The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1939-12-01
THIS COUNTRY NEEDS ECONOMY
]. E. Jones

| iOrity of states ana cities every per
son who orders meal at a restaur-
ant or hotel finds that there Is an
item of one or more cents on their
bill called the tax. If you buy some
thing at shop or store there will
still be an item on the bill called
! the tax. 1t is the same at the gas
| service station, the cigar counter,
the liquor store-in fact everywhere
you go. The Old World has followed
similar plans of taxation for years.
Apparently our country is becom-
ing Europeanized.
| The greatest business group in the
United States has drafted program
at its headquarters in Washington
proposing forty changes in the Fed
eral tax laws. 1t would like to have
it's suggestions taken up by Congress.
The big Chamber of Commerce is
not butting in, this time, with fresh
tax proposals but it states that it Is
presenting the composite views OF
all elements of business in response
to a request from the United States
Treasury for suggestions on how the
tax laws could be improved"
About the only one of these forty
recommendations worth mentioning,
| because the rest of them are from
four to six years old), is the pro-
posal to eliminate double taxation
of dividends"
These big organizations are sup
ported by brilliant leaders in the
business and political world. All too
often they side-step the real ques-
tions. In old-fashioned English the
real remedy most d is
ECONOMY.
In six years the National debt has
been multiplied several times. At
the end of each fiscal year the de-
ficits of the Government have be-
come greater by millions of dollars
than they were the year before. The
| Government has simply gone wild
on one spending spree after another.
1t is beside the question to lay all
the blame on the President because
l
Congress was not a profligate Mr..
Roosevelt could not splash around
with all these billions of the taxpay-
ers money. The voters can pin down
their candidates in 1910 and pledge
them to economy. In the days when
Cal Coolidge was president of the
United States the national debt was
reduced 10 billion dollars. 1t can be
reduced again.
Business Abhors War
That American business doesn't
desire war and war profits, declar-
ed noted commentator recently, is
not just because business learned
we'll the lesson of the postwar de-
preston. 1t is more that business, he
added, has perhaps unknowingly,
developed a degree Of social con-
seriousness"
Substantiation for this declaration
is abundant everywhere, through
expressions of their convictions by
many business and industrial lead
ers, who by nature are realists. Here
are few examples, coming from
representatives of just one of the
larger corporations:
"The belief that war is profit
able enterprise is entirely without
any basis of fact. 1t is true that it
causes a temporary stimulation of
| oof;y;fy p,f ir,-ocY,ootixra of oil tho
facts and circumstances, all ulti-
mately lose.-Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.,
Chairman of General Motors.
Our corporation could not possibly
make money out of war sufficient
to Offset the losses our regular bus
mess would suffer through the up
setting of economic conditions due
to war. That, of course, is why there
never was a good war or a bad
peace. S.. Knudsen, Presi-
dent of General Motors.
War is nothing but a question
of negative economy in which you
start to trade. Now, as you trade
those economic values back and
forth, one fellow gets down to the
point where he hasn't anything to
trade, and SO that war ends. Chas
F. Kettering, vice-President OF GEN
eral Motors.
Ships That Sail LIN The Night n
War; neutrality, embargoes, and
restrictions, have spread darkness
over the face OF the deep, and
American ships do not know wheth-
er they are going to see the ports
they made in the days of peace.
Panama seems to be courted by
some American shipping companies
that want to register their fleets IN