The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1900-12-05

five to ten cents, is one of the most
outrageous propositions of the kind
ever conceived outside of Paris.
The five per cent tax robs Burling-
ton to the extent of "a 800 a year the
SO 900 out Of US.
1t is highway robbery. There is no
pretence of right or justice about it.
And it doesn't in the least improve our
country schools or raise our education
al standard. 1t simply enables the
little towns to get along with lower
rate of taxation.
The legislative representatives. OF the
little towns press the button and Bur
lington and the larger places do the
Burlington News.
The language of the contemporaries
is plain. From whence does in en-
anate2 From city to which the COM
munistic and predatory small towns
contribute some hundreds OF thousands
of dollars in trade, or in one way or
another, every year; from city to
whose University, in its various de-
partments, these robber small towns
send their young people and to
whose revenues they are the chief in
dividual contributors, whose support
sustaius the Institutions existence and
whose material wants help to enrich
the city's merchants; from a city into
which the State is pouring annually
S14, 40 which these small towns help
to pay for the benefit of this same Uni
versity and into which the United
States turns annually $4,000 for the
benefit of this self same University, the
bnlk of all which sums of money is
paid out in the city of Burlington and
contributes to its material prosperity.
To this golden stream the Legislature
has just contributed $4,000 more.
From these communistic commune
ties, haunts of highwaymen, abodes of
greedy looters of The larger towns come
the young men who supply the banks,
| the merchanta, the business assoca-
tions, with clerks, with cashiers, with
men for places of trust and responsible
ity, who become ultimately the bust
ness men OF the city and the factors of
its progress; from these same habita-
tons ofjugglers of taxation who levy
tribute upon the well-to-do OF the
larger towns come the young women
for teachers in the city's public scuocls
and for the hundred other offices in the
latter day economy of human affairs.
The large towns thrive upon the
small; the city is replenished from the
country-materially, morally, intellect
ually, and here is the city Of Burling-
ton, yearly deriving in all these varied
ways greater income from the small
towns Of Vermont than any other OF
the larger towns of the State, whining
over the circumstance that under a
wise law of the State it is compelled to
disgorge few paltry thousands Of its
princely revenues to these small towns
for the support and bettermen of their
public schools, the chief stone of the
corner in this fabric of government,
the chief fundamentally of good citi-
zenship, the chief source from which
its University is recruited, its demands
for young men and women of intelli-
gence and education supplied; moan
ing over an inappreciable expenditure
that brings returns of many fold, stig-
matizing these contributors to her
prosperity in all the varied departments
of her activities as communists, rob-
bers, highwaymen, extortionists, ETC.,
etc, and boiling over their heads the
terrors of the law if they do not with
draw their levies. Shame on the
Queen City,