i6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



Government could impose on him an income tax, and Hs own 

 State, at the same time, assess him with not only another like in- 

 come tax, but also with a tax on the property from which his 

 income was derived ? The idea of a dual government and its 

 inconveniences, and that the Congress of the Federal Government 

 had not cared to remedy the latter, had not occurred to the in- 

 terrogator. 



Had the power of the States to take money hy taxation from 

 their people been limited at the time of the formation of the 

 Federal Union by constitutional provisions, the injury and dis- 

 grace of State repudiation might have been wholly avoided, and 

 much wasteful extravagance checked. 



" Within an hour's ride from the city of New York several 

 towns can be reached that were bankrupted by undertaking * pub- 

 lic works upon a magnificent scale.' The number of Western 

 communities that have been ruined from the same cause is count- 

 less. A very great number of people in the Eastern States, both 

 poor and of the middle class, have been impoverished by the sud- 

 den check to the prosperity of these communities. Nor is any 

 severer tax imposed upon any class than that which is paid by 

 those who have only their wages to live upon, when they are de- 

 prived of these by the collapse of municipal credit and the conse- 

 quent sudden stop to extravagant expenditure. The average cost 

 of the pensions paid by the United States is ten to twelve dollars a 

 year to every family in the country, and in many cases the pension 

 charge alone is equal to half a month's or even to a month's 

 wages. Not a few of the governments of the earth are now in- 

 solvent because of excessive expenditures upon public works. In 

 South America and Australia, extravagant undertakings of this 

 kind have caused widespread ruin and distress ; and the poor of 

 several other nations are likely to find out eventually that the 

 alleviation of temporary distress by governmental expenditure of 

 capital is like keeping off the cold by burning down the house." 

 D. MacO. Means, The Forum, 189 J^. 



That the State governments should have bestowed the un- 

 limited and imperial power of taxation upon city governments, 

 and given up to their use and control the entire property of the 

 citizens, is an extraordinary abuse of trust and a renunciation of 

 the true functions of government. As a result of this policy 

 these delegated governments have, within a comparatively recent 

 period, absorbed for alleged public uses a large proportion of the 

 property of the citizens, to the estimated extent in some instances 

 of more than one third that is, the usufruct (right of using and 

 enjoying) and the American citizen has to-day no constitutional 

 or legal remedy. " No such plunder was ever sanctioned or prac- 

 ticed before in the history of civilized governments. That it has 



