Now, without following the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. DAVIS] in that proposition, I do insist, that, on articles of prime necessity, we should reduce taxation where we can. Therefore, when the Senator from Ohio tells me, that, if my proposition is adopted, we shall lose a certain amount of revenue derived from coal, I have an easy reply. Very well,--let us lose that amount of revenue derived from coal. You ought not to obtain it; coal ought not to be one of your taxed articles. So far as possible, coal should be cheap. That is the proposition with which I began and ended; and if I do not impress that upon the Senate, I certainly fail in what I attempted. MR. GRIMES [of Iowa]. Why should it be cheap? MR. SUMNER. Because it enters into the necessaries of life, and because it is a motive power that works our manufactories. … I say that the article is necessary to us in New England. It enters into our daily life,--into the economies of every house, into the expenses of every citizen. It enters, therefore, into the welfare of the community; and you cannot tax coal without making the whole community feel it, whether rich or poor. Every poor man feels it. If I said the rich man felt it, you would reply, “That makes no difference; let him feel it.” I insist that every poor man feels it; and I insist further, that all who are interested in the manufactures of the country necessarily feel it,--not only producers and owners, but all who use the products of their looms. I say, that, as a motive power, it should be made cheap and kept cheap. Now the apparent policy is, to make it dear and keep it dear. MR. HENDRICKS [of Indiana]. I like the Senator’s argument just where he is now; but I wish to ask him whether, if by a tariff you raise the price of every yard of cheap woollen goods and cheap cotton goods, it is not a direct tax on the labor of the poor man of the West, who has to buy them? MR. CRESWELL [of Maryland, to Mr. Sumner]. That is the application of your argument. MR. SUMNER. The Senator from Maryland says that is the application of my argument. Pardon me, not at all; because the tax on cotton and on woollen goods--I have had very little to do with imposing any such tax--is not oppressive on any part of the country, nor does it bear hard on the constituents of the Senator, or on the constituents of any Senator on this floor; whereas the increase of the tax on coal will bear hard upon a whole community, and upon all its interests; and that is the precise difference between the two cases.