The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-20
DOWN WITH THE TAXES.

From the NJ Y. Herald
Is there nobody in Congress with eyes
sharp enough to see and brain weighty
enough to win the eminent position that lies
waiting for the public man who will lead
successful attack upon the giant Taxation
For some time past we have been peering
about with our lantern for some statesman
with tongue and head, decent knowledge
of arithmetic processes, a modicum of care
for the public good, and large share of am
bition, who will see and use this fine oppor-
tunity. We are surprised at that chronic de-
fault of ambition and arithmetic which leaves
us without champions of the peoples cause
in this question of purse and pocket and
more surprised are we at the patience of
an outraged, oppressed, and defrauded
people. Camels can and do rebel aud
bite when they are overloaded. Elephants
deposit their drivers and their burdens in the
river or the mud when those beasts more
intelligent than our taxpayers, it would
seem, are of opinion that the burden has
been unfairly adjusted to the back. Yes,
even COWS sometimes kick over the milk
pail, and the milkmaid in the bargain, when
they consider, after the reflection, that their
patient and useful teats are too vigorously
end exhaustively drawn on. But what will
wear out the slavish patience of our
tax paying body? What extremities of fiscal
oppression will they submit to before they
emulate the judicious camel, elephant, and
cow, and administer kicks to our dull finan-
cial tyrants that shall compel them to reform
their laundering ways?
We have run through the negro question.
Beginning with the abolition of the slave
trade and the slave-pens in the District of
Columbia in 1850, step by step all the legal
wrongs of the black man under our late in
stitutions and constitution of African slavery
have been righted; and in the recent ratifica-
tion of the fifteenth amendment we have
made Uncle Tom "a man and brother"
The Southern reconstruction question, which,
pending the conflict between the policy of
Congress and the policy of Andy Johnson,
threatened a long agitation and world
of trouble, has been substantially settled
by Congress and General Grant. The social
and political disorders which still at1lict the
South are but the natural consequences of a
political and social revolution tearing out the
old established order of things by the roots.
| These disorders can be cured only by time,
! although the idea still seems to prevail in Con-
gress that they can be cured by another dras-
tic purge or two of reconstruction. But he who
| looks at the recorded revolutions of the whirll-
gig of American politics for the last fifty years
will find that the two great revolutionary
issues of the country have been ''the almighty
nigger" and the almighty dollar" and that
when the Niger question has been temporarily
| pushed into the background the question of the
| almighty dollar has come into the foreground.
Thus, if Southern slavery was the great agita-
ton of 1920, the money question was the rul-
ing issue of the country from 1880 to 1850,
when the negro again came to the front and
threatened to tear the country to pieces.
After twenty years of sectional agitations and
conVulsions thus excited, including our ter
rible civil war, the negro question is setteld,
and now, with all the accumulated financial
difficulties of these twenty years, the
almighty dollar is again the all-absorbine
question, and especially in reference to oul
heavy, and needlessly heavy burdens, of tax
alton.
This question of taxation is rapidly becom
ing the foremost practical question of the
hour for all of us. The reaction of price.
from the inflated condition of the war ha.
now set in with intensity, and the gloomy
political condition of the Old World, reactinc
so powerfully as it does on all the values o.
our staples, threatens to precipitate alarm
- iDgly the fall in values. Our profit margins
are being abridged in all directions. Yet th'
tide of taxation still rises around the weaken
ing foundations of our house. Both IN th
Federal and the State departments of on
public affairs there is a constant tendency 3i
increase in the public burdens. And impu
dence reaches a height unparalleled in his