View Single Post
Old 10-24-2011, 06:53   #12
SF-TX
Quiet Professional
 
SF-TX's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 1,585
Quote:
Originally Posted by Longstreet View Post
Contractors lining their pockets to produce gear for US soldiers is nothing new. During the Civil War, the general feeling was whatever you had the guts to charge the Federal Government, you got. Sorry I cannot remember if this was the US Federal Government or the CS Federal Government or both.

jaYson

Robert Parker Parrott belies that statement.


Quote:
"...If I were a younger man [he said] I should return to the army, and do what I could to aid my country there; but at my age, and in my position, I am denied the opportunity of helping the Government in that way. But in this way I can be of use, and I intend that these guns shall cost the United States no more than is absolutely necessary."

This remark was called forth by the remonstrance made to him that the prices he fixed for his cannon etc. were unnecessarily low; that he would receive no credit from any one for his moderation; that the Government must purchase all that he could manufacture on his own terms (as was indeed the case), and that here was the opportunity, which could never occur again, to acquire enormous wealth.

Smiling in the quiet way habitual to him, he replied that he had no desire to possess extraordinary riches, and that he would rather not acquire them in that way; and then, with earnest seriousness, he spoke as has been quoted. As he had spoken so he did.

He furnished his ordnance and projectiles to the Government on terms most advantageous to it, and although the enormous increase in the cost of materials and labor, which occurred as the war continued, compelled him to increase his prices, those charged to the United States were certainly at no time equal to what he would have exacted from any other purchaser.

When the Internal Revenue law went into force, levying a tax of three, and afterwards five, percent on the value of manufactures, he was entitled to have it remitted on his products which he was furnishing to the Government on standing contracts entered into before the enacting of these laws.

He declined, however, to ask for such remittance, preferring to pay from month to month large sums, deducted from his legitimate profits, in aid of the necessities of his country.

So when the war, so long protracted, came happily to a sudden close in the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston, he had not long before concluded with the Ordnance Department a contract for a large number of guns and projectiles.

Knowing that the Government would now no longer require them, and having no wish to profit by furnishing what would be of not use to it, he made known to the Department that, although he was of course ready to fill the contract if it were desired, if it were considered to the interest to the Government to annul it, he was content that it should be done. The contract was accordingly canceled.

These instances of his upright conduct are not cited in the spirit of exalted praised, but as illustrative of his honorable character which, with the basis on which it was formed, this memorial is designed to commemorate...

Source
__________________
Ubi libertas habitat ibi nostra patria est

I hold it as a principle that the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict on the enemy. –Gen. Mikhail Skobelev
SF-TX is offline   Reply With Quote