Newspaper Page Text
December, 1915
THE ATL ANTI AN
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must mean that most men the world over love peace and
good will. There are no great festivals of hate and re
venge. When the common consciousness of the race
speaks in large terms it always announces some noble
sentiment—never an ignoble one.
In human progress, motive precedes mechanics—the
ideal is ahead of the reality. In imagination men first
talked across the ocean, and traveled under the waters,
and flew through the clouds; then they made the tele
graph, and the submarine, and the airship to fulfill their
ideal.
Permanent peace will come in the same way if it comes
at all. The people of the earth will decide in their souls
that peace is the best of all conditions for progress and
happiness; then they will devise the means of securing
it. The trouble with a good deal of the propaganda_for
peace is that it attempts to work wrong-end-first. You
can’t impose the most ingenious theory of peace upon
the nations until they first of all have a passionate desire
for peace and a determined resolution to have it.
For the good things that mankind has got, mankind
has paid a big price. Peace is the very best of all good
things upon this earth. A great price will have to bo
paid for it. The price is not the “sound and fury” of the
orator, “signifying nothing.” The price is not the pro
fessional thesis smelling the lamp. The price is not the
cautious contrivance of the financier. The price is the
sweat and tears of the people—the sweat of hard-think
ing, and the tears of long-deferred hope.
Favoring the Small Landholder
The rate of income and inheritance taxes is progres
sive; that is, the tax increases with the amount to be
taxed. Paraguay, in South America, has recently applied
this principle to direct taxation on land. By a recent
law, property valued at less than $5,000 is not taxed at
all. Land assessed at from $5,000 to $10,000 is taxed
$2 per thousand; from $10,000 to $20,000, at $2.50 per
thousand, and so on to properties exceeding $2,000,000
in value, which are subject to a tax rate of $9 a thousand.
In Paraguay this nine-dollar rate is only about one-half
or one-third of what is paid on the same land value in
this country.
Paraguay has also a “surtax” on unimproved land.
The law provides that, on land valued at $100,000 or over,
there shall be a 5 per cent tax for the first year of idle
ness, 25 per cent for the second, 35 per cent for the third,
. and 40 per cent for the fourth and each succeeding year,
unless it can be proved that at least 20 per cent of thq
value of the land has been expended in development. Fur
ther, the law provides that in assessing real estate only
the value of the land shall be considered;, nq tax is added
for improvements. Thus the Paraguayan system encour
ages the ownership of small homes and discourages the
holding of real estate for the purpose of speculation.
The suggestions the system offers are well worth the
consideration of our own law makers.
The Strength of a Nation
The strength of a nation is found in its working classes
—the men and women who earn their living by hard la
bor. A hundred years ago this class, in America, con
sisted largely of the rural population. They tilled theii*
own farms, or worked at trades as their own “bosses.”
The younger men “hired out” to their neighbors or serv
ed as apprentices or journeymen to local tradesmen, with
the expectation and ambition that at some early date
they would “set up for themselves.” 1
Now, things are very different. The mass of the labor
ers of the land are wage- earners, with little hope-of ever
becoming independent. Labor is controlled by the giant.
Capital.
But the workman is still the strength Of the nation.
Accordingly, it is absolutely essential to the prosperity
of the country, in peace or in war, that he be strong,
healthy and contented. “The laborer is worthy of his
hire;” and that hire should be sufficient for him to sup
port himself and his family through life in frugal com
fort. Unlss he gets so much he becomes enfeebled and
demoralized—a source of weakness to the nation.
Now it is a fact evident to all, that during the last
fifty years conditions have arisen which have, in many
instancs, made the income of labor far less than it should
be.' Too many capitalistic employers regard the laborer
as they reerard the machinery in their business—a tool
to be utilized to the utmost and then thrown into the
scrap-heap. Wiser statesmanship is. however, recogniz
ing the danerer of an insufficient wa^e. and is seeking
to avert impending evils bv enacting workingmen’s com-
nensatfoo laws, establishing a minimum wa<re. limiting
hours of labor, enforcing sanitary conditions in tenement
houses and workshops, and protecting childhood from
health-destroying labor. But there are still reactionar
ies who decry and oppose all such measures as an “in
terference with property rights.” They do not see that
the course they are takine is not only an infringement
upon the personal rights of the laborer to life and the
pursuit of happiness, but is actually destroying. the
strength of the nation—or, if they do see, they do not
care. /