Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/182

172 modified form, is probably the situation throughout the State of Massachusetts.

In Pennsylvania the State Constitution makes the payment of a State or county tax, at least one month before election, a prerequisite to the exercise of suffrage; and as the poll tax involves the smallest amount of tax that a citizen could pay, it was expected that almost every man would pay it. But, in point of fact, it was found that thousands of citizens neglected to do so, and the political campaign committees, irrespective of party, recognizing this fact, have adopted the policy of furnishing voters whom they desired to influence with receipts for the payment of their poll taxes; and this practice has attained to such magnitude in recent years, that the two leading party organizations in the city of Philadelphia alone purchased in the year 1894 over ninety-five thousand such receipts. Obviously this is a form of bribery which is forbidden by the spirit if not by the letter of the law; and to meet such a situation of affairs the Legislature of Pennsylvania has recently (1897) enacted a law forbidding the payment of a poll tax by any other person than the elector against whom such tax is assessed. During the American colonial period some attempts were made to compel the exercise of suffrage by imposing a fine on citizens neglecting to vote at regular elections; the fine imposed in Maryland on citizens in default of such action having been one hundred pounds of tobacco. But since the adoption of the Federal Constitution no legislation of like character is believed to have taken place in any of the States until 1889, when Kansas City adopted a charter provision imposing a tax of two dollars and a half on each citizen who should fail to vote at a general election. This provision coming up for review before the State courts of Missouri, was affirmed in the first instance by a Superior Court judge, who took the ground that "in the enlightenment of the present age it is in the power of the State to compel its voters to exercise the election franchise, and if the State can do so the city is invested with the same power." After enumerating many things of an arbitrary nature that are done to maintain good municipal government, the judge said that he could see no legal objection to the use of the taxing power for the purpose of securing a full and perfect expression of public sentiment and the election of competent and worthy men to public offices. The position was an advanced one, he admitted, but not an unreasonable one, in view of the fact that "the highest type of government is attained when every voter casts his vote, and that vote is counted just as it is cast." On an appeal to the Supreme Court of the State, the provision was, however, declared unconstitutional, the language of the decision being as follow: "Taxes may be levied," it said, "in money or in services having a money value to the public, and he who pays in money does not necessarily have to pay more or less than he who pays in services, and vice versa, and it is upon this principle that these taxes are upheld; but who can estimate the money value to the public of a vote? It is degrading to the franchise to associate it with such an idea. The ballot of the humblest in the land may mold the destiny of the nation for ages."

Neither of the judicial authorities above referred to seem to have grasped the great principle essential to the continuance of every truly free state—that the power of taxation should not he invoked for police purposes, but be strictly limited to the raising of revenue to meet legitimate state expenditures.