70 to 76 per cent of salt, but they are not sufficient in quantity for the purposes of our operations. The consequence is that our endeavor is all the time to sink for the stronger water, and, as we get it, abandon the weaker wells, because the weaker wells will not pay under any circumstances. The territory where we get the stronger water is narrow, and the territory underneath does not lie open to the human eye. I can tell the gentleman from Jefferson [Mr. Bell], and the gentlemen of the committee, when he undertakes to compare the expense of a well, which is perfectly sure to reach the salt water in Saginaw or Goderich, with the cost in our locality, where the well is not half so deep, and costs less money to put it down, that it is the successful well that pays the cost. Even since we have been members of this Convention, the State has failed in two instances to get a well, after sinking three to four hundred feet, within one hundred and fifty feet of the best well on the location. Only week before last, they pulled the tools out of a well when they had expended a large amount of money and were within one hundred feet of a well that was in successful operation. It is to a certain extent, in our locality, a lottery. Mr. BELL-Does not Mr. Barker say that the State owned fifteen wells, and that these wells can be sunk for $3,000 each, and that the well sunk this year belongs to the State-that they have fifteen State wells? combination, under the circumstances in which it, waters of our salines to-day and mix them, and was got up, and in the way in which it has been they reduce us down below 62 degrees of the going on, have received each and every year more salinometer. We have got wells there that give than three times the amount that has been received by us by way of profit. Do you have any doubt, Mr. Chairman, does any gentleman have any doubt, that if we had carried on that business during the war of the rebellion as individuals, each looking to his own gain, and each depending upon outside operations for these articles that go to make up the matter of salt, do you have any doubt at all that, instead of selling the salt at $1.25 and $2.35 a barrel in our own locality, it would have been $5 and $7 a barrel? Each man within the limits of the State of New York who was compelled to use our salt would have had to pay $5 and $7 a barrel, instead of getting it at the price he did under the arrangements made by this company. We are aware of the fact-it perhaps may be owing to that fact, that we have conducted ourselves in the past as we have; as, for instance, in the years 1862 and 1863, by holding the people of this State separate and apart from the speculations in the West in the article of salt, we may have been induced to do this-we were unquestionably, to a certain extent, by the fact of our intimate relations with the State in reference to this property. We could not afford to do otherwise. We were not there for the purpose of making money for a year, and then packing up and going to some other place to enjoy it. We were there denizens of the soil, born there, many of us, there determined to live during our lives. We could not afford to kill any goose that lays a golden egg. It was for us to stand by not only our interest, but the interest of the people of this State to the extent that our position demanded of us. We did so. We have done so through all this combination. We have cheapened those very articles that go to to the State? make up the manufacture of salt, by the process that we have taken. The gentleman from Jeffer-longs to the State. We have no right to the son [Mr. Bell] says that we have got fifteen wells there that will produce a certain quantity of salt. It is true that we have those fifteen wells, but the salt company of Onondaga built three of them and are now at work building a fourth. The salt company of Onondaga have never undertaken co restrict the quantity of salt manufactured there. They have been again and again to the door of the superintendent's office for more water. They wanted the water when it was time to make the salt; they wanted to make hay when the sun shone; and he has been doing all that he could do in the hope of increasing instead of decreasing the quantity of salt made there. We have gone to work and persistently endeavored to increase the quantity each and every year of our existence. Two or three or four months ago we produced one of the very best wells, at the expense of the salt company of Onondaga, that there is now on that reservation, and we are doing it again to-day. We have nearly got one well down to the water, and the house is now removed to another spot where we are going down with still another well to produce more water for the purpose of the manufacture of salt. There is another thing. Our object is, our desire and interest is, to get the best quality of water that we can. You take the | Mr. ALVORD-We have fifteen State wells, but of these fifteen wells the salt company paid for, superintended and carried into execution three of them. Mr. BELL-How could he say that they belong water. It is not our water. It is true we dug case, at that price our field of 3,600 vats was val- the material wealth of the people of this State, ued at six thousand dollars less than the actual to the adding to the basis of the taxation of the cost. To-day, sir, the superintendent of the On- people of this State, to the beautifying and adornondaga salt springs tells you, and your own re- ing of that portion of the State; these men who flection in a single moment will tell you, that have given their toil and their sweat to this work, they cannot be purchased for any thing less than are the men who have given all of the value, if fifty-seven dollars-an increase in value of seven- there is any value, to this property of the people teen dollars in the single article of coarse salt of the State of New York. But take it upon the vats in our location, forty-three thousand in num- hypothesis that these gentlemen desire us to. ber-over $700,000 increase above the valuation Take the actual cost to us of the erections there of 1860. The salt works that could have been placed. Put them down, if the gentleman pleases, built in 1860 for $5,000, and put in complete run- to $2,500,000, or even $2,000,000. Apply the same ning order, to-day cannot be built for less than rule to the State. Put their property down at $8,000; and all of the property has appreciated, what it cost the people of the State at the time not under the operation of the business, but only they bought it. Then foot up your balance. Then because of the increase of the cost of the mate-after you have gone through with the expenses rials of which they are composed. But take attending the matter; after you have gone them at the original cost. Take that basis of the through with all the outgoes and outlays, copartnership that the gentleman from Jefferson and come to the final result by way of [Mr. Bell] speaks about, and let us look at it in profit, to the State and the company aggregated that light. Why, sir, the people of the State of together, then fairly divide the balance, my word New York bought that property for $700 in for it, sir, if they will strike this balance-sheet, money and an annuity of $700, which capitalized they will say that the people of the State of New would be $10,000-call it in round numbers $11, York have received, in all time past, and are re000-you have no right to add their improvements, ceiving to-day, largely in excess of the property amounting to $300,000-for they never have owners, who have built up this great work. I paid one single dollar upon that property except wish to touch, now, to a small extent, upon the from the money which came out of the duty on report made by the gentleman from Ontario [Mr. salt. They have put into the pockets of the McDonald]. In that report he goes on with a people of the State, by sales of the property upon series of arguments, and with a pile of figures, that reservation, in fee, about $200,000, upon which I will not undertake to dissect, because that original investment of $11,000. They have, conclusions should be derived from results, rather in addition to that, under the operation of the than from an attempt at figures; he goes on to law of 1817, and the constitutional enactment of state that the people of my locality are to blame 1821, paid into the treasury of the State, for the because they charge the people of the State of purpose of building the Erie and Champlain New York a certain price for salt, and charge in canals, $2,500,000 more. That is what they have other remote places a different price; and that done. They have, since your duties were re-they should be compelled by constitutional produced to one cent per bushel, put into the pocket vision not to discriminate against the people of of the people of this State $400,000 more. They the State. I think he forgets one plain, simple have got an item of over $311,000 in this report, law of commerce, a law that obtains everywhere. composed of the aqueducts, conduits, reservoirs, All property is always more dear to localities pump houses, and the offices in which the where it is as a matter of necessity, to a certain State transacts its business. Where did that extent a monopoly, than it is in the general marts money come from? Not from the treasury of your of the world. I venture to say, without fear of State, but it came from these duties which have contradiction, that you may commence with Bufbeen paid upon salt, in addition to the $400,000 of clear money which is in your treasury. Not one single dollar has ever been paid by the people of this State; but, on the contrary, between three and four millions of dollars have gone into the coffers of the people of this State since the purchase of the land from the Indians. That is the statement upon the side of the people of the State as against that locality. Now, I ask you what has given this great value to this property? What makes it to-day pay, at this one cent a bushel duty, into the coffers of the people of the State of New York over two hundred per cent upon the original investment? It is the activity, it is the enterprise, it is the sagacity, it is the business talent of the men who have dug and toiled in that location; men who since this combination of interests in 1860, since this rebellion, which gave them exceptional advantages in the markets of the country, have been doing this, not only to the result of their pecuniary gain in the operation, but to the building up of the beautiful city that stands there now, to the adding to falo, aye, you may go to Detroit, aye, you may go into the interior of the State of Michigan, where they grow the wheat, and carry it to the mill, and make it into flour, and in every one of those localities, from the interior of Michigan, through Detroit, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany, you will find that in every one of these places a barrel of flour sells for more money than it does in the city of New York. I am speaking now, sir, of the general rule. As a matter of course there may be exceptions to that general rule. All property tends to the head of the market, and when it arrives there and can go no further, it must be dependent upon the law of supply and demand, and only in that way can it get to itself a market, and only in that way can the price of it be at all regulated. We manufacture between seven and eight million bushels of salt. The people of the State of New York take, with upper Pennsylvania, about two millions of bushels of that salt. That is all they take. We have therefore got to find a market for between five and six million bushels in other locations. We carry it to other locations. I remunerative price for our salt in every locality. We carry it to Canada, or have in the past, shall We would have to reduce the manufacture of salt not in the future. What is the reason we do not at our place to less than one-half of what it is at get as much for salt in Canada as we do in inte- the present time. And the result of the proposirior New York? Why, Canada has got an arti- tion of the gentleman from Ontario [Mr. McDoncle of salt that comes from Europe and brings ald] is this, and I desire gentlemen in this Conitself into competition with our salt when we vention to look it directly in the face: We have land on those shores. We have got two millions either got to reduce the quantity manufactured in which we have given to the people of the State. our locality, so as to be enabled to sell just so We have got to get rid of the surplus. We carry much as will take it by way of monopoly with a portion of it to Canada, and we meet this this increased duty upon it; or else we have got competition. What are we to do with the salt? to go to work and maintain these markets that Are we to return it to the wells from which it we now have abroad, where we meet with sharp originally came, and stop so much of the labor and severe competition at the expense of the peoand the advantage growing out of that labor to ple who use the two millions of bushels of salt in our locality; or are we to take the price that it our State, not only to the extent of this increased will bring there when we get it into Canada for duty that you propose, but to the extent of the sale? We take a portion of that salt to the increase of duty upon every pound that we send west. When we get to Buffalo we find the Sag- to these outside markets. Will gentlemen look inaw rules the market. As we go still further at that for a moment? The exigencies of the west it rules it still lower and lower and lower, common, ordinary transactions of trade show you until we get to the extreme west. Our salt is in that it must be so. Here we have got an article the market; Saginaw salt is in the market, and at Chicago or New York. We sell it there at the we have got to submit to the price of that mar-highest possible price that we can get, under the ket, or else we have got to stop the manufacture strict competition that we have, and we sell it at of salt. Again, the same thing takes place in a loss, or at a mere margin of profit. You put this State. We sell salt in the market in New York city at an absolute loss. We have sold there fifteen hundred thousand bushels of it without paying the expense of handling. Why do we do so? We have got to get rid of the surplus in some way or other, or else we have got to stop the manufacture of salt. We have got to reduce the manufacture down to the two millions that is to be used in this State, or else we have got to go on and prosecute the work in the way that we do. In this connection, the gentleman from Jefferson [Mr. Bell] says that there ought to be a tax of ten cents a barrel upon coarse salt. I do not know whether the gentleman is aware of the fact or not, but the coarse salt produced in the works at Syracuse is very largely in excess of any demand for the article as coarse salt. We could not begin to get rid of over one-half of it. What have we done? Why, we have gone to work and made up our minds that there was a way in which we could get rid of it if we would go in the right direction. We have found that an article was used for the purpose of curing fish caught upon the banks of Newfoundland-what they called a "coarse-fine" article; and that our salt has a large amount of that, as it is made by the sun; and that our article of course salt, if it was screened, so as to remove the small particles, would sell better as a coarse salt; so we went to work and screened that salt. We get a remunerative price for it, as it is used for the purpose of packing beef and pork. We can sell that; there is a legitimate market for it. Now, we have got to get rid of what is left. We send it to the city of New York and there it is sold, and some goes to Gloucester, Mass., and to different points near the fisheries, and it is used now largely to the exclusion of any other salt, because of its purity and whiteness, but at the same time not so much to its exclusion but that we have to submit to a very low price for the article. The same would be the result if we should undertake to make a upon the sales of salt in this State three cents a bushel duties-ten cents a barrel in addition. The people of this State use two million bushels. Say, for example, four million bushels are used outside. The men in this State who use this two million bushels pay $40,000 more for their salt than they did before. It comes out of the consumer, and he not only pays that $40,000, but he pays $80,000 more-making $120,000-because he pays the revenue upon that salt that we send outside. The simple operation is this, clear, plain and unmistakable: that you have either got to reduce the quantity of salt made in this locality, or the people of this State who are compelled from their location-because they cannot get any thing else to use this salt, are under the necessity not only of paying the duty on that salt so used by them, but upon all the salt that goes outside. As the committee say in 1846, so will be, but very much more strongly, the fact that you are by this operation taxing a portion of the people for the benefit and advantage of other portions of them, because no one for a morent contends that, so far as this State is concerned, over one-half, not certainly to exceed three-fifths of the people of this State use the Onondaga salt; but they use the foreign salt, that comes in by the way of New York. The simple result of the operation of the gentleman would be to cause the people of this State, who are compelled to use the salt, to pay $120,000 more than they now pay for salt, by way of duties to the government, or else to compel the company, in our locality, to be content with making only the same amount of salt that they could find a ready and non-com. peting market for. There is another thing that this salt company of Onondaga have done for the interest of the people of this State, which never would have been accomplished by any private enterprise whatever. There has been, in the past, a desire to make a salt to compete with the foreign article, a good dairy, or butter and, cheese salt. Effort after effort has been made to produce the result of a perfectly pure article of salt in been for the united energy and capital of the salt that direction. Thousands and tens of thousands company of Onondaga, enabling them to employ of dollars have been expended by individuals for the necessary talent in that direction; and this that purpose, but all their efforts in the past, up boon to the people of this State is a boon comto the organization of this company, had proved mensurate with all the benefits and all the advanfruitless. They were men of small means; they tages which the State, by any possibility, can be were men unable to go largely into the matter; considered to have given to us from the location men unable to employ scientific men who would which we occupy. Now, sir, there is another go into a long and labored research in respect to thing in this regard, and urged as another arguthe matter, and find out what the trouble was ment why, in the inflexible fundamental law of the and how the difficulty should be remedied. This State this question of duties should not be undercompany came together for the purpose of doing taken to be settled. Supposing that the neces what they could for their own benefit and advan- sity should come, as it did during the terrible retage, and for the benefit of the people of the bellion of 1861 to 1865, for the people to again arm State. The first thing they did was to take up themselves for battle, again to gird on their arthis question of the purification of salt from the mor for the contest; or, if a great public interest, ingredient which was known to be fatal to butter, or a great public improvement, in which all the which is the chloride of calcium; and they like people of the State were interested, should be wise, as sagacious men, men who looked at these necessary, then it might be well, under such cirthings in the light that they should be looked cumstances, for temporary purposes, that the at, said that so far as their experience was Legislature of the State of New York, looking concerned they might work to all eternity around for resources for the government, should and they could not solve the problem; but they take hold of these salt springs, and for the time went to work and employed experts and chem- being ask of them to give forth of their property ists, and by means of their combination they for the purpose of carrying on the work of imwere enabled to pay those chemists a remunera-provement, or sustaining the power of the nation. tive price for their investigation, and the result Again, supposing for instance, as has been develwas finally a triumph in the matter. After an oped within the past few years, other great salt expenditure of over $20,000 there has been found interests outside of this reservation should spring the great desideratum in reference to this ques-up in our State, and should come into such comtion of table and dairy salt-a simple chemical petition as to destroy utterly the position which problem, the simplest in the known world; but we occupy; would it be right, sir, to make this still, at the same time, efficient and perfect, and destruction so perfect, permanent and comprehenentirely sufficient for the purpose and for the ob- sive as it would be by the imposition of the addiject to be attained. But it is still a chemical tional tax upon us? If it should be found, in process. It requires the employment constantly the course of events, that no such thing is likely of an educated chemist, for the purpose of to transpire, and that there is a large area of superintending its manufacture. Under the ope- country upon which our business can be done ration of this company, we are enabled to employ profitably, you can increase the duty on salt if it that chemist-a chemist whose reputation and is thought in the policy of the State that they character stands as high as that of any man in should look to that as a source of revenue. his profession in the world to day, taking into if the exigency does not arise, leave it where it is. consideration his age; a chemist who is remun- Say that the Legislature can go in either direction erated by us to the extent of his desires. He is as it pleases. I have this to say to gentlemen, constantly in our employment; because what and I say it, believing it. I have looked caremust be done to-day has to be done again to-mor-fully at that locality at Goderich. I have exrow; and it must be under the eye of a scientific amined it as far as I could by the eye, and as far man all the time. Now what do we do, sir? We as I could by asking questions in reference to the produce to-day an article of salt for the purpose results of boring in that place; and I find that of curing butter and cheese, which is selling in the formation there is the same as it is with us, the markets of this State, as compared with the that is limestone overlaying what are called the celebrated Ashton salt, for 33 per cent less in Onondaga shales. It is the limestone coming to price. We are gradually overcoming the preju- the surface of the ground, and overlying those dices of the people of our State against the use shales, directly on the borders of Lake Huron. of our salt in this direction, and compelling them We have found but a little way from our salt to take that instead of Ashton; but I am sorry basin the same formation. Our hills are limeto say that the good work is not yet done. Over stone overlying Onondaga shales. There is no one-half of the dairymen of the State of New doubt in the mind of our chemist, or in the mind York to-day are paying for an article of foreign of any investigating chemist or geologist upon this salt, because of its reputation, which is not, to matter, that the strength of our salt denotes the say the least of it, at all superior, and I claim it is fact that not far from it is the salt deposit. You inferior to our article; they are paying fifty per get that salt deposit if you go to our hills and cent more than they can get the same article for bore for it, I think with as little difficulty, and from us. I venture to say, and I say it without with as little depth as you will at Goderich. It fear of contradiction, that it might be that after a is on private property. The State has no relong time we might have stumbled upon the so- strictive right so far as regards the use of lution of this question, but it would have been, the salt water. That exhibition right in our in all human probability, long after this, before midst would in a day put out of sight any idea this would have been discovered, if it had not upon our part, with the water of the State, un But dertaking to make salt in competition with it. | cality, ana tney should be content with the These are the facts. Within almost a stone's amount of profits that they have made on the throw, I was going to say, of our pump houses, original investment which they have made in that upon private lands, upon land laid out as a military reservation, and where the State have not reserved the right of salt water at all-there is to-day in existence a well that gives a volume of water as good as any well in our locality, and of a strength superior to most of our wells. In all that valley there is no doubt in regard to the matter but what we can find salt water in abundance. There is no question whatever in regard to it. locality. I have a very few words more to say in reference to another proposition made by the committee, and then I will conclude for the present. There is a proposition made to sell, or rather it is in the alternative, authorizing the Legislature to make arrangements for selling this property at any time when the commissioners of the land office shall come to the conclusion that it is best for the interests of the State to part with the property. I am opposed to that. Gen Mr. McDONALD-Is that well now operated-tlemen undertake to argue that this is a very that is not on the reservation? valuable property, that the State is receiving Mr. ALVORD—No, sir, it never has been. nothing like an equivalent for the value of the Mr. McDONALD-Who is the owner of it? property. I think there is no value in salt water Mr. ALVORD-One Vivus W. Smith. at all. The simple value of the article consists Mr. BECKWITH-Can it be operated? in its location. That is all there is about it. We Mr. ALVORD-Certainly. The only difficulty are so situated upon the canals of the State at in regard to it is that it is some considerable dis- that particular point that we can transmit our salt tance from the canal, a long distance from the with very little difficulty to the different portions railroad, and in the result of using the water of the country where it is desirable. So they are there, it would cost probably as much as the at Saginaw; so they are infinitely superior to us duties of the State do now to transport it from at Goderich; so they may be in other portions the place where it is to the canal, say one cent a of this State and of this country. Salt water is bushel; but there is an abundance of salt water too abundant in this country to talk about its in that location, and there is no doubt in regard being of any value. Why, sir, in the Saginaw to it that an increase in the duty to two or three valley, as I have told you, the area of a circle of cents a bushel would permit you to go there and fifty miles radius is full of salt water. I have manufacture salt cheaper than it would be to pay shown you that at least thirteen miles are covered three cents duty to the State. These facts sur by the salines of Goderich. Go down to southround the whole of this question, and therefore it west Virginia. There is a place called Saltville should not be put into the fundamental law of that during the rebellion furnished 600,000 bushels the land to establish, for all time to come, or for of salt, and is capable of furnishing six millions twenty years, that we shall pay three cents a of bushels of salt to the people of this country. bushel duty on salt. We, the people of the city Go with me-though the gentleman sneered at of Syracuse, are ready to do all that may be it-to St. Domingo: and he asks who are internecessary upon our part, as good citizens of the ested in the salt works there. I will inform him State, to advance the interests of the people of that no one interested in the salt company of the State. But in order to be enabled to do so, Onondaga is interested in them. There, within we desire that the business which we have pro- fifteen miles of the sea, within fifteen miles of a duced for ourselves—a business which has been good bay and capacious harbor, is a salt mouncreated in that locality by the industry, sagacity, tain, standing upon the surface of the ground, enterprise and capital of our people-should be between eight and nine miles in length, a mile permitted to exist in the future as it has been in wide, and from 30 to 300 feet high, of perfectly the past, and that you will not thrust this matter | pure rock salt, 98 per cent under the test of the into the Constitution, which may possibly in the chemist. Go into Louisiana, within two hundred future work to our detriment and our ruin. If and fifty miles of New Orleans, and there was the people of the State of New York desire this another source of the rebel supply of salt during property, they have a way in which they can get the rebellion, discovered because the exigencies it. The statute upon that subject is peremptory; of the times demanded that it should be discovthey have a right to retire from this quasi part- ered. They would have perished, so far as it nership that the gentleman has spoken about at concerned the trans-Mississippi, had it not been any time by paying to us, not the value of the for the fortunate discovery of this supply. There, fee of the land, but the actual value of the prop-lying under one of the richest plantations in the erty upon the land, and give it to whomsoever bayou, is a mine of salt which has been perforated they please, or operate it themselves. They have to the extent of forty-five feet, and still the botthe whole power in their hands. We have it not tom has not been reached, underlying a whole at all. They have the right to say to us "Go island, covering an extent of fifteen or sixteen off the reservation," any minute when they hundred acres-the_purest known salt in the please, paying us for what we have put world. Then go to Kanawha valley, where the on it in the shape of these erections. I salt water bubbles up almost to the surface of do not believe the people of the State desire to go into the business of manufacturing salt. I think that they desire that it should be carried on in the way that it has been carried on in the past. They desire that it should be carried on by the enterprising people that reside in that lo the ground, and the coal is right alongside of it, in the hills, any quantity of it; and they make between two and three millions of bushels of salt a year there. In Pennsylvania, their oil discov eries have given to them, in many places, wells that can be used to advantage. In Kansas and |