A STATE OFFICIAL ON EXCESSIVE TAXATION. 651 



tioiis young ones, and at all times as centers of political intrigue 

 and personal profit, is gradually dawning upon the public. Al- 

 ready several Governors have demanded, in their annual mes- 

 sages to the Legislature, that they be consolidated or abolished. 

 As yet, however, it has been impossible to relax their grip on the 

 taxpayer. Obedient to the instincts of their kind, they are invent- 

 ing new arguments to establish their claims to the confidence and 

 gratitude of the victims of their greed and incompetency. 



But the creation of new and needless offices is not the only 

 manifestation of what Mr. Roberts fitly calls " the vicious tenden- 

 cies 'of legislation." More demoralizing are the laws that actually 

 encourage the robbery of one class of people for the benefit of 

 another. A familiar example is the bounty law for the destruction 

 of fishing nets. Almost as soon as passed it produced a new in- 

 dustry — namely, the manufacture of cheap nets, which were depos- 

 ited in fishing waters, subsequently discovered and seized by a pre- 

 arrangement, and made the basis of demands upon the public treas- 

 ury out of proportion to their value. So great have been the 

 frauds perpetrated under it that the cry for its repeal comes from 

 every quarter. Another law even worse morally was passed to 

 meet the clamor of the bicyclists and bicycle manufacturers. It 

 provides that twenty-five per cent of the cost of so-called good 

 roads to be built under it shall be paid by the State. As cities and 

 villages are exempt from its provisions, this sum, which comes out 

 of the pockets of all taxpayers, urban as well as rural, is, as Mr. 

 Roberts says, simply " a gratuity to the towns for the benefit of 

 country roads." As a sign of the moral decadence of the times, I 

 ought to add that one of the most powerful and effective argu- 

 ments in favor of the law was this very discrimination. Still more 

 shameless was one of the chief arguments in favor of the Raines 

 liquor law. AVith a moral callousness truly astounding, its advo- 

 cates framed tables of figures to show how great a percentage of 

 taxation it would shift from the country to the city districts. In 

 the heated political campaign that followed, these tables were made 

 to do service again to save from defeat the party responsible for 

 the enactment. To indicate, finally, how legislation may encour- 

 age vice, I must not omit to mention the provision that created the 

 Raines hotel. Under it assignation houses have multiplied to a 

 degree that Satan himself could not have foreseen nor have been 

 more enchanted ^vith. 



But the greatest inroads on the pockets of the taxpayer have 

 been made under the pretense of charity. I say " pretense " be- 

 cause it is a gross misuse of language to decorate with so fine a 

 word the seizure of a man's property under the forms of law and 



