Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1922-11-23
With Our State
Contemporaries
SPEAKING OLE TAXES

$332, 99S,12l. Mr. Henry Ford
is 50 years old. If he lived TO
be 20, Ford assets-if thus con-
tinuing 20 double every two
years-would total some fifty
billion dollars. II he lived to be
IS, Ford assets-if they merely
increased the same sum as be-
tween II and '19-would total
100000. These figures
take no account Of other re-
sources external to the Ford
company Itself.
Macmillan has jest issued start
ling book, brstling with challenge to
American thought, entitled "The
Abolition Of Inheritance" by Harlan
Eugene Read. II sounds like ram
part Socialism. On the contrary, it
is hard-headed economic common
sense. One may disagree with some
Of its conclusions, but one cannot
blunt its point By ridicule or ana
thema. Excessive inheritances are
the most logical tax-target in Amr-
lea. Beyond certain point, these
taxes are entitled 70 be extremely
drast,c-because once in every gener-
alton it is just that Government
should collect its fee for having main
tanned the stabilities which have
made the accumulation OF the for
tune possible. Beyond further
point, these taxes are entitled to be
practically confiscatory in net effect
because enormous accumulations
Of concentrated wealth can become a
lethal menace not only to fair Ameri-
can opportunity, but to Freedom it.
self. Reads book argues these pre-
misses to serious conclusions. The
authors recommendations are not
wildly radical. On the contrary,
they approve the natural parental
ambition to provide adequately for
the welfare Of wife and children. For
the former, because he has been "a
life partner in the fortunes creation,
no inheritance limit is proposed. But
for the latter it is insisted that $780,
900 apiece is the maximum dictated
either by sense, practical democracy,
social justice, or the real welfare of
the child itself. There's a text for
interminable debate,
Whatever these limits, at which
heaviest Inheritance taxes ought to
begin, certainly they ought to begin,
somewhere. This is not Socialism.
1t is sound political from
John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith,
down to date. Moses, the first great
law-giver, decreed that every fiftieth
year should mark q leveling Of in
herited inequalities. Theodore Roo
sevelt said: 4 feel that we shall ulti-
mately have TO consider the adoption
Of some such scheme as a progressive
tax on all inheritances beyond a GER
tain amount--a tax so framed as to
put it out of the power of the owner
Of one Of these enormous fortunes to
hand down more than certain
amount to any one individual" 1t is
this idea which the new Macmillan
book develops with terrific impulse,
in It's assault upon the un-Amrican
menace of unearned increment, pre-
served in extravagant degree, though
successive heirs. While there is spe-
cific reference to Marshall Fields
$125,000,00O trusted for his grand
children until they are fifty, and to
young Vincent Astor's $16O,000,00
fortune Give generations old, and
TO the 1905 Industrial Commissions
Report upon % fortunes totaling
$780, 100000 so hedged about with
restrictions that they have become
absolute perpetuities," Reads argu-
ment, in the main, is impersonal and
accordingly the more important. He
shows how nearly five billions are the
total average American inheritance
for a year; and how, if only those in
excess Of one million dollars to one
heir, were taxed to the point of dis
appearance, the public revenue would
be billion annually.
Viewed purely as a matter Of reve-
nue., are not these excessive inherit
ances (going much lower than a mil
lion) representing unearn-
cd increment for the heir, and usual
ly discouraging a productive and use
full life-properly q first resource
to which Government, hard pressed
for funds. should turn? We do not
follow Read, even remotely, to his
extremes Of abolition" But we
heartily agree that when new tax
sources are necessary, the first le-
ultimate source-cn a graduated bas-
isis the fat inheritance to succeed
ing generations. (Michigan's inheri-
lance tax scale, it may be said paren-
thetically, is one Of the lowest in
Americana In the first place, there
should be a day of reckoning when
every fortune pays adequate toll to
the Government under which it has
thrived. In the second place, sue
ceeding generations should be left
with few self-supporting respon-
sibilities of their own, for their own
good. In the third place, the pyram-
iding Of vast concentrations of
wealth through succeeding genera
tions, must some day come to a
point, if unchecked, when the money
power" will center in perilously few