Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-02-19
The Range Of ContSscation
Los Angeles Times.

Gaining in volume as it passes from country
to country, wave Of confiscation is sweeping
the world. The human species has come to re,
semble colony of bees devouring the honey OF
their own making, deserving the fields of corn-
flower and clover for plumber and warfare with
in the hive And those skilled in the art of bee
culture have noted that when bees begin loot
ing their own hive, the colony is decadent and
often the queen is dead.
Confiscation assumes varying forms in diff
terent countries it has new mask for every
spectacle; but the sinister figure of the primi-
tive brigand is always hidden beneath. In Rus
STA it is bolshevism-the tyranny of the major
ity; in Germany, despotsm; in France, syndi-
calism; in Great Britain, socialism, in Mexico,
outlawry; and in the United States expropria-
ton through excessive taxation Everywhere
the drones are organizing to depose the workers
and capture the hive. Production is forgotten
in the mad race of the have-nots to possess and
squander the substance of them that have. The
grasshopper approaches the ant, not with a
song and plant, but with club and threat.
Germany started the movement with an or
ganized effort to confiseate the possessions of
her neighbors through combination of treacf-
cry and force. The free peoples of the earth
are weakened from the wounds received in the
terrific combat necessary to break the military
power of the Hun; and while they are still faint
from loss of blood new forces have organized
to finish what Germany began. In Russia con-
fiscaton is legalized and consecrated; the grass
hoppers have driven out the ants and possessed
their substance; and after wasting the wealth of
their own country they migrate in great hordes
to dispossess the ants in other countries. Their
mercenary leaders tell them there is enough ac-
cumuated wealth in the world to furnish plumb
er for the present generation, and that it is folly
for one generation TO stint itself for the benefit
OF the next Credible witnesses report that it is
not an unusual occurrence for men and women
to be stopped in the streets of Petrograd and
robbed not only of their valuables, but of their
clothing as well, and the robbers are generally
connected with some government department.
Our own country is passing through an era
OF confiscatory taxation; not war taxes-their
pinch has not been felt-but through state,
county and municipal taxation, much of it in
direct, but none the less onerous. CALIFORNIA;
forty fat commissions have not added single
blade OF grass or grain of wheat to the states
production, but the government they administer
costs 100000 a month They are so many
drones robbing the hive. During the last year
California has paid $240000000 for federal
state, county and municipal government That
sum represents per cent of the total assessed
valuation of all real and personal property in
the state it is about 20 per cent of the total pro-
ducton of the state for the year. The burden
imposed is intoerable.
Even the prohibitionists have been bitten by
the bug of confiscation. They have conducted
movement for the confscation of the vine
yards of California, as we'll as the plants and
properties of the brewers. They have no more
moral right to destroy the value of those vine
yards and ruin their owners than to burn every
building in Los Angeles in which a liquor store
was once located. Convinced of the holiness of
their cause, they exercise, like their prototypes
in Russia. the intoerable tyranny of the ma
jority that brushes and robs minorties, confus-
ing the might of numbers with the right of JUS
tice.
The Times has pointed out repeatedly that
the Prussian junkers have no monopoly of autoc-
racy. There are other forces as dangerous to
free peoples as those which were loosed when
the Hun legions invaded Belgium and the most
dangerous of these is coniscaton through proc
ess of law Whenever a government becomes
powerful enough to Cypress and rob those by
whom it is supported, whenever state or led
eral pay roll becomes so heavy that it can over
balance the labor and industry of the governed,
then justice ends and conhscation begins The
example of the British municipalities, at the
mercy of their employees, is one that it is we'll
for Americans to consider.
Conhscation is the malady of modern gov
ernments. 1t has ruined Russia wrecked Mex
leo and sadly crippled industry in Great Britain
and the United States. 1t is the deadly enemy
of production; and if it is permitted to extend
its sway over the governments Of free peoples
the civilization of the world will lapse back to
that of the dark ages. Bolshevism, as such, will
never gain permanent foothold in this country;
but it must be remembered that bolshevism is
but a single manifestation of the prevalent
malady, the rage for the confiscation of prop
erty by taking it away striking it away, enact
ing it away or taxing it away from its lawful
owners.
D...uuss - Gill; 49,.