DIRECT TAXATION. 1 65 



brotherhood of men by an impassable gulf, growing 

 wider and ever wider. Its mission is rather to bring all 

 this seeming conflict of interests into harmony. 



Properly adjust a progressive tax on property and 

 mammoth incomes, and you give relief to the one to 

 whom the labor for the gratification of his necessities is a 

 real burden of itself. Levy this progressive tax with 

 all the weight it should have on combines, trusts, and 

 monopolies, and you give back to society an increment 

 which is really unearned. Tax the bonanza farmer in 

 this progressive way, relieve the small proprietor, and 

 competition would be relieved of a terror, the result of 

 an abnormal condition. 



Small farmers could well demand this — without which 

 there appears no salvation for them, — a right in conform- 

 ity with science and the common weal ; but not as 

 suppliants for the crumbs of state charity ; not as the 

 millions of the peasantry of France and Germany, who 

 are now receiving presumed favors from the state after 

 being destroyed as actual forces in the national life. 



Allow the small farmers of the world, before they 

 have lost courage and become depraved, to come under 

 the influence of these wise changes as to taxation ; to 

 take a place as the ideal typical farmers of America, 

 and their power and usefulness as tax producers would 

 prove them no subjects for the exercise of charity, but 

 the equal of any of their contemporaries in bearing 

 the burdens of the state. It is an abnormal condition 

 which makes the farmer a subject of charity. 



While these are my views on the one hand, I maintain 

 on the other that it would be harmful as well as un- 

 scientific political economy to prohibit the aggregation 

 of capital in industry. Deal with these matters by way 



