Vagabond Editorials

Bv Jack D,ionne

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have spedTo vanished joys be blind, and deaf, and dumb; By judgments seal the dead past with its deadBut never bind a moment yet to come.

Saw the statement of a public utility the other day that made me scratch my head. They had their figures on taxation translated into comparisons that drove them home, and home hard. Get this selected statement: In 1913 their taxes per year per subscriber was 13 cents; in 1937 their annual tax per subscriber was $5.65. *:B*

And I guess you know who paid that $5.65, don't you, Mr. Subscriber? Another item in their tax sheet showed that their taxes for 1937 totaled more than fifty per cent of their entire payroll. And you paid it, Mr. Subscriben And next year you will pay still more; and the next year more again; and. so on. Just keep saying that over and over for years to come, a4d you'll have the facts without exaggeration. ,i rf rt.

And in addition to the things already known that have to be paid for there will be armament taxes. With all the rest of the world arming, we're going to arm, also. Don't doubt it. And that will be another bulge in the coming tax bill.

Did you knorv that the world is spending SIX TIMES as much for arms and armament today as it was spending immediately prior to the starting of theWorld War in l9l4? And they are not buying those guns and munitions just to scare the neighbors with, either. **:t

A man I know has been trying to finance a large industrial proposition. On paper it looks like something good to eat. But even investments that look,that good are hard to finance in these days of trembling dollar-owners. But my friend found a capitalist who had that much idle money, and who decided to consider the investment very seriously. ***

He did. And he turned it down. Gave as his reason the fact that he is about seventy years of age, and didn't dare make the investment on that account. Shoutd he die before the money had been returned the inheritance tax would gobble up half of it, and, his family being unable to pay, the investment itself would be sold on ttre auction block by the government to satisfy its tax claim- He risked putting the future of his family in financial jeopardy if he made the investment. So that large gob of cash remains practically idle, and hundreds of men who would have been employed, remain idle also. ***

A big oil corporation closed its books for 1937 and found that its tax bill for the year amounted to $3,300 per employe, $1,020 per stockholder, and $3.50 per share of outstanding stock. It paid dividends of 80 cents per share of stock. Two fellows paid that huge bill-Mr. Consumer and Mr. Stockholder * * ,r

And jumping from taxes to labor-two of the prime causes of our present little depression-it was William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, who made .THIS statement to an alumni meeting of the University of Wisconsin: "Labor and capital have a common cause to protect against autocratic usurpation of power over their destiny by government agency, whether it be the National Labor Relations Board or any proposed board to substitute itself for the parties in determining for them the terms and conditions under which labor and capital shall, side by side, function together. Labor, no less than capital, demands that every sound endeavor which has economic qtility be allowed to function and not be stifed or destroyed by government fiat, whether given through the taxing power, through restrictive legislation, or through discrimination." ***

Mr. Green knows, what others seem unwilling to learn, that business must be allowed to operate free and unfettered under the profit system, if the men who need jobs in this country are ever to be reemployed. Green added in his Madison speech that American industry is in a state of convalescence and needs no severe nostrums.

An editor of the t"" O"*r* Times predicts that the great man of the present century will be he who "originates a plan whereby the people of this country can take full advantage of the plenty nature is always tryingto thrust upon us." I've been trying to say that same thing in this column for six years. Some day \,ee are going to produce

(Continued on Page B)