Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1896-08-26

hcial report sneering and sarcastic
passage to show that only absurdly
credulous persons could for one mo-
ment take the antitrust laws as seri.
Gus enactments, or imagine that Con.
gress had power to place any effective
restrictions upon conspiracies of mo-
nopoly in restraint of trade; and Mr..
Cleveland, instead of turning the trait
or out of his Cabinet, transmitted his
report to Congress with his own ap.
prevail
These were but the beginning of dis
appointments to the peoples hopes.
The commission they had secured to
protect interstate commerce against
extortion by railroad pool not only did
nothing effective in that direction, but
laterly has even made itself the friend
and advocate OF railroad highwaymen
in their schemes, as the Attorney Gen
eral had been the guardian and protec,
tor OF the trusts. In the Senate the
shameless spectacle was presented of
the Sugar Trust using distinguished
Democratic Senators as its agents and
attorneys, and through them debating
schedules that enabled it to rob the
Treasury of fifty millions of needed
revenue, while the Secretary of the
Treasury stood by actively abetting
the plot and venal Senators speculated
through Wall Street brokers in the re-.
suits of their own legislative action.
This growth of corporate and pluto
cratic influence ut Washington has
been constant. The shameful history
of the first secret sale of bonds to the
Morgan syndicate for six millions less
than their value in the open market is
still fresh in the public memory. So
is that of the second attempt to repeat
the robbery in much larger scale last
January-an attempt averted only by
The Worlds extraordinary activity in
exposing its iniquity and arousing a
resistless popular protest against it. In
the one case the people saw the Gov
ernment actually in the control of the
money power, led by Pierpont Morgan.
In the other they saw how grudgingly
1t allowed itself to be saved, and how
even in yielding it was at pains to save
to the money power as much as pos
sible of its coveted plunder.
Equally irritating to the popular
sense of justice was the overthrow of
the income tax. The enactment of
law imposing trifing impost of two
per rent. upon superfuous incomes was
the one apparently earnest attempt
made in all these years to do some
small measures of justice to the people
to distribute the burden of Govern.
ment support with some show of equity,
to make the corporations, the bankers
and the beneficiares of tariff bounty
pay some part at least of their just
share of the taxes. Yet no sooner was
this law enacted than fierce and de-
termined assault was made upon it
The masses of people, who pay taxes
on nearly everything they consume,
were made to understand that the
owners of the superhuous wealth were
not going to pay their share, or even
small part of it, if by any means they
could avoid it. They hired great law.
yers to assail the law and break it
down. They subsidized influential
newspapers to oppose it. They raised
the false cry of socialism against it.
They ignored the facts of history and
the principles of scientific taxation. In
face OF the fact that every great nation
on earth has an income tax, and finds
1t the most equitable of imposts, they
shrieked false cries of ''con fiscation"
and "punishment of thrift" against it.
They refused to accept defeat even
when the Supreme Court decided
against them. They brought the mat
ter into issue again, and did not rest
until Judge changed his view and
thus made the Court reverse its de
cision.
All this was craze as pronounced
as that which inspired the Chicago
platform, and 1t largely contributed
to the construction of the platform. 1t
was slap in the face of thu popular
demand for equitable relief. 1t was
one of the chief Of those outrages upon
justice which have prompted the Dem.
ocracy of the country to turn to the
wild vagaries of Populismin mistaken
hope of betterment. Itnot only brought
the Supreme Court dangerously, tho
unjustly, within the range of the pop
ular indignation, hut furnished new
grievance as fresh fuel to that indig.
nation.
The very men who assailed and de
stroyed the income tax law were those
who should have been most eager to
cherish it as testimony to the people
of their own loyal citizenship and of
the impartiality of the law. BY their
crazy course they saved their paltry
two percent. of taxes, and doing 80
they helped nightly to convert the
popular sense of injustice into mad
ness that threatens much greater cost
to the owners of superfuous incomes
than the tax would have involved
even if it had been many times higher
than it was.
1t is out of this four years failure of