CHAPTER VI. 



THE FAEMER AND THE TAX-GATHERER. 



IT has become evident that the pressure of taxation in the 

 United States is to increase until our burdens are quite 

 equal to those of the European people. There is a ten- 

 dency to demand a constantly increasing service from the 

 national, state, and local governments, and all this service 

 costs money. We shall certainly push these demands until 

 we have reached the limit beyond which the people will not 

 endure taxation. The fact that there is such a limit, not 

 difficult to reach, impairs the credit even of the richest 

 nations, in regard to what may be termed questionable forms 

 and occasions of indebtedness. Universal experience shows 

 that when a certain limit of taxation has been reached, a 

 nation, or any political subdivision thereof, will repudiate 

 its indebtedness. It will usually be possible to raise some 

 quibble, or even some equitable contention, but at any rate no 

 people will tax itself above a certain limit. So long as public 

 funds are expended in sucli a manner as to make an equiva- 

 lent saving in private expenditure, the limit of taxation may 

 be extended indefinitely. If they are expended wastefulh', the 

 limit will be reached whenever the public burden, added to 

 the necessary private expenditure, according to the prevailing 

 standard of life, consumes the income of the average man. 

 When a people is brought to a choice between evading a 

 portion of the public debt, or permanently reducing the 

 standard of life, it will not, if it can be avoided, adopt the 

 latter alternative. 



While we are as yet, happily, far within the limit of endur- 

 ance of taxation, it is never too early to take into consideration 

 the fact that there is a limit, or to remember that every dollar 

 wasted in the expenditure of public funds is a dollar less to be 

 expended for tlie comfort of him who has earned it. In this 



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