, 1921-08-25
A PLAGUE OF PoLIrIcs.

There are approximately six million unemployed
IN the country today" notes the Chicago Tribune
For these men and women and to their dependents
there is one paramount issue. 1t is work.
But Mr.. Samuel Gompers, Mr.. William Jennings
senate have begun a beating of the tom toms, and the
tune is an old one. The common people are being be-
trayed again, and the obvious inference is that they
must turn to Mr.. Bryan, Mr.. Gompers, Mr.. Kitchin,
and the Democratic leaders to save them.
IF it is good sense to trust the same guides who
got you into a bog to get you out, the Democrats, in
GLIDING, of course, Mr.. Bryan, Mr.. Gompers, and Mr..
Kitchin, should be called back at once.
"Mr. Gompers' organization prejudges the proposed
tax revision, which is characteristic of Mr.. Gompers'
Democratic partisanism. 1t demands on behalf of the
idle workers something real, something constructive,
something that will not add to their burden while al
lowing tho rich to escape which seems to mean the
retention of the excess profits tax and the present
scale Of higher income surtaxes. The federation views
the raising of exemptions affecting the small taxpay-
er as a sop thrown to the, people.if q
"Mr- Gompers wants the retention of the excess
profits tax. He pretends that to repeal it is to re-
ieve the war milionaires and great corporations
We think Mr.. Gompers knows better. If he does not,
he ought to make an honest inquiry into the facts.
If he will do that, not as a member of the Demo-
cratic party machine but as a real friend of the idle
workers, he will find that the excess profits tax does
not work as he thinks or pretends to think it does.
Fair students of taxation, who are as sincerely anx-
ious for a just distribution of taxes as Mr.. Gompers
or Mr.. Bryan, and we think n good deal sincerer, hold
that the tax is worse than ineffective, since it resulted
in the ~pyramiding of prices as well as in the encour-
agement of extravagant expenditure.
I'VE think Mr.. Gompers knows it has been a fail.
ure, and perhaps Mr.. Kitchin does, too. But the
temptation to make political capital of the fallacy on
which the tax was built is too great to be resisted.
There Is no respect for the facts shown in the A. F.
of l. pronouncement nor in most of the attacks made
on the tax revision program in congress. The Demo-
Gratis are responsible for the present taxation. 1t is
human that they should try to ignore its faults, but
they ought to have enough concern for the country
now in a serious condition of business stagnation and
unemployment, to drop demagogy and try to work out
a revision which will relieve constructive business and
stimulate it to go forward.
"Mr. Gompers is talking nobly about the 5000,
900 idle workers, but he is acting like a small bore
Inscriptions politician. His appeal is not to facts
or to reason but to class prejudice and ignorance
The country in the present situation deserves better
from him and from the other Democratic leaders who
while pretending to be defenders of the oppressed
poor, are trying to block the measures which by stimu
lating business confidence and enterprise should pres
emily bring relief.
six million Americans want jobs. They are moi
going to get them under the guidance of Messrs
Bryan, Gompers and Kitchin."