Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-12-11
THE TAX OF IGNORANCE
Rv DR.. Frank Crane
"HE human race since time be
been proved npOn by parasitic

been preyed upon by parasites, blood
- suckers and thieves. History is but
a record of the systematic, institutional
plumber of the people by the shrewd and
selfish few. 1t has been lamb populace
managed by wolf expoiters. Mankind has
been taxed incaculaby taxed of money,
blood, life.
But of all known taxes that of ignorance
has been the greatest, includes perhaps all
other taxes. All the tyrannes of rulers,
kings, upper castles and cabals have not
equalled in their pillage the amount robbed
of humanity by ignorance. All the pirates
Of the Spanish Main all the buccaneers,
freebooters highway robbers, burglars and
thugs have not taken from vast.
pile of goods as has this same Ignorance.
Not all the swndling schemes of mining
shares watered railway stocks, wildcat in
vestments, predatory trusts, stock exchanges,
and money powers have depleted as
Ignorance All our loss by waste and prof.
legacy cannot equal our loss by Ignorance.
Ignorance claims its cent, per cent in all
trades. Nine-tenths of the failures are due
to Ignorance. Boys enter into business UNI
trained, uninformed; they go down in the
struggle. The slums and prisons full
of men who stumbled into crime because
they entered the battle for success without
skill weapons
Civilization Systematically keeps it's girls
in ignorance of the laws of their bodies, of
the significance and functions of sex The
hordes or women wrecks that swarm in our
cities is the resulting tax of Ignorance. How
much domestic tragedy is due to the same
cause! Our entire literature teens with
sex-suggestion: we do everything to arouse
passion, nothing to instruct it.
In the way of hygiene what measureless
tribute the race has paid to Ignorance. The
pests of former ages, cholera, the black
death, and the red death, the mutitudes Of
corpses heaped up simply because people
| did not know enough to keep clean!
The myriad lives that have been dark
ened, and bodies tortured by sincere but
narrow men playing upon the common Ig-
nOranoe of the unknown! This tax which
the hierarchy has levied on the light and
JOY of souls is perhaps most horrible of all.
tax due to pure Ignorance.
War, it is impossible to pile up superla-
tlves of eXecratiOn, curses cannot be scream
ed too loud, to do justice to its abysmal- in
fanny; and there never was war that was
not due to Ignorance. The spectre of every
war shall arise Judgment Day to point
a denouncng finger at the rulers of men;
for 1t is only to cover their stupidity that
the commons are led forth to slaughter.
'"There never was war that could not
have been better settled in some other
way" Add, then, to your tax of Ignorance
all them that sleep in mounds by the Rap
pahannock, that persisted at Ladysmith San
Juan, or Sadowa, and all other of those
orgies of blood and hate that fill the pages
of history as the stars fill the sky ....,.
Think of the tax of economic Ignorance!-
Money piled up in extravaganza here, and
yonder human creatures starving: all be-
cause we don't know how to distribute the
products of labor!
Look at the human beings crowded like
cattle into the street cars, look at the public
everywhere insulted, bullied, assaulted, and
we submit, because don't know how to
help ourselves. 49,.
The most economical thing the United
States could do would be to spend billion
dollars more year to give all children
education and thus do what may be done to
remove the taxation imposed by Ignorance.
1t is The Only Way.
Copyright, 1924)