58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a matter of course, the people with the larger incomes will buy all they 

 need with the necessary consequence that the final burden falls on those 

 least able to bear it. 



All systems of taxation have adjusted themselves more or less logi- 

 cally to these conditions. 



It has been found in practice among all civilized nations that any 

 large amount of taxation must be derived from a few articles of very 

 general use; as, for instance, our national taxes on liquors and tobacco 

 have for twenty years preceding the Spanish war annually averaged two 

 dollars and a half ($2.50) per head, that rate sufficing to meet the nor- 

 mal expenses of the government during the same period. That is to 

 say, taxes on liquors and tobacco, domestic and foreign, have annually 

 yielded a revenue in money sufficient for twenty years prior to the 

 Spanish war for the support of the civil service, and the army and the 

 navy before these forces were augmented beyond the requirement of 

 national defense. The taxes necessary to meet pensions and interest 

 have been derived from other sources. In other words, under normal 

 conditions, had we paid the national debt, as we might have many 

 years ago without feeling the burden in any considerable measure, and 

 had our pensions been limited to true cases, the people of this country 

 would only have been called upon to forego a part of their consumption 

 of liquors and tobacco in order to support the national government. At 

 the present time, under the augmented taxes on liquors and tobacco, the 

 revenue from these sources is between three dollars and a half ($3.50) 

 and four dollars ($4) per head. 



Great Britain, France and Germany derive a large part of their 

 revenues from the same sources, namely, from these and other articles 

 which are consumed in largest measure by the millions rather than by 

 the millionaires. These taxes are collected at the least cost for collec- 

 tion and they meet a true canon of taxation, taking from consumers a 

 part of a product which consumers can spare without impairing their 

 productive energy. 



Again, we may find the almost necessary resort of the British Gov- 

 ernment in India to a salt tax, because it is only through the tax on 

 salt that the masses of the people can be reached, the next great resource 

 of East Indian revenue being what is practically a single tax on land, 

 assessed directly without regard to the relative product year by year. 

 These taxes on salt and land admittedly reduce a large part of the popu- 

 lation of India to such condition of extreme poverty that when a bad 

 year comes famine devastates the land. The hoards of wealth in India 

 are enormous, but they cannot be reached. The problem of taxation 

 in India is not a question of will but of power to collect. 



The octroi tax imposed upon the traffic of the city with the country, 

 now in force in France, Italy and some other countries, rendered neces- 



