Evening star., 1924-01-06
Member of the Associated Press.
No Jekyll-Hyde Transformation.


Capital community not only suffers
as one who is threatened unexpect.
edly with a new blistering half million
or million tax, but also is distressed
with sense of humiliating outrage
as one who feels. that he has some
how been ignominiously befooled
Maryland denied to the District the
motor-tag reciprocity which it grant
ed to all the states. In order to make
up d country road-building deficit and
provement, Maryland imposed tax
on gasoline. Maryland found that un.
less a similar tax was levied in the
District many of it's motorists would
buy gasoline there and the revenue
receipts from the new tax would be
correspondingly reduced. So Mary
land desired strongly that the Capt.
tails tax on motors should take the
form of a gasoline tax. Washington
felt that its exclusive legislature, Con-
gress. should secure for it from Mary
land the same free motor reciprocity
which the other political subdivisions
of the Union enjoyed, but having no
representation whatever in it's legis-
lature the Capital was hopeless of Sc
curing this equity except for a price.
Under these conditions the District
Commissioners and the Maryland au-
thorities made informally a wise and
fai faf -lan nd
and the District We're TO recognize
reciprocally each others license tags
and the District was TO change its
form of motor taxation, 50 that gas
oline should be taxed. without either
increasing or decreasing its total tax
revenue from this source.
A bill embodying this agreement
was heartily. approved both by Mary
land and the Capital community. and
approval Of it and the promise to ex-
pedite its passage were, it was believed,
secured from influential legislators in
Congress, SO that Maryland and the
District felt safe in instituting and
did institute tentatively and in ad-
with this agreement.
But as soon as the bill embodying
this agreement of comfy and reciproc-
ity. helpful to everybody, was sub
mitted to the District committees Of
Congress it's conversion was threat
ened into new tax-exaction of a half
million or a million dollars by making
the gas tax an addition to instead OF a
substitute for other motor taxation.
Washington asked for bread. Will
Congress give it a stone, between
the eyes. savagely, crushingly?
OF course, the District Commission
ers have no power 10 make binding
agreements in respect to matters of
District taxation. No Washingtonian
has any voice whatever in respect to
his taxes. Everywhere else III the re-
public the taxed alone decide through
representatives all questions of taxa
ton. The taxed, who elsewhere have
everything to say, here have nothing
to say concerning taxes. Our alien
taxing body, alien in the sense that
we have no representation in it, is
Congress.
The Star does not believe for an in
slant that Congress will in the end
mock and injure the District by con-
verting, through a Jekyll-Hyde trans.
formation, the legislative benefit for
which it petitioned into curse. Con-
gress will either give effect to the
agreement between Maryland and the
District in accordance with its spirit
and intent or it will reject the agree
ment altogether.
In it's final deliberate decisions Con-
gress has for years been fair and just
in its relations to the nations city. No
one has any reason to believe that this
record will be bIackened now.