The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1891-06-05
ARE TAXES EVER A BLEssINGq

n ldOOIllB man Ol mlnuCsoOd MllVS'
the New York Tribune in reply to II. G.
Horr's recent articles on the tariff ask
ing the following questions:
/. What does he (AIr. HOrT) mean
when he says, "a tax may be bless
ing?'
2. Are not all taxes of necessity bur
dens?
3. Why should not the government
own and operate the railroads and tele-
graph lines?
4. Why should not the government
issue all the paper money needed by the
people and so save the interest now paid
to the National banks on the govern
mcnt bonds?
Mr.. Horr replies in as full a manner as
is possible, from which we take some ex-
tracts:
SIN reply to the first two questions, l
will say that taxation is an Outgrowth of
civilization. Among sayageS there are
no assessors, no tax collector. How
does it come in Republican form of
government that such a thing as II tax is
known? We must not forget that in this
country the entire people are the gov
eminent. When our fOrcfathers landed
on the American continent they found
the country occupied by savages. They
brought with them the customs of civili-
zation.
The first thing they did was necessarily
to build houses for shelter. Each family
naturally built its own dOmicile, one
aiding the other as necessities required,
on some agreed basis of labor.
Probably the first work of a public ma
ture was tn building of some kind OF a
! Notification to protect the community
| from the encroaChments of the savages.
No doubt almost every able bodied man
in the colony gave his full share of time
to that work.
The next public work was building a
road. This was probably done volun-
tarily by each person. But as business
increased, while the need of road in
creased, people also began to be en-
crossed in private affairs, and to be alb
sent when road building was required.
Yet no one will claim that the building
of road was burden, but rather a
blessing. As matter of Justice
small tax was levied on each able
bodied man to represent the amount of
service he would have given had the
work all been done voluntarily. If the
street was blessing to that community
then the tax for making it was bless
ing. Any man who calls such tax a
burden, it seems to me, must be trying
to shirk his part of the necessary work.
1t is simply one form of saying that he
would like all the advantages if he could
have them at his neighbol's expense.
In little while the people of each
growing community in this country felt
the need of education for their children.
The first impression would naturally be
that each man should provide for the
education of his own children, and that
schools, if organized, should be main
tained entirely by private enterprise. It,
however, soon became apparent in every
community that poor people often have
large families, and that to leave the cdu-
cation of children entirely to the ability
and disposition of parents would result
in large proportion of these children
growing up in ignorance. To prevent
such calamity, it becomes necessary to
have the education of the rising genera
ton looked after and provided for as a
public necessity. The moment you adj
nit that the entire community ought to
attend to the education of all the chill
dren, then the question of establishing
and supporting schools is placed upon
precisely the same basis as building q
road. That is, each individual. in every
community, ought voluntarily, to do his
full share tNward educating all the chill
dren of his district. The school tax is
then simply fair distribution of what
each man in the commuuity ought vol
UNFAIRLY to pay for the cause of educa-
tion. Hence ii education is a blessing to
a community, then school houses and
school teachers are blessings also, and
the tax which builds up one and sup
ports the other is blessing, too. The
man who claims that such tax is a
burden is simply declaring that it is bur
densome for him to do his full duty to
the community in which he lives.
AS the various communities increased
in number and size, it became neces-
sary to have an organization of these
various communities, and hence came
the formation of counties. Within the
limits of these large organizations, rivers
must be bridged. The entire people of
the entire county were interested in hav
ing more extended communications;
and, while the bridging of large stream
might be beyond the limited means of
any one township, the entire townships
of the county could afford to undertake
even so expensive work as that; hence
the county tax for building bridges.
hIt HOb DllubCS DitSSluBo W bllt OlltllN
people of county? Then why should
they not be built by the entire commu-
nifty? Here again the tax for building
bridges should be exactly the amount
that each person ought to pay voluntarily
for that public investment
In this country, the people levy the
taxes on themselves, ana if they had the
power to get an honest enlistment OF the
entire property of the country and could
secure an honest expenditure of every
dollar so raised, all taxes should be
blessings. If such state of affairs could
be realized, then to pay taxes would not
be called "burdensome" any more than
one would call it burden to buy the
food he eats or the clothes he wears. If
all property could be fairly assessed and
all money raised by taxation, honestly
and carefully expended only for public
purposes, then this Outcry against taxa
don would cease, except from persons
who desire to live at the expense of
other people.
In answer to the third question: What
kinds of business had better be managed
by the government, is a matter which
past experience has never yet decided.
As general proposition it is conceded
by most thoughtful men that the pri-
mary object of every government should
be to protect the lives, property and lib
critics of its citizens, and that the only
business managed by the government
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