Page:Is Capital Income, Earle, 1921.djvu/6

6 prescribed by the Supreme Court, as to the exact meaning of the original Constitution, the purpose for which it was introduced, and the dangers to Liberty which it was intended to remove. As Mr. Justice Holmes has clearly in such matters pointed out, economics and statesmanship are proper aids in reaching proper solution, a word upon these subjects may not be without value. It is universally acknowledged that all restraints upon trade ("which the law so abhors") are prima facie bad. Such restraints have been demonstrated for centuries to curtail trade. Freedom is the prime requisite for enlarged production, while servitude its surest restraint. It most certainly follows that provisions which inhibit men from transfering capital from one capital use to another, as the exigencies of business may require, leaving, of course, the enlargement of income that thus becomes available for Governmental purposes, must strongly tend not only to impoverishment of the community, but to the depletion of Governmental resources. No man of large business activity can honestly fail to testify to innumerable cases where both the National wealth and the Government's revenue have suffered from this very cause. A merely superficial inquiry would disclose endless beneficial transactions, that have been precluded by the fear that these necessary and productive shifts of Capital, (because of the pretense that they in some mysterious way changed in to "Income"), might thus result in its confiscation. Admittedly Capital is one of the prime necessities of employment and production, without which neither the people or the Government can thrive. Necessarily business is restrained from following its natural and productive bent, by, in effect, penalizing it for continuing its free course as determined by business requirements. This is greatly accentuated by