Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-15
PRESIDENT SEEKS TO AVOID
INCOME TAX LEGISLATION

LONG BEACH. July 12.-[Editor
Herald: Mr.. T. Roosevelt, the Great
1 Am" of modern American political
history, did and said several things
that disturbed public serenity fearful
ly, during his stay In the White House,
but he never flung such an apple or
discord into the congress and among
the people, In all his career, as has
his successor, Taft, in this PROPOSE
ton to tax corporations two per cent
on their earnings.
Every man of common sense knows
why this proposition was pushed into
the senate. Every reader of current
history knows that it was forlorn
hope, a last resort, when the TIDE Oh
senatorial opinion from the northwest
and a portion of the south was setting
strongly toward the passage of an in
come tax. When, in the fury of tarift
debate the lines of party division had
been wiped out When Republicanism
had changed its skin and Democracy
its spots. When Cummings and La
Toilette, clamoring for a policy, If 1t
was not free trade" 1t smelled and
tasted of it so strongly that Aldrich
would read them out of the e. o. p. and
Texas Bailey with a half dozen south
ern fellow mistakes were shouting that
the south was always for pertecshun.
Aldrich looked behind him where once
he could count a solid phalanx of reg
ulars that would always sneeze when
he took a pinch, and found the ranks
thinned or spotted with new faces he
never had seen there before, and on
whose loyalty he could not count. An
anDeal was made to the president. No
doubt the member from Rhode Island
was grieved at the necessity 1t was
a coming down. But he did it, and
result
II turned the attention of the senate
and of the whole country in a new di-
rection. Even the insurgent forces
halted at sight of this new specter
coming I'D the horizon In the midst
of the general confusion the new idea
was shaped and incorporated in the
fraudulent revision" The income tax
went tn the limbo of a constitutional
amendment, and the tariff bill to the
gauntlet of a give and take committee
of both houses
Taft saved the day for Aldrich and
his gang, but at the cost of the almost
unanimous hostility of the press and
people of the nation. 1t is amazing,
the unanimity of the attacks from all
corners of the land, and from every
class and color of political opinions.
The party press is t1ndlng ltset IN tne
same mush of unanimousness on this
question that was discovered in the
vote on the tariff in the senate.
Setting aside all estimates of the
amount of honest intention in any of
this business as too trifing to measure
and too light to weigh I am glad of
the result of Taft's craft. 1t is blow
at a, great public enemy. Its name is
Corporation. 1t is a public nuisance.
For fifty years this people, through its
government, has been fighting for its
life against the assaults of corpora
tions," and in most cases the people
have lost in the conflict. Unless this
dragon is throttled human liberty is
lost. and the vilest, most degrading
tyranny that ever cursed the earth will
be in the saddle.
The only saving grace in human rela-
lions with each other is moral respon-
sibility. 1t does not always save the
situation in the individual case, but it
is there. Corporations have not one
atom of it in their make. They are as
devoid of it as a pewter idol Legal
responsibility they have, in the abb
stract, but history daily proves that it
is a myth. In fact, the two RESPONSE
bilities must be found together or they
both fail.
This tax is a direct stab at this
public enemy. Like Lloyd Georges
tax upon land values in England, 1t is
not large in amount, but 1t opens splen-
did possibilities for the future
SENEX.