Page:Rise and Fall of Society.djvu/137

 unwitting ally of the socialists, who really despise him for his lack of spiritual understanding.

The best-advertised reform in all history was that effected by Joseph the Provider. The Bible tells us that the whole thing started with a dream, which is quite characteristic, because all reforms germinate in fantasy. In this case, the evil that Joseph sought to correct was an inadequacy in the ways of nature; or so the story says, although it might be that the hurt visited on the Egyptians by famine was intensified by Pharaoh's taxes; we have reason to believe that taxation, not profligacy, left little with which to tide over the depression. Joseph thought otherwise, and his remedial proposal proved quite pleasing to Pharaoh because it involved the imposition of a new levy. (Here we have the earliest known case of "taxation for social purposes.")

Joseph's reform was so sure-fire, airtight in every respect, that Pharaoh adopted it with alacrity. And, of course, he lifted the reformer right out of his seat in Potiphar's jail to the seat of prime minister. What was the result of the reform? The twenty-percent income tax which Joseph collected during the years of plenty piled up in the public treasury, as intended, but when the hungry workers asked for a return, as promised, they were informed that there was a purchase price on their confiscated property. The price, at first, was all their capital, their stock, and their lands, and when that was gone, being hungry, they sold themselves into slavery to Pharaoh. Thus, Joseph's reform did what all reforms do, it increased political power. Maybe Joseph did not intend it that way—reformers must not be blamed for the contrariness of their reforms; he was, perhaps, deficient in his knowledge of political science, from which he might have learned that 113