Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/18

8 subject. Each one, indeed, seems to argue to himself that "as government and society went on very well without thought or care of mine during the first twenty years of my life, they will undoubtedly so continue during my manhood." And if they eventually become public functionaries, their tendencies, conjoined with not having inherited or acquired the value-perceiving faculty, are toward extravagance and waste in governmental matters. What would have been saved to the people of the United States since the beginning of the civil war through wise methods of taxation is almost beyond conception. The loss to the Federal Government during the single year 1864, when revenue was most needed on account of the war, through a needless imperfection of the law imposing taxes on the single item of distilled spirits, was proved to have been in excess of $50,000,000.

In short, it is a most singular idiosyncrasy of the American people, and perhaps the people of all other countries, that they will defer or neglect the study of the most vital question which can concern a citizen. Probably not more than one citizen out of a hundred, even among those who pay taxes, can be induced, as a rule, either to talk about, think about, or study how much national Government costs him per annum, or how much his State or local government costs. And as long as this is the situation, and until the American citizen does become a student of taxation, it is difficult to see how the national and State governments can be wisely and justly managed.

Of the utter lack of comprehension of the results of what may be termed everyday experiences of taxation, coupled with a general indifference to the subject, which often characterizes American legislators, even such as are popularly regarded and spoken of as statesmen, the following incidents will abundantly illustrate: Pending a recent presidential election, a distinguished member of the Senate of the United States, and also of the American bar, assured a popular audience that the people of the single State of Illinois paid a larger amount in taxes to the Federal Government than were paid by all the people of the former Confederate States. Such a statement was obviously made on the assumption that because the State of Illinois annually manufactured a very large amount of distilled spirits, the burden of a very heavy tax on the same rested upon its people; when a very little thought would have shown that the manufacturers of. the spirits incorporated the tax in the market price of their product, and that the payment of the same fell entirely upon the people who consumed them, who were not in the main the people of Illinois. If this was not the case, the manufacturers of Illinois paid and assumed a tax obligation of ninety cents a gallon for the privilege of making whiskey costing and worth an average of but thirteen cents per