Bisbee daily review., 1918-12-03

be unwilling. if it should become necessary, to grant 10 some such agency as the war trade board the right to establish priorities of export and supply for the benefit of these people whom we have been so happy to assist in saving from the great terror and whom we must not now suddenly leave to shift for ourselves in a competitive market
 For the steadying and facilitation of our own domestic business read justments nothing is more apparent than the immediate distribution of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918. 1919 and 1920. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from busi- ness as sound methods of financing the government will permit and those who conduct the great essential in. dustries of the country must be told as exactly as possible what obliga- tions to the government they will be expected to meet in the years imme- diately ahead of them. It will be of serious consequence to the country to play relatively at uncertainties in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate justify. It is id'e 10 talk of successful and confi- dent business reconstruction before those uncertainties are removed. If the war had continued, it would have been necessary to raise at least l $S,0O0 100000 by taxation, payable in the year 1919, but the war mas ended and l agree with the secretary of the treasury that it will be safe to reduce the amount to S6,00O, 100000 An i'm mediate decline in the expenses of the government is not to be looked for. Contracts for war supplies will. ! indeed, be rapidly cancelled and liQuidated, but their immediate iqui- dation will make heavy drains on the treasury for the months just ahead of us. The maintenance of our forces on the other side of the sea present an immediate necessity. A consider able proportion of those forces must remain in Europe during the period of occupation and those which are brought home will be transported and demobilized at heavy expense for months to come. The interest on our war debt must. of course, he paid and provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the government which represent it. But these de mands will, of course, fall much below what a continuation of military opera tions would have entailed and S6.O00,- 000.0 .000 should suffice to supply a sound foundation for the financial op- erations of the year.
 q entirely concur with the secre- tary of the treasury in recommending that the $2.OO0,00O, 900 needed in addi- tion to $4,0OO. 100000 provided by ex- isting law be obtained from the profits which have accrued and shall accrue from war contracts and distinctively war business, but that these taxes be confined to the war profits accruing in 1918 or in 1919 from business orig mating in war contracts. l urge your acceptance of his recommendation that provision be made now, not sub sequently, that the taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions. Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of industrial re- adjustment through which the country must now immediately pass and which no true friend of the natOn's essential business interests can afford to be re-