PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 589 



reduced, enables individuals to spare a larger quantity for the 

 use of the state. The sacrifice made in paying taxes, consists 

 in the labor, or in the cost of the money or produce required to 

 pay them and not in the amount of such money or produce." A 

 given, amount of food and clothing, iron, steel, copper, leather 

 goods, paper, and transportation can now, for example, be fur- 

 nished to the Government of the United States for at least one 

 third, and probably not more than one fifth, of the labor required 

 to produce like quantities of these same commodities or services 

 in 1840 ; while the wages paid for the work which such quantities 

 represent or necessitate have been increased from fifty to seventy- 

 five per cent and upward. In 1840 an operative in the cotton 

 mills of Rhode Island, working thirteen to fourteen hours a day, 

 turned off 9,600 yards of standard sheeting in a year ; in 1886 the 

 operative in the same mill made about 30,000 yards, working ten 

 hours a day. In 1840 the wages were $176 a year ; in 1886 the 

 wages were $285 a year. 



Daring the ten years from 1870 to 1880 the increase in the 

 number of hands employed in anthracite coal mining was 32'2 

 per cent, as compared with an increase of product of 82'8 per 

 cent ; while in the case of copper during the same period the 

 ratios were 15'8 and 70'8 per cent respectively. The whole 

 tendency, therefore, of the modern conditions of production is 

 not to entail any greater sacrifice on the part of the taxpayers for 

 the support of the Government, but rather to diminish it. " Gov- 

 ernments have precisely the same interest as their subjects in 

 facilitating production, inasmuch as its increased facility affords 

 the means of adding to the quantity of produce at their disposal 

 without really adding to the weight of taxation; whereas, on the 

 contrary, a diminished facility of production must either diminish 

 in an equal degree the produce appropriated by government or 

 compel it to lay heavier burdens on its subjects. Public wealth, 

 in short, is merely a portion of private wealth transferred to 

 government, and the greater the amount of the latter the greater, 

 of course, will be the magnitude of the portion that may be con- 

 veniently spared for public purposes." J". E. McCuUoch. 



When Taxation becomes an Evil. It is not pretended 

 that taxation, even under a correct system of assessment and col- 

 lection, may not under some circumstances be an evil. It is an 

 evil when through extraordinary or injudicious expenditures 

 of the state it is excessive and demands too large a proportion of 

 the annual or concurrent income of the people (in the form of 

 rents, interest, profits, salaries, and wages), out of which, or out of 

 the annually augmented wealth of a country, and not out of ac- 

 cumulated capital, all taxes ought to be paid, and as a rule are 

 paid. The economic rule governing taxation of first importance 



