The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1920-03-10
The FEDERAL AID DANGER

/ Federal aid whether for roads
schools, army or other purpose has tc
be paid back flnally through in
fcreased taxes The states can never
by any possibility get out of the fed
eral treasury more than they put in
r. Bearing on this issue which Is
growing more and more important al
Washington each year is a recent ad
dress by Leo Day Woodwork, secre
tary of the American Bankers Associ
lation. This address is in part as
follows:
Bankers, especially the institutional
bankers,t the trustees for the working
balances or the savings reserve of mil
ions of depositors, cannot afford to
overlook "a contest of nationwide
scope which is now raging.
1t no longer is sufficient to discuss
mere systems of taxation. Taxes are
4 the reflex of expenditures. Taxes will
not diminish, the need for war levies'
i cannot abate, unless the government
+ sets an example of thrift and econo-
/ my and checks extravagances. This
point was stressed by Robert A. Mad
dex, in his presidential address to the
American Bankers Association in Oct
ober
! Future tax burdens will be diminish
/. ed or increased to the extent of bill
ions of dollars per annum, according
to which of two mutually exclusive
systems is permitted to prevail in ma
tional finance, viz.
First. the budget system, with def
mite responsibility and accountability
for expenditures and their results, or,
Second, the laid" system, with no
effective check on waste or assurance
OF efficiency, yet so constituted as to
make increasing appropriations polite
ally certain.
The weakness in representative
government which is demonstrated
from yeagvap year in pension, local
improyenfeH, public building and sim
liar billsanX6uld under the aid sys-
tenn attain its greatest development
as to costliness, and we believe, inef
ficiency.
!, The motives for asking for Federal
AID to states are as varied as are the
views ofsAifferent persons and societ-
les which ask for naturalization of
governmental functions and of prop
erty ownership or control. These mo-
tives range from distince selfish in
terest by groups of business men to
that or the worshippers of bureau
cratic, standardization, or even of rev
olution and socialism The thought
lesness of: the selfish and the ignor-
ance of what Roosevelt called 1.-The
lunatie fringe" both received this
merited rebuke from President Mich
olas Murray Butler of Columbia Uni
Destructive. and reactionary forces
are actively at work to turn our rep
reseptatives republic into Socialist
autocracy, to destroy liberty and equal
ity. of opportunity and to paralyze the.
greatsstSfdrce that the world has ever
seen for the promotion of the happi
ness, the satisfaction and the full de
veHfbaineIit of free men and women.
What we have defended against Ger.
mar aggression and lust of conquest
we must now band together to pro-
tesE against more insidious and no less
powerful enemies who would under
mhfe the foundations on which our
Anaafiean freedom rests. 1t would in
deed be cynical conclusion of this
war if We who have helped so power
fuffd fo defeat the German armies on
thei feld of battle should surrender,
!. ipgaany degree to the ideas that had
,takan possession of the Geramn mind
ands that led the German nation into