Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1893-08-03
How Taxation is Studied in Penney.
vania.

to tax the masses without taxing the
classes; how to tax industry without
taxing monopoly; how to have more
Money in the treasury for rings to
manipulate; how to pretend to do
something for the people and really do
nothing at all. What is taxation and
what is unjust taxation: what has the
state right to take and what has it
no right to take; what taxation will
promote the general welfare and what
will be injurious to tall these arc
questions that these commission stu
dents of taxation generally know lit
tie about and concerning which they
care even less.-The Crusade.
How misplaced is the sympathy fox
debtors as against creditors will appear
from y fact which is not generally con-
sidered, but which the events of the
past two weeks on the New York stock
exchange have made plain, namely,
that the debtors who are in trouble are
not poor and needy people, but adven.
turers who were seeking to make them
selves rich by the aid of borrowed
money. Another fact, no less impor-
tant but quite as unfamiliar, is that
creditors are mostly people OF moderate
means, not to say poor, and that In
number they far exceed the debtors.
The largest borrowers also, besides the
spectators in stocks who have just
come to grief on our stock exchange,
are, first, the railroad companies whose
aggregate debt amounts to S6,000,O 00,-
900, then the banks, state and national,
which have deposits amounting to 81
| 500, 900, 900, and the United States gov
eminent itself, which owes in round
numbers $1,000, 100000. In addition
there are state, city and county obliga-
| tions amounting altogether in 1900 to
81, 1875, 80, 442. These debts are owing,
not to few capitalists, but to a multi
tude of small creditors, many Of them
women, who have invested in them their
own savings, or have inherited them
from relatives who did the same.
But by far the most numerous class
of creditors in the country, and one
whose claims to consideration are rot,
l think, sufficiently estimated, are the
| workers for wages and salaries. Out
of our total population of $4,000. 600
there must be at least 10000, O0e of
men, women and children who depend
for living upon their personal labor.
Estimating their earnings at the low
average of one dollar day, these sons
and daughters of toll find themselves
at the end of every week the creditor
OF their employers to the amount OF
SOC, OOO 900, and in the course of year
to one of 50, 12O, OOO, 900. The valusr of
this vast sum in purchasing articles Of
daily use is measured by the value OF
T. ,o ALL f0 1Gt hot t110
for the benefit of the comparatively
small number of debtors is to rob the
many for the benefit of a few.
A large portion of these 10, 900, 900 easn.
ers of wages are, moreover, creditors in
another way. The census shows tEat
4,7s1, sos of them have savings bank &C.
counts, amounting on an average to
1853 each, and in the aggregate TO
s1,712, 100, 6o6. The debtors, who b'T.
row this money, borrow it in su1as
ranging from 1000 to 100000, but as
Stunning the average to be $4,000, their
number is only 342, 554. The taxation
of credits sought as a measure for the
relief of the debtors could not therefore
benefit more than 342, 554 persons ow-
ing money to savings banks, while it
would injure 4,7S1, sos who have depos-
its in them. A million and a quarter or
more people hold, also, policies of in
surance on their lives, aggregating
more than $500, 600, 900, for the secur-
ity of which the companies have assets
amounting to $3.50, 000, 600. These are still
more largely interested in the exemp-
ton of evidences of debt from taxation.
The only debtors, of any number,
who seem to deserve consideration in
the matter of taxation are the farmers
! who have bought land on credit and
have given mortgages on it for the pur-
chase money. These deservedly claim
the natural sympathy felt with men
who are striving to secure homes for
themselves and their families. and since
they believe that to tax the money
loaned to them would make it easier for
them to pay off their mortgages there is
strong impulse to grant it to them. 1t
would have the contrary effect, and on
the other hand, it should be rcmem-
bered that buying land on credit is al
much speculation as buying stocks is,
and, for the most part, those who have
engaged in it have seen the market val
ne of their purchases advance and tho
rate of interest decline, for more than
enough to compensate them for any adj
ditional burden on the land which the
exemption of the little money now
taxed might cause. Besides, when it
comes to choosing between them and
the much more numerous little credit
ors l have mentioned, the preponder-
ance of sympathy as well as of numbers
is against them.-Matthew Marshall,
in n. Y. Sun.