The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1895-04-23
4 LYING PAPER.

fasten an income tax on the government
had its motive in Southern resentment
against national pensions for Northern
soldiers who put down Southern rebels.
The South is where those soldiers won
their pensions. The North is where the
property is which an income tax would
reach. The scheme to tax the section
which furnished the benefciaries of pa
triotism was agreeable to the section
against which those benehciaries con-
tended. The North took it out in pen
sions. The South would retaliate on
property. The South had few or no fed
eral pensioners. The North had nearly
all; but the South had little or no prop
erty subject to income tax, while the
North had much. The chance to get
even, or more than even, was attractive.
1t was improved by making the exemp-
tion rate just high enough to let the
South effectually out" The editorial is
headed, "Appomattox Revenged and
Reversed"
The Brooklyn Eagle makes an asser-
ton that it knows to be false, and one
that it has manufactured maliciousfy for
the purpose OF bolstering up a cause that
it cannot defend with argument. The
income tax is demanded by the people of
the North as well as those of the South,
and it is demanded by that class of
whom soldiers are made. It is demanded
by the great mass of common people,
who pay enormously more than their
proportion of the taxes in order that the
class who do not bear arms in time of
war may be exempted from their fair
proportion of the tax. 1t is demanded
that this tax be imposed in order that
the burthen may be .equalIzed, and that
persons instead of paying per capita
tax will pay according to their ability to
pay, and will put up the sinews of var
necessary to carry on the government in
proportion to the benefits derived from
the government.
Rockefeller has 500, 100000 and he IS
protected in its possession and enjoy
ment. BY whom2 BY the common
people of the United States, by the
middle classes who pay as much for hav-
ing $4,000 worth of property protected as
Mr.. Rockefeller does for having $780,
600 900 protected. And again during
the war an income tax was imposed and
submitted to by the rich. Why?sBecause
they preferred giving up two per cent. of
their incomes to giving the whole
amount up to pay the debt the nation
would have if the South won. Then it
was war measure. As soon as the war
was over and the danger was passed,
these same tax dodgers set up the cry
that now the war was over there was no
necessity to suffer this inquisitorial tax
longer, and the congress of the United
States, false to its trust, relieved wealth
of its share Of taxation and turned war
debt of 81, 800, ,000, 900 over to the common
people to pay. The war was over, but
the debt was left and the necessity for
the tax was not over. Incomes that
were piled up from the speculation of
sharpers, on the necessities of the soldier
at the front, were exempted and the
soldier who was paid in money worth
fifty cents on the dollar, and made so
worthless by the spectators, were asked
to stretch their patriotism still further
and stand in to pay not only their por-
tion of the debt, but also that of those
who had grown rich by plundering
them. 1t was venal congress that fell
down at the demand of the plutocrats
and betrayed the people.
John Sherman was reasonably honest
then. He defended the income tax, and
answering taunt OF. Casserly, Cali
fornia's senator, he said. ''The income
tax is a just tax; it is the most just and
equitable tax ever placed upon the
statutes of this or any other country"
Johns income was not so large then and
his conscience was more tender. He is
not talking that way now.
The income tax has come to say. and
to grow, and those whose vast wealth is
Used to corrupt legislation and purchase
courts, may yet find that it had been
better to have paid the taxes on their
incomes, than to have found that an in
dignant people had left them no incomes
to be taxed. The degenerate Romans
burned Rienzi for trying to tax them
and the republic fell, France had her
privileged classes in 1872, hut not in so4
and the tax dodgers of New York may
profit by contemp plating these examples.
It is not the North, neither is it the