Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/65

Rh go round. Of course, the richer classes can buy what they need, therefore the ultimate and destructive burden of militarism falls upon the poor and the incapable. I think it cannot fail to be admitted that by so much as products are taken by the government for consumption outside the civil service, mainly for military purposes, in the form of food, fuel, metal, timber and the like, by so much is there less of these materials to be expended for subsistence and for the construction of dwelling houses, factories, workshops and the mechanism of productive industry. If such productive consumption is retarded by an excessive tax on inheritances or on incomes, then the accumulation of capital is retarded, and by so much must the rate of interest or profit be higher than it would otherwise have been. The distribution may be very remote, but it is very certain, unless one is prepared to admit the absurd cry of over-production and to defend a waste of substance by way of taxation in order to get rid of it.

All these material substances which are applied in the end to the supply of shelter, food and clothing are the joint product of land, labor, capital and mental energy. They are derived directly or indirectly from the field, the forest, the mine or the sea. There can be no large production conducted exclusively by labor; tools are necessary. Tools are capital, whether used by hand or worked by power. On the other hand, there can be no production exclusively derived from capital; tools and mechanism without human power or direction are inert. Land is the basis of all production, yet raw land is practically inert. Land is but a tool or instrument of production and has been so ever since the nomadic life gave place to civilized life. Again, there can be no great product, of either land, labor or capital, of either manual or mechanical work, without the directing or coordinating power of mental energy, bringing all these material forces to a constantly augmenting product in ratio to the number of persons occupied in their conduct.

If, then, the entire product of land, labor, capital and mental energy in a given period, consisting of four seasons or one year, is represented by the symbol A, that part of the product which is converted to the uses of government by taxation may be represented by the symbol B; then A minus B equals X, the unknown quantity. If X, the unknown quantity, is the share of the annual product of material substances used for shelter, food and clothing, then the whole burden of taxation, wherever imposed and however collected, with all the expenses of collection, be they greater or less, must fall in the end upon all consumers in proportion to their consumption by diminishing the quantity or value of X.

It follows that if the demand of governments takes so large a portion of the product that what is left is insufficient to meet the necessity and comfort of those who are not in the government service, then, as