Year: 1871

enough to see and brain weighty enough to
win the eminent position that lies waiting for
the public man who will lead q successful
attack upon the giant Taxationa For
some time past we have been peering
about with our lantern for some statesman
with q tongue and head, decent knowledge
Of arithmetic processes modicum Of care
for the public good, and large share
of ambition, who will see and use this
fine opportunity. We are surprised at that
chronic default of ambition and arithmetic
which leaves us without champions Of tho
peoples cause In this question of purse and
pocket; and more surprised are we at the
patience Of an outraged, oppressed and de-
frauded people. Camels can and do rebel and
bite when they are overloaded. Elephants
deposit their drivers and their burdens In the
river or the mud when those beasts, more


intelligent than our taxpayers, 1t would
seem, are of opinion that the burden


has been unfairly adjusted to the back.
| Yea, even cows sometimes kick over the
| milkpail, and the milkmaid in the bargain,


when they consider, after due reflection, that
their patient and useful teats are too vigor-
ously and exhaustively drawn on. But what
will wear out the slavish patience Of our tax
paying bodyp What extremities Of fiscal
oppression will they submit to before they
emulate the judicious camel, elephant and cow,
and administer kicks to our dull financial
tyrants that shall compel them to reform their
blundering ways7


We have run through the negro question.
Beginning with the abolition Of the slave trade
and the slave pens In the District Of Columbia
in 1850, step by step all the legal wrongs Of the
black man under our late Institutions and con-
stitution of African slavery have been righted;
| and In the recent ratification of the fifteenth
| amendment we have made Uncle Tom "a man
| and brother" The Southern reconstruction
question, which, pending the conflict between
the policy of Congress and the policy Of Andy
| johnson, threatened q long agitation and a
world of trouble, has been substantially settled
by Congress and General Grant. The social
and political disorders which still af1ict the
| South are but the natural consequences of a
political and social revolution tearing out the
old established order Of things by the roots


These disorders can be cured only by time,
although the idea still seems to prevail in Con-
gress that they can be cured by another dras-
tic purge or two of reconstruction. But he who
looks at the recorded revolutions Of the whirli-
Gig Of American politics for tho last fifty years
will find that the two great revolutionary
issu Of the country have been ''the almighty
niger" and the almighty dollar" and that
when the niger question has been temporarily
pushed into the background the question of the
almighty dollar has come into the foreground.
Thus, if Southern slavery was the great agta-
ton of 1920, the money question was the ruling
issue of the country from 1880 to 1850, when
the negro again came to the front and threat
ened to tear the country to pieces. After
twenty years of sectional agitations and con-
vulsions thus excited, including our terrible
civil war, the negro question is settled, and
now, with all the accumulated financial diff
culties of these twenty years, the almighty
dollar" is again the all-absorbing question, and
| especially In reference to our heavy and need
lessly heavy burdens Of taxation.


i ulS uucSticu VI IdAd9lOu lS TdpIuiy UGCOm-
ing the foremost practical question of the hour
for all Of us. The reaction of prices from the
inflated condition Of the war has now set in
with intensity, and the gloomy political condi-
ton Of the Old World, rsacting so powerfully
as it does on all the values Of our staples,
threatens to precipitate alarmingly the fall in
values. Our profit margins are being abridged
In all directions. Yet the tide Of taxation
still rises around the weakening foundations Of
our house. Both in the federal and the State
departments Of our public affairs there is a
constant tendency to increase in the public
burdens: And impudence reaches a height
unparalleled in history in some OF the projects
submitted to our legislative bodies for fleeing
the people. We read the other day Of
project placed before Congress for SUBJ
sidizing mining companies to the extent Of
millions of dollars.


What we need is finance minister
who shall have the management of our
finance system as o whole both before the
legislative bodies and in the department.
To put it as shortly as possible, we have no
budget and no Minister of Finance who draws
it up and bas to answer for it. In all coun-
tries governed by parliamentary system
the revenue and expenditure of each year
are stated by the responsible minister
to the representative body. Thus the
taxation and the disbursements Of the country
as a whole are presented to the representatives
and the public as coherent, Ineligible
thing, which has, like building, it's responsl-
BILE architect 1t is obvious that by this
method it is possible to have real financial
policy and to control 1t by public debate and
opinion. But our plan of propounding tax
bills through committees Of the House is one
which never can by any possibility introduce