Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1919 — Amusement Tax in Vogue More Than 150 Years Ago Declares London Writer [ARTICLE]

Amusement Tax in Vogue More Than 150 Years Ago Declares London Writer

The entertainment tax of the present day was anticipated over 150 years ago by the Inventive genius who proposed that all places of public diver-' slon. Including playhouses, operas, masquerades, Ranelagh. Vanxhall. Sadler’s Wells and Astley's—the famous resorts of the fair and fashionable of his day—should be taxed, saya a writer In London Tit-Bits. Another proposal was that the very statues in the garden—and the lakes and the groves, the grottoes and the temples of those days, were thick set with statues of heath'en gods and goddesses—should have a price put on their heads. Time was when taxes were put on the watches attached to the seals that dangled from the fobs of the beaux or hung on the girdles that encircled the waists of the belles. Those who owned clocks were also regarded as fit subjects for special taxation. The “guinea-pig” tax—the tax a householder had to pay for every person In his household who wore a pigtail and covered his hair with powder —had its day arftl passed away. ,So, too, had a tax on soap—the Impost that gave Lord North his nickname of “Old Soapsuds”—and a tax on salt. Gloves and mittens were once taxed, and so also were scores of other articles and the shops in which they were sold.———