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PHYSIC FOR MOSS-BAGKISM.
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A Tax on Incomes.
The People’s party has with fore
thought and wisdom included a grad
uated tax on incomes as the best
means of defraying the expenses of
the government. While no other
organized party has done this form
ally, yet the speeches in Congress
and the discussion in the newspapers
clearly indicate that there is a strong
drift of public sentiment in this di
rection. The lines of progress, re
form ami civil and religious liberty
have always been wrought out and
secured on the questions as to taxa
tion and revenue. Edmund Burke
saw and expressed this great truth
in the English Parliament during the
debate on American affairs at the
commencement of the struggle that
resulted in the independence o f the
United States and the estabhshment
of this government. The revolution
of 1776 was caused by unjust and
unequal taxation. So also was the
revolution that culminated in the
death of Charles the II of England.
Illegal and unjust taxation brought
John Hampden to the front and arbi
trary taxation to a sharp and sudden
end. The second revolution in Eng
land that drove James II from the
throne and into exile, had its root in
the same cause. To unjust, grinding
exactions and extravagant expendi
tures may be distinctly traced the
impulse that pronounced the revolu
tion and reign of terror in France.
All history establishes the great
truth of Burke’s axiom that the lines
of progress, ami of civil rights are
along the hues of taxation. “ What
soever things were written aforetime
were written for our admonition.”
'rhe present situation of the finances
of this country, the injustice and ine
quality of all tariffs, internal revenue
laws and taxes on private enterprise
in the shape of license and privileges
10 puisue a vocation, are so oppress
ive that from all sides there comes a
demand for a tax on incomes as a
means of raising a public revenue.
A conservative and influential
newspaper of Democratic faith says
in an article on an income tax that,
“It is against public policy to tax any
income that is a normal result of in
dividual industry, whether in trade,
in production, or in professions.
Such taxes tend to restrict trade and
to cramp activity; but where the
income is clearly abnormal, where it
is derived from usury or other para
sitism, and where it is clear from the
amount of the income that the per
son who enjoys it is drairintj it'.from
the labor of others to whom he is
making no adequate return, then the
income tax is not a restriction of
activity but rather a check on
unjust accumulation. ”
This definition of a just income
tax made editorially in the St. Louis
Jbpublic of April 29, is almost per
fect, although the whole article shows
that the writer does not fully appre
hend the force and effect of his own
definition. “A graded tax on all
abnormal incomes” will imbrace
incomes under as well as “ over ten
thousand dollars a year. ” It is not
only necessary “ to relieve the strain”
as this editor says, but it is also neces
sary that an income [tax should be
just, uniform and equal, and that no
product of the laboring masses should
be touched or diminished thereby
because the laborer is -entitled of
right to the whole product of his
labor undiminished by any tax.
An income tax as ordinarily under
stood leaves out of view the source
from which the income is derived.
If it is the product of individual
labor in the utilization of the natural
force and resources of the earth, or
sea, or air, without any interference
with the equal rights of other men or
any special and exclusive privilege of
using the common {'property of all,
then an income tax would be clearly
unjust. Again, wealth is the product
of labor; capital is wealth in action
through applied labor producing
more wealth. The graduated income
tax as contemplated by its proposers
would take this wealth from its pres
ent owners and creators and put it
into the public treasury without any
discrimination as to the source from
which the income has been derived.
Leaving much unsaid for the
thoughtful consideration of the reader,
the assertion is made that there is
within easy reach an income tax that
will meet every |public need; that
will not touch the products of any
man’s labor, and that will arrest at its
source the robbery of the laboring
masses by monopolistic corporations.
The principle on which this tax is
founded is this: Individuals and all
jjublic corporations having spacial
PEOPLE’S PARTY PAPER. ATLANTA GEORGIA. FRIDAY. MAY 12, 1893.
privileges and exercising a public and
social function of such a nature as to
make free competition impossible—
such as telegraph, railroad, water, gas
and other like companies and corpor
ations— should pay into the public
treasuries of the nation, state, county
and city an income tax equal to their
gross receipts after deducting 2 per
cent annually on the actual cost of
their construction, eliminating all
fraudulent and watered stock, and
adding thereto the actual cost of op
erating and stopping all superfluous
salaries and offices.
Putting one for all of this class of
corporations, take as an example a
railroad corporation. The presence
of the people on its line of operation,
the products of their labor in agri
culture, manufactories, travel, trade,
etc., make up the whole of the in
come of the road. If there were no
people, no labor, and no interchange
of commodities, there would be no
income. Now, why should it not be
obligatory on the railroad that thus
derives its income from the public to
properly remunerate the public in re
turn for the exclusive privilege the
people have conferred, by putting
into the public treasury a fair pro
portion of its income ? For over and
above the fair cost of construction
ami operation, the whole product is
due alone to the people’s labor and
should go into the public pocket in
stead of the private pocket of Jay
Gould, Vanderbilt and other million
aires in ease or in expectancy. So
cialism or State ownership is not in
this question. We can do justice to
all the people and to labor by simply
changing our present mode of taxa
tion, and taxing out of the pockets
of the monopolies that portion oi
their income that is clearly earned by
the labor of the people. The immense
value of all these monopolies is only
fully realized when we take into con
sideration the faet that seventy men
in the United States own more than
$20,000,000 each, an aggregate of
$2,700,000,000. There are in the
United States to-day ten men whose
wealth averages $100,000,000 each.
Thomas G. Shearman, after a statis
tical and exhaustive examination,
concludes that 25,000 persons own one
half the w r ealth of the United States,
and that the wdiole w r ealth of the
country is practically owned by 250,-
000 persons, or one m sixty of the
adult male population, and he pre
dicts from the rapid recent concen
tration of wealth, that under present
conditions 50,000 persons will prac
tically own all the wealth of the
country in thirty years—or less than
one in 500 of the adult male popu
lation.
Now, nearly all this immense body
of wealth has been earned by the
people, and has been filched out of
their pockets by the cunning devices
concealed in the charters of the mo
nopolies that hold and exercise special
privileges in taxing the products of
the farmer and manufacturer, the
traveler and the trader. Take their
income at its source, and divert the
stream of gold that has been running
into the private vaults of Rockefeller,
Lorillard, Plant, and others of that
ilk, and turn the net income they
have enjoyed and not earned into the
public treasury, and add to it the in
come of the land and city lot specu
lators, and the ground rents of the
landlord, all of which are likewise
wholly earned by the people, and
there will be no further need for
tariffs, internal revenue, imports,
taxes on personal property, or taxes
on private and personal privileges
and ocupations.
In addition to all this, take the
power of coining or making money
and controlling its volume out of the
hands of the gold bugs and silverbugs
and the banks and money speculators
of Wall street, and put that pow'er
where the constitution places it, in
the hands of the w’liole people acting
through Congress, and let them de
termine how much money shall be
made and of what commodity—
whether it be nickel, copper, silver,
paper, gold or aluminum, and the
proportions of each, if any of them
are used, and there may be safely
predicted to follow an era of peace
and general prosperity.
J. Dennis Wolfe.
Pensacola, Fla.
Corporations—Their Uses and Abuses.
Fort Gaines, Ga., April 29.
There has been, perhaps, a time
when corporations tilled an honora
ble position in the channels of busi
ness. Before the days of combines
and monopolies to perfect the greed
and avarice of capital, corporations
acted the part of justice. In railways
competition brought about legitimate
freights; manufacturing gave the peo
ple goods controlled by competing
prices; banks, with competition, re
suited in living rates of interest and
a free circulation. But what are the
facts in this day of combine ? Each
married or given in marriage by the
corrupt ties of combine, the offspring
of w'hich is, as designed, oppression.
In railways we are forced to pay mil
lions as a tribute to watered stock.
With their corporate powers thev
have influenced legislation and robbed
the people of millions of acres of our
public lands in the way of land giants.
They, by .their influence, shape ap
pointments and elections, and our
courts are controlled to the extent of
judges shaping verdicts and constru
ing the laws so as to chain men to
their engines with as much grace as
the master chained his slave to the
plow in the days of slavery. The
family of manufacturers claiming in
fancy asked protection and exemp
tion from taxation. Our lawmakers,
under pretext of home industry,
granted their prayers. But where
uro we at, Mr. Editor? Paying mil.,
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PEOPLES PARTY PAPER, Atlanta, Ga.
lions of our scanty allowances into
the coffers of this licensed band of
oppressors. We are reaping the ben
efits of home industry by England
pricing our products, and America
robbing us fifty cents on the dollar
on the necessities of life; England
pricing our cotton at 64- cents, Amer
ica charging us seventy-five cents a
pound back in manufactured goods
under cover of home industry—the
products of our Southern mills being
bought cheaper in New York and
Boston than at the mills. Where are
the benefits of protection and home
industries? Deal! and buried by the
marital |ties of corrupt combines.
The money or banking system, from
the earliest days of our government,
has been questioned by our safest
and best men. Jefferson and Jack
son, followed by Calhoun and others,
always opposed corporate control.
Jefferson says: “For the safety of the
government and the good of the peo
ple the moneys of the government
must be separated from banking in
stitutions.” Jefferson foresaw the
evil fruits of corporate control. Ham
ilton, backed by the Federalist ideas,
favored the control by banks. Suf
fice it to say that the Hamiltonian
curse is upon us to-day, and as the
assumed followers of Jefferson are
now in power, it only remains to be
seen what disposition will be made
of it.
If Jefferson was right, those as
suming to sail under his colors should
give the people a currency independ
ent of corporate control. For if Jef
ferson could awake from the sleep of
death he would now see what he
foresaw while contending for the
rights of the people—a monopolized
currency and the demons of plutoc
racy buckling the collar around the
necks of the people; the issuance of
this currency delegated into the avari
cious grasp of the Shylocks at 1 per
cent and the people forced to pay 4
per cent. This system illustrated
(bearing in mind that the people
compose the government): A repre
sents the government, and B the peo
ple, and C represents Shylock, or
national banks. One hundred bushels
of corn is required for business uses.
A and B first control this corn, but
delegate its issuance to C at one
bushel rent. B calls on Cto borrow.
C. says its unconstitutional to let you
have it, but furnish D with your collat
eral and D can get it on these collat
erals at about four bushels rent. In
turn, D discounts and charges B, or
the people, forty bushels rent, the peo
ple being charged at the rates of forty
per cent on what Jefferson says was
the people’s corn. Is it possible that
a more perfect system of legalized
robbery could be practiced on apeople?
Some are proposing a clap-trap dodge
on State banks. Besides other rea
sons, this would only tend to open
up new fields for speculation. Jef
ferson’s idea was a currency based on
the wealth of the government instead
of the hoarded metal of the conspira
tors of Lombard and Wall streets.
Just so long as gold measures the
value of our paper circulation will
labor pay for the fiddling. Such
a currency measures, or fixes, the
price of labor and the products
of labor, based on a non-legal tender
against a legal tender or gold basis.
We sell our labor and products for a
legal or non-legal tender, and buy
necessities which have to be paid for
in legal tender or gold basis currency.
Beyond question we are paying
tribute to the goldbugs, and we are
prone to ask where we are at.
Mr. Editor, from a standpoint
backed by Jeffersonian principles, the
answer is: Lombard and Wall street
goldbugs fixing the price of labor and
its products, hoarding and holding
their gold in order to dictate the issu
ance of new bonds by the govern
ment on gold basis. What a picture
for free America! A few bloated
conspirators dictating its financial
policies ! We can only wait and see
as to whether the rights of the peo
ple or Lombard and Wall street will
prevail. G. W. Cropps.
Thinks a Crisis Imminent.
Lily Pond, Ga., May 3.
In view of the financial condition
and the political situation of this
country, it is evident to my mind
that we are rapidly approaching a
crisis which will either terminate in
war or the enslavement of the labor
ers of this country. Now, if any
man doubts this, then I ask him to
look at the financial condition of the
laborers, and then look at the attitude
of the rotten egg party and the atti
tude of both the old parties who are
so much in touch and sympathy and
harmony with each other that they
twain have become one party, their
interests and purposes are the same,
to oppress and enslave the laborer ;
and while the honest toiling men
who voted the People’s ticket are in
earnest and are determined to labor
for reform and relief, the combined
capitalists of this country and Europe
who own and dominate both the old
parties are more determined to en
slave us. The lines between capital
and labor are being so closely drawn
that it seems to me that any thinking
man can see that every possible
effort is being made by the capital
ists to put us in the most abject form
of slavery, and that soon it will be
done unless the people resort to arms
in defense of liberty.
Remember, when legislation is
proposed to prohibit the {publication
of reform literature, that I told you
so. Some of my People’s party
friends may think my views extreme.
I want to say to every People’s party
man, if you are afraid to fight and
don’t intend to fight, you had better
desert your party now.
J. 11. Kinnan. ,
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