Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1886 — THE MORRISON INCOME TAX BILL. [ARTICLE]

THE MORRISON INCOME TAX BILL.

Indianapolis Sentinel: Mr. Morrison’s bill to levy an income tax to meet the continually growing demands upon the National Tre sury,especially in the great amounts involved in the number of pension bills and claims now before Congress and the Treasury, is one towards which the country has been rapidly tending from the reckless extravagance in the management of its resources. Indirect taxation from imports of foreign merchandise is yearly and rapidly lessening in results as the ti ade has been restricted, and in many caseb entirely destroyed, by the operation of the tariff impositions. The enormous sums annually expended by Congress must be raised in some way,|and as we have exhausted the sources of indirect taxation, and as the people would under no pircum stances permit the imposition of a stamp tax on necessities, the only resource is to tax hicomes, and however unpleasant this alter-* native may appear to the wealthier classes, who thus far have so largely escaped taxation, to this it must finally come. Soldiers have argued, and to our mind with justice, that in the dispensation of the property of the nation, as in grants to railroads, the management of currency, the powers in National Banks, aud the unfair, undemocratic disposition of national funds, themselves and the masses of the people have been unfairly dealt with. This feeling has penetrated to every class engaged in productive industry, creating a discontent that is involved in this very question of unfair disposition of the burden of taxation, through which industry not only carries tke entire burden, but actually pays a tribute to fiscal corporations and individuals.

That the enormous wealth produced in this country during the past forty years has resulted in so greatly widening the two classes into rich and poor, and which has created a great number of many times millionaires, while poverty has been on a continual and progressive increase, indicates that our application of national economies has been grossly unfair. This unfairness is directl / traceable to the unequal method of taxation whic : has left personal property, that includes money, bonds, securities, as well as mere chattels, free or nearly free from taxation. That this form of property has grown to such enormous proportions is clearly perceived in the fact that these hypothecations of real property have overshadowed, in fact devoured, nearly all forms of real property through which taxation is now levied. In the United States, upon an assessed valuation of $18,000,0c 0,000, sll, 000,000,000 are hypothecated into some form of security, which receives its profit in interests until this profit represents the productive or earning capacity of the realty upon which it is 1 ased, and yet pays no adequate share in the expenses of government, which are thrown on the original realty that is already overburdened with an interest accDunt. All the vast expenses of the civil war have been paid out of productive industry, and by the soldiers who fought and the farmers and artisans who maintained the

contest. It represents alone more than $8,000,000,000, and this vast amount has in one or another way gone into a few, a very few, pockets, while legislation in all ways has adjusted t txation to that end, and gone further on the road to national poverty by failing to make tnese pockets sustain their share of its costs and interests. Five millions of tenant farmers out of total of s ven and a half tell this story plainly enough. Men with their hundreds of millions, accumulated in less than a generation, tell it in a different way. Mr. Morrison’s bill, however it may be received by the class who have controlled, and yet control legislation, will be the most popular move ever made in America. He can not hope to succeed with it now, but lie has opened a question so fun amental to the necessities and the interests o# Americans, and in fact to the world, now staggering under loads of debts, which create a single plutocracy in every form of government, that its success is ns certain as fate, or as it is founded upon equities primarily essential to the free governing and prosperitv of any people. It is one of those fundamental questions that govern many grave but inductive evils. It is a crystalization so long needed to make an effective unity of popular interests of all the politico-economic questions that have engaged the attention of the American people for the past fifteen years. Ex-Sheriff John W. Rowell has leased the Halloran Livery and Feed Stables, and respectfully solicits a liberal share of the public patronage.

• Who is it that opposes free lumber ? Tne seore of lumber lords of Wisconsin and Michigan who are fattening off the tax laid upon their fellow citizens, while they pay the men in their employ starvation wages. Who is it that wants free lumber ? Every man in America except the aforesaid lumber lords and their paid attorneys. Which of the classes would our statesmen prefer to offend? It is for them to decide; but, though we are not practical, it seems to us that it would be much safer to throw overboard the first class than to incur the enmity of the second. Yet a vote against Mr. Morrison’s bill would mean that he who cast it thought it good statesmanship to tax 60, 000,000 of people sos the benefit of perhaps a hundred. “Whoso is wise will ponder these things.”—lndianapolis Freeman. Every republican member of Congress from Indiana, including Owen, from this district, voted in the interest of the monoply lords and against the Morrison bill.

The new display of Goods, selected and bought by such a combination of experience and taste as Mr. and Mrs. Ludd Hopkins may justly claim to have, will certainly sell at the prices offered. —

The female critics who have been finding fault with Miss Folsom for being mairied at the White House have at last been silenced. An English paper affirms that she was married at the residence of her Unde Sam. It i? a notorious fact that Leopold gives greater bargains than any other house iu town. Call and examine for yourself. Mrs. Mulvaney, the laundress: “Indade, ma’am, and it’s miserable I am. I’m but just on me feet wid the pain in me back, an’ J immy, he’s as bad off; be has a cough on um that sounds loike an empty bar’L Cough for the lady, Jimmy!” Special prizes are offered for tli&. largest two G. A. R. posts in the the line of march, for the best uniformed post in attendance, and for leader of best band in attendance on the Encampment, Lafayette, July 29,1886.