Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/173



referred alone to slaves and lands and the improvements on lands.

The Supreme Court in the Pollock case extended and broadened the terms of this somewhat unfortunate compromise so that it now not only covers lands but income from land, personal property, and income from personal property. This decision was made possible by invoking a mere technicality, that is, that a tax upon the rents of land is a tax upon the land.

I am not going to discuss at this time the decision further than to say I am one of those who believe that the income tax decision is as indefensible as a matter of law as the Dred Scott decision, and fraught with far more danger in its ultimate effect, if it is to become the settled law of the land, to the Republic.

The income tax is the fairest and most equitable of all the taxes. It is the one tax which approaches us in the hour of prosperity and departs in the hour of adversity. The farmer though he may have lost his entire crop must meet the taxes levied upon his property. The merchant though on the verge of bankruptcy must respond to the taxes imposed. The laborer who goes to the store to buy his food, though it be his last, must buy with whatever extra cost there may be imposed by reason of customs duties.

But the income tax is to be met only after you have realized your income. After you have met your expenses, provided for your family, paid for the education of your children for the year, then, provided you have an income left, you turn to meet the obligations you owe to the government. For instance, according to amendments recently pending relative to the income tax, a man with an income of ten thousand dollars would pay the modest sum of one hundred dollars. "Man as a human being owes services to his fellows, and one of the first of these is to support the government which makes civilization possible."

It seems incomprehensible that anyone would seriously contend that property and wealth should not bear their fair share of the burdens of the general government. Adam Smith says, "The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."

Notwithstanding our large standing army, our large navy, our all but criminal extravagance as a government, men are found who still unblushingly argue that this burden must all be laid upon consumption and nothing upon wealth, that is, that the man of most ordinary means must pay practically as much to the general government as the man with his uncounted millions. It is strange indeed that men can bring themselves to believe in so unfair and unjust a position.

They soothe their consciences to some extent by saying that it is a just tax, a fair tax, and that the property should indeed bear