Evening star., 1935-04-03
The Nye Committee Bill.

after months of investigation, has
brought forth a bill designed to take
the profits out of war. 1t goes much
further than that. 1t aims to prevent
war time imitation and its grim sue
cessor, postwar defation. 1t pro-
poses to take the profits out of war
through heavy taxation and the draft
of business executives into the Govern
ment service during the period of the
war. 1t proposes to prevent initiation
and subsequent deflation by paying
the costs of the war as it is waged.
The Senate committee bill is more
drastic than any similar proposal ever
advanced in Congress before. 1t is
more far reaching than the bill re-
ported from the House Military Affairs
Committee, which is to come up for
consideration in the House today. For
months the Senate committee has
heard the testimony of munitions
makers, ship builders, financiers, in
dustrialists and representatives of the
military forces. 1t has revealed to the
public in startling and realistic detail
the huge profits which have been made
from war by those who make and sell
the materials needed during the period
of emergency. No one loves war
profiteer. Yet every war has had its
parasites, men who have drawn huge
fortunes from the dire need of their
own countries.
1t may be argued in some quarters
that if the profit is prohibited war
will not be conducted so efficiently.
Others will fear that if a plan, so
socialistic as it affects the earnings
of the people. is adopted during a
war it will continue into the period
of peace following the war. Other
incentives besides profit making are
involved in the struggle Of nation
to maintain itself through arms. The
love of home, of life and freedom
impel the great majority to work
and slave and fight during war. The
war profiteers, after all, are and must
be necessarily in very small minority
of a people at war. And once a war
has been concluded, a people, and
particularly the American people, will
rush to throw off the limitations, the
denial of liberty of action, which have
been imposed upon them during the
continuance of a war.
The Nye committee bill recognizes
the fact that it requires vast sum
of money to conduct war. The taxes
which it proposes to levy on the peo-
pie are enormous, shocking to those
who have been accustomed to large
incomes and to the qualification of
their desires through the lavish ex-
penditure of money. All wars, the
committee says, have been financed
through huge borrowings. The next
war is to be financed through imme-
diate taxation of the Nations wealth.
That means taxation not of the rich
alone, but of every single person whose
income is over $500 and every married
person whose income is above 81 900.
Without going into detail, the tax
schedules will be so arranged that no
individual would be permitted to earn
more than $4,000 a year during war,
and no business would be permitted
to retain more than three per cent of its
net gains. Under this plan wars are
no longer to Great millionaires, nor
to impose huge financial burdens upon
the future.
The Senate committee quite freely
admits that war profits are not the
only cause for wars. But at the same
time it takes the position that wars
would not be so popular with some
persons if it we're impossible to roll
up huge fortunes out of selling mate
rails to the belligerent governments
or to wiring millions out of the people
for food in time of war by charging
excessive prices.
Every man and woman in the
country in time of war has something
at stake, whether it be life, liberty
or fortune or all three. The bigger
the fortune the bigger the stake. On
that theory the insurance premiums,
the taxes paid, should quite naturally
be high for those with the big stakes
at issue.