Hope Republican, Volume 1, Number 3, Hope, Bartholomew County, 12 May 1892 — Page 3

COMMENT- , Jndianal Tax Law Ably and hly Dissected. Fttrn/* ajr th ® Increased Taxes ypTrs—Other Interest1 litlcal Notes. \ LrS NEW TAX LAW. M ’ jB Icaiana POlts Journal. 1 t Uthe Democratic State n 0 /erenoe to the new tax 1 1 ’]Jh the following: stateUl/ * n^orse the new tax \ ' J pnd benificent act by ; a eased revenues neccesV M'm support of the State \ mo 1-6 raised entirely from \ lnohs df'the State that Jhad| re unjustly escaped their JfaiiT 0D taxation. M jiinly a strange thing that M so V°dy of honest men should Jr. ■ }'> the people of this State J Jt b° palpably false as the Jrtainly no such statement “it form can deceive the taxI -taers. figures touching the last asSessments can be found in the reports of the State Auditor, and the other evidence necessary to show the falsity of the above statement wll be found in the tax receipts held b, the tax-payers. By referring to the Auditor's reports for 1891 and 1892, we can readtget the exact figures. The total rease referred to as ‘‘necessary the State government is $1,226,—that is, the State taxes this jfcar, if paid, will be $2,249,654. ins ead of $1,023,160 last year. They Sty this increase of $1,226,494 is praised entirely from the State.” '■ he taxes to be paid this year on na1 ed farm lands is $807,545.02, instead 1 t $373,731.60 last year, which shows ■ icreased State taxes to be paid on aked farm lands this year to be 436,613.90, with increase in State axes to be paid on improvements on ■ arm lands amounting to $60,622, i laking the increase on farm lands nth improvements thereon to be #497,244.91. which is much more than One-third of the total increase. The i lereased State taxes on lots and ira- ; Movements this year over last year fro., lands, lots and improvements is p $773,494. The total increase in the State f taxes on personal property, which ( includes raiiroals, is $453,218. Of s this increase $205,742 is shouldered on the railroads, leaving $247,776 increase in the State taxes on all other personal property. Assuming that corporations pay one-third of this increase on their personal property, which is certainly a safe presumption. the result is that the increased taxes to be paid on personal property by persons not corporations is $164,984. On personal property belonging to corporations other than railroads the increase is $82,492. A summery of the above figures, then shows that railroads and other corporatians pay an increased State tax this year of $2-8,234, while the rest of the tax payers pay an increased State tax of $938,260, nearly two thirds of which inci’ease, about $600,000, is paid by farmers. So i that corporations, instead of paying i all the increase, pay only 234 per Icent. of it, while the rest of the taxpayers pay 764 per cent of the increase. Thus, it will be observed, over three-fourths of the increase in State taxes falls upon tax-payers that are mot corporations, and no statement in any platform can blind the people to this fact. A tax receipt will be ivery convincing evidence. Farmers have to pay double the State taxes on their lands this year that they did last year, and it will not soothe their wounded feelings very much to be told by the Democratic party that iftll that increase is being paid by corporations. In regard to the latter part of the above statement, that “corporations theretofore have unjustly escaped their fair proportion of taxation,” it ,can be said that no credit whatever for the increased assessment of railroad and corporation property can be given to the new tax law. The [jnembers of the State Board of Equalization deserve whatever credit there is atttached to such increased assessment. The former State boards which, for a number of years, have Ibeen Democratic were under the same obligations, exactly, imposed by law, to assess these railroads at their real value. The only change made in the new law regarding corporations refers to inquisitorial powers; but since, as wa all know, that gower was not reported to by the •'.ate board except in the case of ankers, and was not complied with y them, it can be truthfully said hat the new tax law had no effect whatever in increasing the assessoents of corporations more than hat of other persons. The platform further states: “We commend the Legislature for j refusing to adopt Governor Hovey’s I recommendation to increase the State j levy from 12 cents to 25 cents on the j •flOO, and for meeting the necessary expenses of the State benevolent in- I

stitutions by a levy of 6 cents on the $100.” The great mistake made by the last Legislature was in not following Governor Hovey’s advice to increase the levy if it were necessary to have more revenues, instead of both increasing the levy and establishing a new basis and rule in the assessment of property. A great wrong worked by the new tax law was in establishing a new basis of assessment in place of the old one, which was settled and established after several years of assessment and equalization by ail the assessors and boards in ail parts of the State. The only desirable ob'ect in assessing property is to make the assessments throughout the State equal and just to everybody. It makes no difference if that assessment be two-thirds of what the property may sell for or the true value; whether it be the market value or the value by forced sale—only that some one S3 T stem be adhered to. Now, tiie old system had been used for a number of years, and the basis of value was understood bv the assessors, and the former books ef the assessors could be used in making a new assessment. During all these years the county and State boards of equalization have been trimming down the assessments that were too large and increasing those that were too small, working each year with the former year’s work as a basis, so that it is believed that a more equal and just assessment could not be made than the one in 1890 and a few years prior thereto, for it was the product of years of equalization. The new tax law virtually casts aside the former assessments and records of the assessors and adopted a new basis. | The result was that some who were filled with the spirit of the Legislature put the values up to the highest notch, while others who did not concern themselves much with the matter made the values about what they were in the previous years. Every assessor and every county board, therefore, had its own peculiar basis of valuation, so that when the figures reached the State Board it was impossible for the State Board at one session to alter them so as to make them equal and just throughout the State, and it can safely be assumed that it will require a dozen years of work by the county boards and the State boards to get the assessment under the new regime as equal and just as it was under the old law. The glaring inequalities of this new assessment have been pointed out before, and there is no need for me to state them again here. Hence I repeat that if the Legislature had adopted Governor Hovey’s advice and left the basis of assessments the same, but had Increased the levy from 12 cents to something over 26 cents, they would have raised the desired amount of revenue Without throwing any unequal or unjust burdens on any section of realty in the State. The platforn further says; “We denounce the infamous conspiracy of the Republican county commissioners, township trustees, and other officers of Indiana, who, for the purpose of creating an unfair prejudice against the new tax law, have wantonly and needlessly increased the local taxes in the fortysix counties controlled by them more than $1,250,000, a sum greater than double the increase of State taxes in the entire State. We call on the taxpayers of those counties to rebuke at the polls those local officers who have put this needless and oppressive burden upon them.” Not having any figures from the forty-six counties above referred to, I cannot discuss this statement, and cannot say whether it be true or false. If it be true, I unite with the Democrats in asking those counties to rebuke those local officials, who, it they have done what is charged against them, have acted very foolishly, and with their eyes open. Still, they have not done more than the last Democratic Legislature, which has needlessly altered the tax laws of the State, and increased State taxes, so that whatever argument they can bring against the Republican county officials applies with equal force to the last Democratic Legislature and the party which has just indorsed the new tax law, and the opponents of that law can justly “call on the taxlaws of the State to rebuke at the polls” the party which has “put this needless, iniquitable and oppressive burden upon them.” WOOL GROWING IN INDIANA. Albert Yount in Indianapolis Journal. The Indianapolis Sentinel says: Ninety-nine per cent, of the wool growers of Indiana never attend this association, and most of them have too much sense to desire the continuation of a wool tariff under which the price of wool has continually decreased. The Sentinel is right—wool has declined. Has not American cotton j declined 40 per cent.; has not Amer- ! ican wheat declined 20; has not forj . ign wool declined 30, while American wool, consumed entirely at ho ne and never exported, has only deI dined 10 per cent. The Sentinel

doubtless gets information on wool prices from the House ways and means committee, which falsely asserts that for the past twenty-three years American wool has averaged a little less in price than foreign wool. The committee, to sustain this misstatement, compares Port Phillip .skirted, spout washed wool, shrinking 10 per cent,, with Ohio unskirted washed, shrinking 10 per cent. All these different grades of Port Phillip wool, when scoured, sell in England for 34 cents per pound, while protected medium Ohio sells for 70 cents per pound. The following from Justice, Bateman & Co., who know present prices of American and foreign wools of every grade, should convince any ono of the folly of free wool: In London, the principal wool market of the world, wools are sold in all sorts of greasy condition, and all sorts of prices, ranging from a few cents a pound for the heavy, greasy pieces up to the highest price for the cleanest scoured. These widely differing fleeces must be scoured, carded and combed, and must be brought to an even and uniform condition before they can be prepared for spinning into worsted yarn, and these scoured, carded and combed wools are commercially known as “tops.” The practice abroad of selling wool at private sale usually involves a representation of the yield in tops and noils,and the grease price is fixed accoringly. For the purpose of a comparison of American and similar qualities of foreign wool, unlike in the grease condition but exactly alike in fibre, it is necessary to reduce both to the condition of tops, so that when they are compared they shall be alike in every respect. To this end the two diagrams herewith show the prices of American and foreign number 60’s tops, which is the quality made of Ohio XX and similar grades of foreign wool. The course of prices from May, 1891, to March, 1892, for American and foreign No. tiO’s tops thus compared show a decline of only 6 3-5 percent, in protected American tops, as against a decline of 26 per cent, at the same time in foreign tops. This conclusively proves that under the protection of 11 cents per pound given by the McKinley bill to the wool grower, and the protection which the McKinley bill also gives to the laborer in the mill, No. 60’s American tops cost 85 cents per pound, while the English tops, made of free wool and by labor paid at the rate of II, or less, in Europe, as against |4 in the United States, costs only 37 cents, or 48 cents per pound less than the American protected tops. The Sentinel says no one in Indiana follows sheep raising as a business, exept a few fancy breeders. Then I suppose by the same reasoning no one in Indiana follows wheat raising for a business because they happen to raise a little corn. No one raises hogs for a business if they raise a few chickens. The fact is about sixteen hundred farmers marketed their wool in Montgomery county in 1891, and they make a business of it, and on account of the requirements of a woolen mill in the county competing with buyers of other mills in Indiana. The Hon. Jasper N. Davidson has said (what is well known over western Indiana) that Montgomery county wool dealers give the wool grower 3 cents per pound more for their wool than dealers in the rest of the State. This increased price on the amount purchased in the county would pay the wool tariff on 1,500 suits of good wool clothes. And all this is brought about by home competition for the wool. In closing his message on the Chilean affair the President said: “I have as yet received no reply to our note of the 21st inst." Thereupon Breckenridge of Kentucky offered his resolution calling on the President to state “whether any answer has been received either from our minister to Chili, Patrick Egan, Esq., or from the Government of Chili, to the dispatch sent by the Government of the United States on January 21st.” Ip other words the President was to bo asked whether he had lied or not in the message he had Just sent in. Ordinarily an imputation like this might be expected as the natural expression of Kentucky Bourbonism, but in this instance it was made at a time when the President was entitled to the hearty support of men of all parties in upholding American honor. Breckenridge, however, was true to his exConfederate sympathies and prejudices, and he was heartily applauded on the Democratic side of the House by other ex-Confederates who showed that they would rather embrace the opportunity to stab a Republican President in the honor of the flag. Mrs. Van Neering (hiring her first butler) —“And you are sure you are fully conversant with the duties of a butler and will not need any instructions?” ’Ennery 'Obbs (reassuringly)— “That’s hall right, me leddy. Nc von shall hever know butvbat you've been used to a butler hall yer life.” —Puck.

1 QUESTION OP LABOR. So-Called Human Slavery In Indiana me Prof. John C. Ridpath Sees It, Indianapolis News. The following are extracts from an article on the wage system by John Clark Ridpath, of Greencastle: The wage-system of industry is about to end. Civilization has reached a stage which will po longer tolerate the pui-chase and sale of human labor. The law of evolution is working here as elsewhere. A great change is impending over the industrial order of the world. Time was when slavery went unchallenged Time is when even the system of wage hire is unchallenged. Time was when capital was capable of purchasing not only labor, but the laborer. This was simply the right of perpetual hire. The purchase and sale applied to the man himself, and thereby he became a slave. * * * The man may be no longer sold under the wage sytem, but his labor only. One man might no more buy another man as to his body, and muscles,and brain, but only the exertion, the labor of that other man. Thus, instead of slavery came the prevalent system of wages—the sale and purchase of human toil. Without doubt there is good ground for preferring wage hire to human bondage; but this by no means implies that the wage system is the final form which civilization will invent, or that men will be satisfied forever with the buying and selling of their productive power. As a matter of fact, the increasing enlightenment of the age has brought a knowledge of the injustice, hardships, cruelty and universal unhappiness springing out of the wage hire system. There is an agitation reaching down the sea-bed of humanity, and if we mistake not the purchase and sale of human labor as a commodity of the market can not much longer continue. After showing how the wage system became general, Mr. Ridpath says; In the present case the error has been in the assumption that labor is simply a commodity of the market. As a matter of fact, it is no such thing. It is amazing to reflect upon the harm to humanity and the blight to progress which have come through a failure to recognize the truth that labor is not logically, or in fact a commodity at all. Is labor a product? Is it a thing which results objectively from human exertion? Is it tangible? Can it be weighed, or seen, or measured? Certainly not. Corn is a product, and beef, and implements, and vehicles, and clothing. These things have been produced by labor; but thy are not themselves labor, nor may be classified as labor, or as a thing of -the same kind. Labor is a part of the laborer. It is himself in action. It is impossible to conceive it as separated from him. To buy labor is to buy part of the laborer, that is, a part of the man —not all of him, but a, part. To regard labor as a product, to sell it and to buy it, are acts so nearly akin to the sale and purchase of human beings as to give us a shudder. In the further discussion of the position that labor is a commodity, Mr. Ridpath asserts: Labor can obey the law of supply and demand only in the same sense and same degree that men obey it. You can .deal in labor by dealing in men. You can make it abundant or scarce by producing an abundant or scarcity of men. You can raise it or depress it by raising or depressing men. You can corner it by cornering men. Labor is, in a word, an attribute of man. These ideas which can be here no more than merely stated in words, are acting as a ferment in the thought and nope of our age. They are as yet not consciously, but unconsciously entertained. They are entering the consciousness of the people. They will presently become spoken and written thought and will then take form in the great change which ,s to mark the end of the wage-sys-tem of industry and bring in the system of co-operation. Mr. Ridpath concludes bis article with the prqphecy of anew adjustment along the line of co-operation thus; The animosity of capital and labor depends for its force upon the fact of competition, and upon the determination expressed in the false dictum nf political economy that labor is a commodity to be bought and sold. The new age shall bring with it new ideas, new interpretations, and, in particular, new adjustments between accumulated labor —which is capital —and the current labor of men. Each shall have equal claims upon all products, all values, all the objects of desire, all the the means of happiness; that is, equal claims proportional to the parts which labor and capital have contributed. Cooperation shall supervene in the place of that cruel system which has bartered and sold the labor of human beings as though it were an objective material product. No'problem of to-day is more important than

that of the sate and easy >/.. ence of society from the wag tern of industry to the system j\ peaceable universal co-operati >a. PEOPLE. Baron von Felder, of Vienna, has sold his famous collection of butterflies to Lord Rotschild, of London, for $25,000. Senator Carlisle recently received a $25,000 fee for winning a suit involving $200,000 before the Kentucky Court of Appeals, The collection of old painting presented to Chicago by Charles T. Yerkes embraces eighty-two pictures, worth in all $150,000. Ex-Senator Edmunds has been the guest of Senator Blcalcburn, in Kentucky, and showed himself to be u thorough horseman. Dr. Mary P. Jacobi, in New York, and Dr. IVIary Hoxon, in Washington, are each reputed to earn $40,000 a year at their profession. Commodore Henry Bruce, of the United States Navy, is 95 years of age, and is supposed to be the oldest living naval officer in the world. Jackson, the new Irish Secretary, in a few months has already crossed the Irish Channel oftener than Balfour did during his five years’ incumbency. Ex-President Cleveladd has been invited to be a guest of President Frank Jones, of the Boston & Maine railroad, at Sorrento, Me., the coming year. Prof. Richard T. Ely, recently called from Johns Hopkins to the Chicago University, will be at the head of a summer university in Michigan, the Bay View, this season. Parnell’s widow is said to be very fond of birds. Her house in Walshingham Terrace, Brighton, is full of songsters. Even in her boudoir she keeps brooding cages for canaries. The largest congregation in America is St. Stanislaus Kostka, in Chicago. which has 30,000 communicants. The number of attendants at the several services every Sunday frequently exceeds 15,000. Roger Q. Mills is said to havebeen greatly moved when he left the House for the last time as a plain member. He was always liked in the House, though he was so aggyf-'sw'C. Max O.Rell says that everyone, except kings of the prime- ministers, like to be interviewed; and he considers it a compliment to be asked to give a newspaper his ideas. Voltaire did not belive in the If 1 | as a medium of communication fur 1 lovers. He claimed that the. oilj I advantage of the post was thats I woman could let her lover know a- J* actly what she was not doing. N Burnish must be a heavenly r for women. In that country • members of the fair sex select the., own husbands, and when they tire of them procure a divorce for the asking and marry again. The liking Baron Hirsch, the Aus - trian many-millionaire, has for Eugglaud seems to be daily increasing. Having recently established himself in a permanent home in London he is looking about for a country estate. ' John Haines, of Danville, 111., ' . troubled for some time with a v P throat. He gradually grew until he lost his voice. Last t 0 J he coughed up a brass pin, a. / afterward recovered his voice f Announcement is made in York of the engagement of iy Blanche Havemeyer, granddaug’ of ex-Mayer William F. Ha vein to J. Adair Campbell, son of . Campbell, of Dumbartonshire. . land. . THE MAN WHO TRAMPS. Hungry Higgins—’Fi had a m.-vJ , plunks I wouldn’t work any Weary Watkins —Work aihrtao' W’y— " l\ “Any more n I do now. Why cat. you wait till I gits troo me say? 9 Indianapolis Journal. First Tramp—There ain’t goir be good livin’ for our professioi 11 the future, I’m afeard. Second Tramp—Blow me! ’Ow’s that? “It’s this ’ere civilization. These cookin’ schools is teachin' gals ’owto use up the cold wittels. —Drake's Magazine. Tramp—Good mornin’, mum. Is yer husband ter home? Ancient Lady—I never had a husband. Tramp—1 don’t see no dog here. Lady—I never kept a dog. Tramp—I s’pose some o' yer mule relatives live with ye? Lady (suddenly regarding tramp closely and suspiciously)—No; but I ought to have a man around to — Tramp (hurrying away)—Woo! I forgot this was lep,p year!—Judge. Sago—of which the small white variety called the pearl is the best, the large brown kind having a disagreeable earthy taste—should always, be kept in a closely covered box or jar.