The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1914-07-03
THE LICENSE TAX SYSTEM.

system as whole is an abomination
whether the license is $40 for prac-
ticing law or medicine or 81, 900 for
running a beer saloon-nigh or far.
A piece of property or a privilege
should be taxed on its advalorem val
ue to the owner thereof. There is
no sense in taxing a lawyer earnin 3
$4,000 the same as the one earning
$500. The same applies to doctor,
or doctors of this earning power. The
first can more easily pay $1,000 than
the last can pay $100 as license to
practice. However, they should pay
a license on the protection they get
and the cost to the state for collec-
ton. The first on every account or
note sued will cost at least an hour
of a superior or city courts time,
the last will cost nothing, as his will
be sued in ]. P's. court, where each
man pays his own cost at the time
of trial, so that a 2 per centum on
the first and one-sixth of one per
centum on the last would about fill
the measure and let the tax-profes-
sional-be levied on all professions,
including preachers, teachers, must
clans, civil engineers and other skill
ed workers of whatever class be-
ginning at, say, one-half of one per
cent for .alaries of less than 1000
(exempting salaries Of less than
5000 and gradually increasing the
tax to ten per centum on incomes OF
$4,000 and over. On autos let it
begin at one per cent and increase
to five for machines costing $4,000
Or over, as the auto tax is for the
purpose Of paying the extra tax need
ed by reason Of the wear over horse
drawn vehicles on roads. Either pro-
hibit alcoholic and narcotic drinks.
for one works as much damnation
to all that is good as the other, or
take off all license fees and tax them
according to business done, begin
ming at ten per cent for all saloons
of less than $1,000 dollars sales and
increase to so per cent to those sell
ing $4,000 and over per year. And
let every cent OF this money go into
the state treasury; let there be no
county or municipal tax on any lux
ury or skilled labor nor on any evil,
such as all men concede saloons to
be.
But, you say, such a method is a
tax on enterprise; so is an inherit
ance tax, so is an income tax, so is
any tax, the man whose skill or
opportunities, advantageous position,
whether as Georgia is by reason of
her nearness to the Gulf and Pan
anna, or Carnegie, who manipulated
the tariff to rob the balance of us
and spends his time, whether in Scot
land or America, in antagonizing the
tribe with whom and by whom he
gets his gains and preaching the sin
of dying rich to those who never will
have the chance to sin after his man
ner, so that If damnatiOn is only re-
served to those who possess like rich
es with Andrew he will have mo-
nopoly of hell, as he has Of his kind
of philanthropy on earth. (This just
as an illustration.)
So long as license holds good for
luxuries or skilled labor or damna-
BILE places, like the saloon, so long
will wrangles over what shall and
what shall not be licensed tempt the
legislature to war over it, and so
long will small men use it to ride
into office. Large men don't have
to do it. Were I a candidate for leg
islative honors, which l am not, my
platform would be amendments to
the constitution disavowing the Ii
cense system in all it's forms, pro-
hibiting the sale or manufacture or
possession of all alcoholic and mar
cotic drinks within the state, and
placing such as was needed in the
medical and mechanical arts in the
hands of the state board of health to
be dispensed as vaccine is for small
box and the various serums for other
contagious diseases-through the va
rious physicians of the state. AS to
traffic in interstate shipments OF
whiskey, beer and kindred abomina-
ton. the same law that allows the
state board of entomology, without
violating the federal constitution, to
bar the shipment into the. state of
anything likely to be vehicle for
bringing in the boil weevil or other
insect pest will let the state declare
the bringing into it's lines any article
detrimental to state law, morals or
health a nuisance. But this would
stop Seab Wright from making pro-