Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1888 — A Tax Is a Tax. [ARTICLE]

A Tax Is a Tax.

The people should not forget that a tax is a curse. The United States is spending $267,000,000 a year, and that money must be raised or that expense lessened. A cloud of pension lawyers and a host of demagogues surround the Treasury, hammering on the doors with their leathern tongues, urging a levy of $500,000,000 for pensions alone. Whether there is to be free trade or a Chinese wall, there will still be a tax of at least $267,000,000. The Chinese wall simply affords the oasiest way to collect the most onerous tax. The producer pays the bill, whatever it is, under all systems. In England twenty articles are subject'to duties. The rich and well-to-do pay the rest of the tribute—s42s,ooo,ooo—by licenses, stamps, fees, and various direct tax payments. But in the end the workers bear the whole burden. The tenant pays the landlord enough money to leave some for the tax. But the subsidies made possible by the American tariff on 4,000 articles are in England restricted to twenty articles, on which the internal tax equals the external, as was the case In America on the 4,000 articles in war times. America raises $200,000,000 by tariffs. This the producers pay, and with it a billion of ‘protection."— Chicago Herald.