Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1915-12-08

De for the fiscal year 1917, $93,SGG, 900. Those figures, taken with the figures for the present fiscal year which ] have already given disclose our tinan- cial problem for the year 1917. As suning that the taxes imposed by the emergency revenue act and the pres ent duty on sugar are to be discontn- ued, and that the balance at the close of the present fiscal year will be only $20 ,644 605.1S, that the disbursements for the Panama canal will again be about twenty-five millions. and that the additional expenditures for the army and navy are authorized by the congress, the deficit in the general fund of the treasury on the thirtieth of June, 1917, will be nearly two hun dred and thirty-five millions. To this sum at least fifty millions should be added to represent a safe working bal ance for the treasury, and twelve mil lions to include the usual deficiency estimates in 1917; and these additions would make a total deficit of some two hundred and ninety-seven millions. If the present taxes should be continued throughout this year and the next, however, there would be a balance ill the treasury of some seventy-six and half millions at the end of the pres ent fiscal year, and a deficit at the end of the next year of only some fifty millions. or, reckoning in sXty-tWo millions for deficiency appropriations and safe treasury belance at the end of the year, total deficit of some one hundred and twelve millions. The obvious moral of the figures is that it is a plain counsel of prudence to con- tinue all of the preesnt taxes or their equivalents, and confine ourselves to the problem of providing $112,000,00O of new revenue rather than $297, ,000,- OOO
 New Sources of Revenue.
 How shall we obtain the new reve nue? It seems to me clear dictate of prudent statesmanship and frank finance that in what we are now, l hope, to undertake, we should pay as we go. The people of the country are entitled to know just what burdens of taxation they are to carry, and to know from the outset, now. The new bills should be paid by internal taxation.
 To what sources, then, shall we turn? This is so peculiarly a question which the gentlemen of the house of representatives are expected under the Constitution to propose an answer to that you will hardly expect me to do more than discuss it in very gen. eral terms. We should be following an almost universal example of mod ern government if we were to draw the greater part or even the whole of the revenues we need from the in- come taxes. By somewhat lowering the present limits of exemption and the figure at which the surtax shall begin to be imposed, and by increasing, step by step throughout the present gradu- ation, the surtaX itself, the income taxes as at present apportioned would yield sums sufficient to balance the books of the treasury at the end of the fiscal year 1917 without any where making the burden unreason- ably or progressively heavy. The pre-. else reckonings are fully and accurate ly set out in the report of the secre- tary of the treasury which will be im- mediately laid before you.
 And there are many additional sources of revenue which can justly be resorted to without hampering the in- dustries of the country. or putting any too great charge upon individual ex. Yhenditure A one Der cent tax per gallon on gasoline and naptha would yield, at the present estimated pro- duction, $1O,000,000; a tax of 50 cents per horse power on automobiles and internal explosion engines, $15,000- 900; stamp tax on bank checks, probably S1S,000,000; tax of g cents per ton on pig iron, $10,000,000; a tax of 50 cents per ton on fabricated iron and steel, probably $10,000,000. In country Of great industries like this it