The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1899-04-21
CONCERNING TAX DODGERS.
OF the Two Classes Which Is the
Worst?

Castlereach once spoke OF "the ig-
nor2nt Impotence OF taxation" Il
seventy years later Gladstone so far
improved it as to tell of the ignorant
patience of taxation" 1t was the other
day when The Verdict read Of the kill
ing OF a moonshiner. The revenue Of
ficers put him to death on his lean
hillside somewhere in the low noun
tains Of Tennessee. What had he done
to merit being murdered offhand? He
had taken the corn he couldn't feed
or sell and distilled a primitive, vile
whisky from it. Then he had proceed
ed to be drunk with his neighbors
thereon, forgetting and falling as a
preliminary to pay the government tax
at so much per gallon. On its face
that doesn't tell of any horror. No
crime Of black, unusual terror seems
unfolded. The moonshiner had neither
slain the body nor appropriated the
goods of another. He had not burned
his neighbours barns, poisoned his
springs nor hamstrung his kline. At
the felonious most he had done no
more than withhold from the national
treasury a handful of dollars, that by
terms Of statute rather than the speci-
fication OF any moral law he should
have paid in taxes or the whisky he
had wrung from his corn. For that
he was shot down on his poor prem
Uses. and if he'd burned the white
house with the president in it they
couldn't have done more. 1t is not
The Verdict's purpose to defend the
moonshiner. 1t may have an opinion
OF this handwriting which goes for
ward. the length of our Allegheny hills.
all the year round, and which sends
some annual hundreds of the ignorant,
poor, whisky-making mountaineers to
their long homes, but it won't express
it. The Verdict may hold it's views
on these tax-murders in the wilderness,
but it will keep them 70 itself. What
it would like to ask, however, of some
official monitor of taxes, laws and
ethics, is this: What is the difference
between some darkened m%oonshiner
who c%onceals his still, goes stealthily
about his fire-water and avoids his
revenue tax; n such as the wealthy
men. who by concealment and pull"
avoid payment Of personal taxes on
1899 out of every $1,000 that they pos
sess? Is the mountaineer a greater
felon than the millionaire? The one
~"avoids" his taxes and the other
avoids" his taxes. The method of the
mountains has this much in its favor
as against the methods Of these city
men of millions: 1t does not employ
perjury; it puts up no false oath; the
mountain method is merely to hide and
dodge and conceal oneself. Yet the
MISUNDERSTANDING mountaineer who
defraads the people of a dozen dollars
a year in unpaid taxes is hunted to the
death. Tax collectors, armed to the
teeth, chase him through his glens and
shoot him down. The Morgans and the
Rockefellers who, by overt wrong in
forty fashions, cheat the public of hun
dreds of thousands in taxes, are among
us safe and honored. They are point
ed to as leading citizens" They adj
dress Sunday schools, assemble with
v~estries and church boards, and take
pious tea with the dominic afterward.
The Morgans and the Rockefellers are
pointed out to our boys as examples
Of all that is publicly or privately vir-
tuous; and named as tai! headlands on
the coast of existence for the just
launched youth to steer by. Why are
they not for their tax ~delinquencies
hunted like the t~ax-dodging wretch of
the mountains? Is there one sauce for
the mountain goose and another for
the Wall street gander? Gladstone's
phrase: "the ignorant patience of tax
ation,'' may still find that food among
lis that should fatten and keep it alive.
IN. Y. Verdict.