384 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



$133,333+. And, according to any lair interpretation of tlie action 

 of the committee whicli reported in 1884 a $4,000 exemption, a 

 citizen who is worth less than $80,000 of ordinary property yielding 

 income, or $133,000 of property invested in United States bonds, was 

 a legitimate object for national charity; the above sums represent- 

 ing the dividing line in the United States between those who were 

 entitled to be regarded as poor and those who were entitled 

 to be considered rich. Such an assumption finds no precedent in 

 fiscal history, and was an unwarranted favoritism to nine tenths of 

 the well-to-do people of the country, who were abundantly able to 

 pay any just proportion of the taxes which the Government then 

 considered it necessary to impose for its support. Under such cir- 

 cumstances it would be a misnomer to call such an extortion taxa- 

 tion. It was unmasked confiscation and a burlesque on taxation. 

 In the case of the income tax of 1868, when the amount of exemp- 

 tion was $1,000, experience demonstrated that more than nine 

 tenths of the entire property of the country, and more than ninety- 

 nine hundredths of its property owners, escaped payment from this 

 form of taxation. 



Again, an income tax which exempts $4,000 of income in the 

 United States can not be defended by any rational rule or doc- 

 trine, legal or economic, for the property and income exempted 

 would be infinitely greater in the aggregate than the property and 

 the income of the same class made subject to the tax. Under this 

 form of an income tax there could be no equality between taxed-pro- 

 ducers and non-taxed-producers, and more especially as the non-taxed- 

 producers Avill be the most numerous and the greatest producers in 

 quantity as a body. 



]^o man is a freeman whose industry and capital are subject to 

 exaction, and from which his immediate competitors are entirely ex- 

 empt. Equality of taxation of all persons and property brought into 

 open competition under like circumstances is necessary to produce 

 equality of condition for all, in all production and in all the enjoy- 

 ments of life, liberty, and property; and government, whatever 

 name it may assume, is a despotism, and commits acts of flagrant 

 spoliation, if it grants exemption or exacts a greater or less rate of 

 tax from one man than from another man, on account of the one 

 owning or having in his possession more or less of the same class of 

 property which is subject to the tax. If it were proposed to levy a 

 tax of five per cent on annual incomes below $4,000 in amount, and 

 exempt all incomes above this sum, the unequal and discriminating 

 character of the exemption would be at once apparent; and yet an in- 

 come tax exempting all incomes below $4,000 is equally unjust and 

 discriminating. In either case the exemption can not be founded or 



