People's party paper. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1891-1898, 1893-07-07

1
board rivals the splendid waste of
Roman Emperor; where the gor-
geous apparel, flashing with gems,
represents the spoliation of thous-
and homes, and where every note of
JOY. rising as it does from the pride
of i'll gotten gains, has its deep coun-
terpart in the groans of the wretched,
from whom their subsistence was
taken that it might be squandered In
plutocratic debauchery.
On the other hand, what have we?
Numberless unhappy mortals, broth
ers and sisters to us, crowded like
brutes in sitting huts and cellars
and garrets-almost unclothed, well
nigh unfed; their gaunt fingers al
ways outstretched in the mute plea
of want; their bed a stone in the
street, or corner in the alley
knowing the law only as their enc.
my; knowing the government only
as the partner of victorious robbers
who despoiled them; knowing the
church principally by It's digni6ed
ministry and magnificent temples---a
ministry which shuns the contamina-
ton of their touch, and church
whose velvet pews they are not ex-
pected to soil-these are the people
and these are the human slums
which are the legitimate offsprings of
our Infamous system. These are the
quarters we make for CRIME. These
are the citadels we furnish vice.
Couched in these lairs are all the
evils civilization abhors and creates
1t is here that the rum shop finds
stability nothing can shake; i'm
morality an impulse nothing can
check; crime a seed-bed nothing can
sterilize; pestilence source which
nothing can exhaust religion bar
rier which nothing can level!
All honor to such men as Booth,
and his Salvation Army; all honor
to the Sisters of Mercy of the Cath
olic church; all honor to the Mission
work of the Protestant; all honor
to Evangelists like Sam Jones, and
Sam Small, and Moody, and Park
hurst
But I venture, here, this deliberate
prediction EmanuePs Kingdom
will never float its standards, in
complete triumph, over the lives of
men until some of the glorious doc
trines in behalf of common hu-
mainly, some of the warm hearted
democracy Of Jesus Christ, finds a
place in the laws of his protested
disciples!
What was the remedy which JEFF
ferson proposed for this threatened
evil?
First, and most essential, to have
no class legislation.
Second, to have system of taxa
ton which would exempt, altogether,
the small property, while it taxed
the large fortune, on graduated
scale, which was to make the tax in
creasingly heavy as the fortune grew
increasingly large.
These are his wOrdsx <
"Another means of silently lessen
ing the inequalities of property is to
exempt ali from taxation below
certain point, and to tax the higher
portions of property in geometrical
progression "a they rise"
The Atlanta Constitution quotes
this paragraph approvingly, in it's
editorial columns to support it's de-
mand for an Income Tax. The posi-
ton is quite correct as far as it goes.
1t certainly does not go far enough.
Mr. Jefferson was speaking of the
excessive accumulation of property
and of taxing that excessive accumu-
lation. His idea was that a man who
had only beggarly million should
not pay as high tax, even in pro-
portion, as George Gould, but that
as we went up the ladder, the tax
should be increasingly heavy for each
million.
The theory was to discourage ex-
cessive concentration concentra-
ton which can bring no happiness to
the individual who accumulates it,
but which must do enormous harm
to the mass of the people from which
it is taken.
In other words he desired to create
a means to prevent any one man
from taking from the common stock
so much more than his share so
much more than his legitimate indus
try had earned or his legitimate needs
LISTEN TO THESE WORDS.
81 am not one of those who fear
the people They, and not the rich,
are our dependence for continued
freedom. And, to preserve our in
we must not let our
rulers load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our election between
and liberty, or prof1t8ion
and serUituoze. If we run into such
debts as that we must be taxed in
our meat and in our drink, in our
and our comforts, in our
labors and amusements. for our cali
ings and our oreeds, as the people of
England are, our people, like them,
must come to labor sixteen hours in
the twenty-four, give the earnings of
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