fidelity, and general good judgment, I won d conceal the fact that misled them and sa they proposed to protect anthracite coal, an that they drew an imaginary line in the middle of the ocean and proosed that coals coming from within that line should pay but 50 cents perton, and coals coming from beyond that line and beyond the ocean should pay 3 times 50 cents er ton.