Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — Crooked Taxation. [ARTICLE]

Crooked Taxation.

The great crime of our tariff Is that which is inherent in every tariff. It is the most ingenious and effective means ever devised for the plunder of the poor and the enrichment of the rich. Ido not now refer merely to direct robbery of the poor for the benefit of the rich through so-called protective and prohibitory measures; I refer to the whole system of indirect taxation which is founded upon tariffs and could not exist for a day without them. Indirect, or, as I always prefer to call it, crooked taxation, was invented in days when the mass of the people had, as a famous bisnop boastingly said, “nothing to do with the laws except to obey them." It owed its origin to the grasping desire of despotic governments and their agents to extort as much as possible from the people. The wealthy classes had a power of resistance which made it dangerous to push them very far. The tax-gatherers attempted to collect direct taxes from the people at large, but found the task tco laborious and costly; just as in Boston to-day the collection of poll-taxes from the poor costs more than the entire receipts from the poorer classes. Then it occurred to them that, by taxing the food and clothing of the people, they might compel the poorest to pay tribute out of their misery. As soon as the new idea was put into practice it was found that taxes upon consumption were productive of far greater revenue, with far less resistance upon the part of tax-payers, than any form of straightforward taxation which hpd ever been tried. So it was very acceptable to the tax-gath-erers.

After a short experience of crooked taxation, rich men everywhere realized that it relieved them from most of the burdens of government, and as they were gradually admitted into some share in public administration, they insisted upon the abolition of direct taxes and the substitution of crooked ones. In France and Spain the same methods were adopted and carried even further. Taxes upon food, clothing, furniture, buildings, and other necessaries of life, whether levied by a tariff upon imports or a tax upon home productions, are what are known in economic science as taxes upon consumption, and it is inevitable that such taxes should be paid principally by the poorer classes and only to a trifling extent by the rich. This is easily understood upon a few moments’ reflection. If bread is taxed, the 40,000 families who own half the wealth of this oountry cannot eat more bread than 40,000 day laborers’families, if as much. The 10,000,000 families who own less than one quarter of the national wealth will pay five hundred times as much of the bread tax, in proportion to their means of payment, as will the 40,000 favored ones. A single hungry newsboy will pay as heavy a bread tax as a multi-millionaire. What is true of bread is true, to a slightly less degree, of every other thing which is made the subject of crooked taxation. It will be said that luxuries are taxed, and that such taxes are paid ■only by the rich. But the amount of taxes which are or can be collected on pure luxuries, used only by the rich, is ridiculously small, compared with the entire public revenue. What are called luxuries are used largely by the poor; and the attempt, sometimes made, to justify taxes upon the poor sewing-girl’s ribbons, gloves, bits of lace, and tiny ornaments, as superfluous luxuries is an act of purse-proud arrogance and impudence for which no words are hot enough. There never has been, there is not now, and there never will be any system of taxationupon consumption which does not bear ten times as heavily upon the great mass of the hard-working people as it does upon the rich and prosperous, or which does not bear a hundred or a thousand times as heavily upon day laborers and sewing-women as it does upon the few men in whose hands many million's are concentrated. The result is, of course, that the small savings of the hardest-working .class are almost entirely swept away by crooked taxation, while the savings of the very rich are almost entirely untouched. Year by year the concentration of wealth in few hands goes on at ever accelerating pace.—Thomas G. Shearman.