be accounted for and paid into the treasury. This act was soon superseded by the present law. Other fees regulated from time to time by Congress are the municipal fees of all kinds in the District of Columbia. Fees for liquor licenses and for licenses. to innkeepers, peddlers, and many other occupations, have been fixed and changed again and again by Congress. One act which illustrates very well the tendency of changing from fees to regular salaries is that of 1842, which expressly prohibits any police official in the District of Columbia from receiving any gift, fee, or emolument other than his regular salary.1

24. Some Typical Fees collected in American State and Local Governments. Fees collected by authority of state or local laws are so numerous that only a few typical cases described by Professor Urdahl2 can be given here:

1. Fees for oil inspection.

First and foremost in importance is the inspection of oil or petroleum, if we may judge by the number of states which have deemed it necessary to enact compulsory oil-inspection laws. The oil-inspection legislation prob

1 Elsewhere (p. 191) the author says:

"Federal fees are the only ones of which anything like complete accounts are kept, and even here the reports are not detailed enough to make an exhaustive treatment possible. A special report made by the Secretary of the Treasury to Congress, stating the receipts and expenditures of the federal government for the year 1882, is the basis of the following table, which contains the aggregate of all the fees, excluding postal fees, collected by federal officials of that year":

2 The Fee System in the United States, pp. 155-156, 161-163, 163-166, 174-175,

186-189.

ably originated in the frequent explosions and consequent fires due to the inferior quality of the oil at first put upon the market. The modern oil-inspection laws may roughly be said to begin about 1880. A few instances may be found earlier, but the subject did not become of much importance until the great American oil fields had been discovered and exploited. Indeed, it is the aggressiveness and power of the Standard Oil and other companies, in keeping up the price and lowering the quality of the oil, which may largely be considered the cause of the later legislation on this subject. The consumption of oil increased enormously, until it became a necessity to everybody; and as the quality gradually deteriorated, popular discontent made itself felt in the form of legislation prohibiting the sale of any oil below a certain quality. Public oil inspectors were provided, usually by appointment, whose compensation consisted in fees fixed in amount by law. In general these were determined by the quantity offered for inspection at the time, usually a certain number of cents per barrel. Many states make the fees regressive in amount, in that the charge per barrel decreases as the number of barrels inspected at the time increases, from forty cents for a single barrel to ten or fifteen cents if over ten barrels are inspected at one time; while one state provides that the inspector shall be paid by the hour. The other state laws on the subject fix the fee per barrel ranging in amount all the way from ten to twenty-five cents, with no reduction for large quantities. Nebraska pays its oil inspectors fixed salaries. Minnesota requires all oil-inspection fees to be paid into the treasury, and other states limit the amount which an inspector can receive as his official income to a certain maximum.

2. Fees for marriage licenses.-The oldest and most common form of license regulations which has existed, and which exists to-day in some form or other in every state or territory in the Union, is that of the marriage license. This is one of the first and perhaps the most important of the regulations affecting that fundamental institution of human society-the family; and upon the character of this regulation depends the success or failure of the only direct interference which the state exercises over the marriage relation. It is an important function, which most states have neglected to exercise in the interests of society.

Only twenty-one states require any returns of marriages to be made to any state officer, and but few commonwealths have compulsory registration of marriages. It would take too long. to give even an outline of the public services performed for which the license fee is charged, much less to trace the causes which brought about the legislation. Suffice it to say, that the number and nature of the requirements, as outlined in the statutes of the different states, varies very decidedly. One state requires a statement of the age of the parties and proof of their competency to contract marriage, before the license shall issue; another prescribes that bonds be given as a guarantee that the parties are entitled to marry; another simply prescribes that the license, or the application for a license, be recorded in some office. Louisiana gives the probate judge power to suspend marriage, if any objections are raised, until a hearing has been had. Maine requires a notice of intention to marry to be recorded with the town clerk five days before the license is granted. Maryland requires an examination of the applicant for license, under oath, to ascertain whether any legal impediment to his or her marriage exists. Massachusetts requires notice of intent to marry. Pennsylvania requires parental consent in certain cases. These and many other requirements are deemed important enough to be enacted into law, and for the exaction of fees for the services performed by the officials in carrying them out. The enforcement of these laws, in thirty-five states, is left to a mere clerical official, the county clerk, county recorder, or some other registering official. In the other states the licenses are dispensed by the county or probate judge. The fees for these services of the officials, and for the license. proper, vary from 50 cents to $3. Several states require the fee for the license proper to be paid into the state treasury, and give the officials power to collect extra fees for their services. Most states, however, give the fees as perquisites of office to one or more of the officials concerned. In many of these cases the marriage license fee loses its most important function, namely, that of regulation. It was originally intended to be a payment for a privilege granted only in cases where it appeared advisable. Under this system, the pecuniary interest of the official is in many cases diametrically opposed to his plain duty under the

law. As a matter of fact, it is notorious that marriage licenses are rarely refused in any state. It is largely to this system that we owe the large number of wild and runaway marriages oftentimes contracted by mere children.

3. Fees for liquor licenses. To the great majority of the people, the word "license" will call to mind, or will mean, simply the permit to sell liquor, which is obtained in most states on payment of a certain sum of money. The license legislation on this subject alone, when taken together, shows a greater diversity in the different states than would at first thought seem possible. In most of the original states the license charges, as they exist to-day, are the result of a gradual increase of the amount charged at the beginning of the century. For example, the license fee in Rhode Island has increased from $4 in 1822 to $400 in 1896. Many of the new Western states have of course adopted laws which are taken directly from the statute books of Eastern states, and some of them have attempted new experiments in license legislation. Scarcely two states have exactly the same system. One state grants all the licenses directly through a state official, and receives all the fees into the state treasury; another state leaves both the power to grant the license and the revenue therefrom to the local political units. One commonwealth has a license or excise commission which grants. all licenses and turns half the proceeds into the state treasury and grants the other half to the counties and municipalities. In some states the counties are the most important political units, and the county commissioners or county boards are given power to grant all licenses. In others the cities, villages, and towns are given this power, and are allowed to use some or all the revenue derived from this source. But as a rule the state legislature gives the counties, cities, or towns power to grant the license only under the conditions it prescribes. In some states these are allowed a great deal of latitude in imposing restrictions on their grants, and oftentimes, too, in prescribing the amount of the fee. In a few states the localities are given "local option," as it is called, or, in other words, power to allow or entirely prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries.

4. Fees for incorporation of companies. - An incorporation fee is in most cases collected for filing the charter of articles

of incorporation. Six states charge only $5 and two charge less than this amount, while all the rest charge amounts varying from $5 to $100 for this service. It should be borne in mind, however, that the incorporation fees include all the charges made by the state under various heads, and that the total amount, instead of the individual fees, is the important consideration. The most common and the fairest method of gauging the incorporation fee is to make it proportional to the amount of capital stock. Five states have adopted this method in full, and charge from 10 cents to $1 per thousand dollars of authorized capital stock. Six other states have a slight modification of this system, in that they charge a certain minimum fee for any amount of capital stock up to a certain limit, and then collect from 50 cents to $1 per thousand of capital stock over this amount. A very large corporation would, under this latter system, yield some revenue to the state treasury. These fees were originally designed only to cover the expenses incurred by the state in granting incorporation rights and regulating them when granted.

5. Fees for judicial processes. - Sheriffs, constables, clerks of court, and other court officers are, as a rule, remunerated in the same way. In the older states scarcely any changes in this part of the fee system have been accomplished. The result is, that many of the court officials are receiving fees which were designed for conditions existing from fifty to one hundred years ago. Not only are the fees entirely unsuited in amount to the modern conditions, but many of the primitive forms and formulas are clung to with great tenacity. The following example will illustrate this: In the early courts the sheriff was usually the jailer, court messenger, and constable; this custom, once established, has been continued in most of the older states, and as a result the sheriffs pocket enormous amounts of fees for services which they are supposed to perform in these three distinct capacities.

In spite of the numerous and heavy fees the courts are nowhere self-supporting. Not even those courts which deal exclusively with civil cases and have all their docket fees and other fees are able to maintain themselves without heavy drafts upon the state or local treasuries. Reforms to remedy this