The Republican journal., 1922-11-02

Tor Office who poses as e friend OF the
people wants to increase tsxes7 Our own
mayor has urged . larger income tax in
Massachusetts. And, II Is fair to say,
that these larger taxes must come If we
are 10 spend the poney. And the tax
that you pay Monday. u you are rich
man, Will be finding locgmeutsTuesds
on the building which you rent 10 The
boarding house keeper, and on Wednes-
day on the sslessirl who occupies its
smallest hall bedroom. The fact that she
votes Enthusiastically for all the things
that make harder her struggle for exist
ence, because she sees only the tax that
hits you-does not lessen your moral
responsibility for her welfare You
should, in your ballots, save her from
herself, If BY any chance you can.
The greatest step that We have taken
IN this direction came 10 the passage OF
the Demonstrating maternity bill, soon
TO be followed by an educational BIZ of
the same import. The federal good roads
bill is nearly as bad. Il is mathema ticaliy
demonstrsble that the people OF Massa
chusetts pay between five and six dollars
toward the fund out of which the federal
good roads comes, for every dollar that
they get back. New Hampshire gets 81
cents per capita out OF this fu-d and
Mississippi So % per capita. negroes and
all, and yet New Hampshire, with
very much smaller population than Mis-
sissippi, pays four times as much federal
taxation. Six Northern states pay 90
per cent. OF the nation total. Is It any
wonder they want to raid us7 But what
Cicero Sspps we are to maintain props
aanda to urge them to do so Yet none
of our Northern states are without warm
adnerents of Mississippi's game-in the
name of altruism and progress, OF course.
II we, at the tax paying end of the
line, favor the Towner twins and the
federal road appropriation, and the bonus
and all things in which we have to spend
i've dollars to get back one, what can we
expect in the sections in which the argu-
ment can truthfully be raised that the
cost of these things does not come out of
them. but out of distant plutocrats il the
East?
For subversiveness to the institu ions
which have made this country great and
free, these Iowner bills are the worst
that we have ever undertaken. No sup
porter of them, in and out of his or her
own club or party, has any license to pro-
test against our complete transfer to
soviet government when the result comes
to pass. We are taking the early hurdles
now. This may sound extreme, but our
present peace-time taxes would have
sounded even more extreme had any one
told at the time of Roosevelt's laying
that corner stone to what we have nov
come.
There are certain great factors in our
experience as immovablc as the truths
of the multiplication table. One of these
is that our federal government is the
most expensive agency known to man
for the conduct of business. Long before
the war, when prices were low, it cost
the government $40. 900 for every boy it
graduated from West Point. You know
how much it costs Harvard and Boston
University and Boston College to educate
boysl You know the presses upon which
our money is made have been for years
turned by hand In the bureau of engrav-
ing in order to make work" You know
that door keepers have sat patiently,
drawing their salaries, by doors after
they had been nailed up. You know
Uncle Joe Cannon's remark that he be-
lieyed the government had at the Capitol
at least three men for every one mans
work. And that is what you pay for
when you have things done by the fed
era government. 1t is in that way that
IL Will run pQOflC cuOCdliOn
benefits and all the other things that the
radicslism of the West, abetted by the
altruistic enthusiasm of our new voters,
is forcing upon US, to the subversion of
of our social order.
But we are at stage in public opera
tions where people seem to think of only
one side of the ledger. II you tell the
school teachers that their salaries are to
he I'D 49, fazar,l -oF - ID
they are for that policy, ID disregard of
Their own obligation ultimately TO pay
for it, through making up the other
charges. We have recently been through
an experience with the bonus Il has
been very unpopular in Massachusetts, to
oppose the bonus, as shown by the fact
that both Lodge and CASTOR are nightly
in favor of it. And yet the veteran him.
self in Massachusetts, who would not, in
his own purchases. pay more Ia taxation
by reason Of the bonus than he would get
in the payment from it is very unusual
man. The state would pay four dollars
for every one that we get back, and the
veteran here, who is earning SIS a week
would be loser in the trade. But so
long as we do not see that, as a public,
these expenditures of the type which the
farmers bloc is pushing upon us, are
bound to be popular. The West and
South will push them upon US and we
shall, here in the Ea t, in various degrees
of fatuous submissiyeness, accept them.
Meanwhile, we are driving a hard blow
at our civilization. If you have any doubt
about this, consider the problem today of
the person of MIDDLE class means, y no
wants TO live in respectable conditions 10
an apartment in Boston or New York.
These taxes, percolating through various
industrial groups, have become enmeshed
in the cost of building combined with a
labor unionism more or less justified by
these very taxation burdens, to an extent
that makes the respectable housing for
the great yeonanry of our eastern cities
Increasingly difficult. The heating prob
lem is another of the same sort We are
verify pilinR turdens on the people heavier
than they can bear. We do not seem to
realize how we are doing it, simple as the
process is to any one possessed of even
the rudiments of economic knowledge.
We add to the burden every time we
transfer from private agency or from the
scrutiny of the local community, any new
functions of business or of administra ton
to the unwieldy and bureaucratic over
lordship OF the Washington government.
The Herald was denounced by the educa-
tionai convention here in the summer for
its attitude toward one very long step in
this direction. But we shall continue to
tell the truth, in the assurance that events
nil afelv fucfifv our pociticx, 10 in