The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-01-23
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK. Henry Morgenthau thinks
Miss Vlvien Kellems' exhortation to her fellow
citizens to refuse to pay their income taxes
smacks of disloyalty. He exaggerates.
Miss kellems is guilty of evaporation and
foolshness, NO worse. Her evaporation may
do some good but she will surely pay for
her foolishness because the Treasury has the
right and power to sell her out in the court
house steps like Iowa farmer in the days
of the panic and would have to do it to
maintain the authority of government and
law should this energetic and emotional man.
ufacturer of a small but highly important
war contraphon persist in her refusal to pay
on the ground that she needs the money for
la stake to resume normal business after the
war.
to cry of protest and despair on behalf of
many other entirely loyal citizens who find
themselves actually broke today, stripped of
their savings and compelled to 60 to the
loan sharks for money to hand over to Mr..
Morgenthau. There are among these good
Americans some with children in the services
who have suffered sudden total loss of their
normal employment or business and must now
pay to the Treasury money which they had
put by for that rainy day without the slight
est hope that they will be able to pay the
rent and keep their homes together. They
will pay with a feeling that there is something
wrong about a government which would re-
duce them to poverty and use part of their
money to buy unaccustomed comforts for the
peoples of foreign lands and to pipe streams
OF cash into the treasures of corrupt unions
at home. The family is the basic unit of
American society and the nation, but the in
come tax rates now hold that the head of a
family is entitled to only miserably insult
ficient allowance for their support and must
take care of strangers, including foreigners,
first
These are some of the thoughts of Ameri-
,%x0 that Mr. thor
who agree with Miss Kellems up to the point
where she asks them to engage in a mass
protest or tax strike.
Mr. Morgenthau said further that taxes are
levied by Congress, representing the people
and that I'VE in the Treasury are charged
by law with collecting those taxes
That is correct except that the Treasury
has tried to tell Congress how much to charge
and has insisted ruinOuS rates. Paradox
| cally, the Treasury and the new deal have
| squeezed and squeezed toward financial ex-
| tnction the one class of income taxpayers
| who yield by far the most important return.
There has been in this program evidence of
animus against an economic and social class
of Americans who are as patrlotlc as any
of the rest and much more loyal than some
biologists in Washington.
Miss Kellems' reference to fantastic, RI
diculous and distorted tax laws OF this country
which understand was not an
exaggeration. These laws are unfair, retro
active in some respects and so complicated
that it has been necessary to hold classes for
the instruction of agents of the Internal Rev.
enue, who will admit privately, that they
still do not understand The taxpayer him
self is lost in the tangle of language and ref
erences and he has a feeling that a tax,
originally intended to raise money to run
his government. has been turned into a
device to take away his home his savings,
his insurance and the money which he had
hoped to leave his wife when he died. There
has been suggestion in the Treasury's tax
!, ing program for years that there was some
thing morally wrong about saving and &C
cunlulating from the earnings of hard work
J and ability, and parallel suggestion that the
, state should take over this and care for all
alike and on charity rations
Mr. Morgenthau expresses a political bias
when he said of Miss Kelems' remarks:
, "Such an attitude is especially unworthy OF
persons profiting from war contracts.
Why is it especially unworthy? War con-
tractors on the whole, have given this nation
! service at least great and noble as his