BOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 727 



main object of a government by the people is the payment of 

 pensions rather than the protection of life and property. 



The Prospective Revenue Requirements op the Federal 

 Government. The aggregate revenues of the Government for 

 the fiscal year 1897-'98 are estimated, on the basis of existing laws, 

 by the Secretary of the Treasury (Report on the State of the 

 Finances, 1896). at $431,327,000; and the estimates of appropria- 

 tions, exclusive of sinking fund, required for the same period, are 

 $460,916,000 ; leaving a prospective national deficit of revenue for 

 the next fiscal year of $45,719,000. The total appropriations of 

 the two sessions of the past (fifty-fourth) Congress aggregate 

 $1,043,437,019. Under such circumstances a provision for an 

 annual revenue of more than $500,000,000 is therefore most 

 expedient, and the question at issue of first importance is. How 

 can this sum be raised with the greatest certainty, regularity, 

 and minimum cost to the Government, and with the least 

 inconvenience and friction on the part of the people who will 

 have to provide it ? For the Government never has any money 

 by which alone the expenses of the state can be defrayed 

 except what the people citizens or subjects give or concede to 

 it by voluntary or involuntary action ; while the people, as a 

 whole and in turn, never have any to give except what comes 

 to them as a result of their work, or from an exchange of the prod- 

 ucts of their work. And such being the case, we are confronted 

 with a homely truth, generally overlooked by writers and legis- 

 lators on taxation, that what the Government really wants of its 

 people, when it calls upon them for taxes, is work, and that the 

 methods of taxation are only methods for collecting and using 

 the products of work. Furthermore, it ought also to be borne in 

 mind that for every dollar the Government at present expends, 

 the average American citizen must work for at least half a day, 

 or furnish a value equivalent for such an amount of work.* 



Another matter of almost equal importance for consideration 

 in this connection is the desirability of initiating an adequate 

 revenue system for the national Government, the elements of 

 which shall be rendered in a high degree permanent, by exemp- 

 tion from influences contiogent on changes in the political admin- 

 istration, and on temporary commercial and industrial conditions 

 of the country. In fact, it would be diflBcult to name an influence 

 more certain to be conducive to national prosperity than the reali- 

 zation of such an agency. 



* " Taxation means work, of the head, or the hand, or of the machine, or all combined. 

 And the method of taxation is only a method of distributing the products of work. It is 

 measured, when in the process of distribution, in terms of money, but the money itself 

 stands for work, or is derived from work." The Industrial Progress of tJie Nation, Edward 

 Atkinson ; G. P. Putnam & Sons, New York, 1890. 



