The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1914-08-11

article by Kay Stannard Baker eX-
planning just how Uncle Sam spends
your income tax dollar.
Under the old indirect method Of
taxation (by which we still continue
to raise most Of our revenues) few
people have felt any concern in what
the Government was spending" he
SAYS, "but with the Inauguration of
a new system of direct taxation, the .
income tax, several hundred thou
sands of Americans will be feeling
this year for the first time what it
really means to help buy warships /
and pay for unnecessary post Offices. I
A man who has to sit down and write /
his check for $40 or $50 or $4,000
payable to his Uncle Samuel is going
to want to know what causes his I
Uncle Samuel in his ripening years
to lead such a fast life. He is going
to be very stern with Uncle Sam;
he is going to find out something about
his sad addiction to pork and the reck
less habit he INDUCES of expanding
immense sums on war machinery-and
then paying pensions to those who
get hurt.
when l was in Washington not
long ago l fell into an extremely in
teresting conversation at the Cosmos
Club with a small group of men who
were discussing this very matter. One
of them said to the rest of US:
"'Did you know that is is now pos
sble for the first time in our history
to tell intelligently what the United
States does spend its money fof?'
az didn't know
"'Well this country is the only one
of the civilized nations which has no
general financial plan as the basis for
It's bookkeeping or any carefully pre-
pared comparison of proposed expen-
diture with expected revenue. A
Captain of industry or a chicken
farmer who kept his accounts as I'M
intelligibly as Uncle Sam does to-
day would be considered bad risk for
commercial rating and we'll on the
way toward bankruptcy
"You see. we are a very rich peo-
pie and our money has been raised
by indirect taxation, so that the peo-
pie have never known when they
bought hat or yard of silk that
they were paying taxes. They have
attributed their troubles, when they
had any, to high cost of living-and
let it go at that. And Congress has
gone on appropriating without bud
get, without any clear notion as to
how much the nation could really af-
ford to spend, relative to revenue,
and without any studied system for
, the division of those expenditures.
zone of the men | met at the Cos
mos Club was Harvey S. Chase of
Boston, who handed me remarkable
document. 1t was a single sheet head
ed The Budget of the United States
on It's Expenditure Side
ut represented the first real at
tempt to reform the general account
ing methods of the Government. Has
this attempt succeeded? Has the work
been completed? BY no means. This
budget is merely budget on paper
Though it represented one of the re-
suits of the untiring work for sew
eral years of a group of scientific
economists and accountants, wher
Uncle Sam saw it he was positively
angry, The idea that any one shoulc
try to limit and systematic his Goo
given right to spend his cash wher
and how he liked! And besides some
of the figures in all their stark reality
no doubt made him feel little un
comfortable inside.
what did he do? He did exactl.
what the old kings used to do wher
messengers brought them bad news
"'Off with their headsv he shouted
"And off their heads went; an,
that was the end of the Econom,
. and Efficiency Commission.
THE specimen budget that Nh
Chase handed me gives the first clea
and comprehensive idea of what tn
. Government is really spending it
money for. 1t furnishes new classi
y fications of expenditures.
81 can perhaps best tell about wha
found in the budget by showin
how each dollar / pay in taxes to tn
Government is divided up.
81 find that out of my dollar 6
:. cents goes for war. The next larges
r proportion is asked to improve hal
bors and rivers, and costs over
cents out of my dollar. Some of TIL
= is pork and represents unnecessar
expenditures secured by Congressme
to make themselves strong with the
Ia ~