The Washington times., 1917-05-10

Iron TOday's N. Y. SUM-
The war revenue bill reported to
the House of Representatives by the
Ways and Means Committee yester-
day is an economic monstrosity.
No American objects to taxation.
Every American expects to pay taxes
to bleed money for the expenses Of
the war, for its enormous direct
costs, for its staggering indirect ex-
penses. No man, no corporation
hopes or wishes to avoid g share OF
the tremendous burden. No COM
plant that taxes would beheavy has
been raised. But no taxpayer pres
ent or prospective can read this bill
and not recognize that while demon
a.izing and even running business
and industry it will fail to produce
Jthe needed revenues, and that its
provisions are futile, the outcome Of
dull ineficiency, or the children of
malice.
If there is a single correct princi-
pie of taxation this bill does not vio-
late, the omission must be credited to
oversight on the part of its authors,
and not to their knowledge or good
viii.
It is apparently the purpose Of the
committee to ask for favorable &C
ton by the House on this product Of
stupidity and ignorance in the ex-
pectation that the Senate will repair
its errors and whip the measure into
a shape in which the submission Of
intelligent citizens to its terms may
be asked with some chance of sue
cess.
In other words, the only plausible
explanation of the committees con-
duct is that the Representatives are
TO be asked once more to abandon
their function as the originators of
measures for the raising Of revenue,
and to shift the burden of inquiry,
discrimination, and adjustment to the
Senate. This the members of the
House have occasionally done in the
past, tacitly admitting thereby that
they felt themselves incapable of per-
forming their constitutional duty;
but never has any popular assembly
in the presence of a situation such
as the United States is in today
brazenIy given It's Endorsement to a
project so inadequate to the require
ments of the nation for which it
spoke, so subversive of economic
laws and SO defiant Of the necessities
that must be met as in the draft of
8 revenue bill offered by Claude
Kitchin of North Carolina.
The manner in which this prepos-
ferrous proposal reached its present
form is revealed by the single in
stance Of haphazard drafting. The
ieommittee recommends that on all
PARTICLES now imported free of duty
from foreign countries a duty of 10
per cent ad valorem shall hereafter
lbe collected, and that there shall be
"a horizontal increase Of 10 per cent
in all customs duties imposed by the
Underwood tariff law. These provi-
sions "were Unexpectedly agreed to-"
according to the dispatches from
Washington. And they were most
funintelligently agreed to, it must be
added.
Such a method of revising the
tariff cannot be supported by protec-
zionist, free trader, or tariff for reve-
nue. only man. The inclusion Of raw
materials, unfinished products. and
manufactured articles under one
classification for whatever purpose
violates ali the teachings of eco
Monies, and reveals its supporters as
utterly lacking in philosophic concep-
tion of the objects and methods of
taxation.
This system of duties must of ne
cessity impose on one industry a
burden disproportionate to that i'm
posed on others. In one case it would
give an Unjust advantage to the mer-
chant over the manufacturer, in an
other it will reverse the improper
benefit. In some instances it would
impose a prohibitory tax, because of
which the Treasury will be deprived
of revenues it now receives. In other
cases the tax would be absurdly low
and the yield therefrom would fall
far below the amount that should be
exacted.
The general effect of such tariff
imposts must be disturbance of
business, revenues far under what
they should be, and the complete dis
ruption of trade in many important
commodities from which by saga
oious taxation the Government might
collect substantial sums.
This astonishing paragraph seems
to have been happy afterthought of
the committee. Certainly no sane
member Of that body can have given
TO this scheme for the reconstruction
Of the tariff the thoughtful study