March 10, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



367 



in favor of the state of thirty per cent.* 

 Three such taxes would leave of the oyster 

 little but the shell. 



In 1898, during the war with Spain, 

 Congress also levied an inheritance tax, 

 and the burden or the succession was 

 heavier still until the repeal of that 

 measure a few years afterwards. It did 

 not, however, apply to personal property 

 here passing- on the death of the owner to 

 citizens of another country.! 



The results of this condition of multiple 

 taxation are rapidly becoming apparent. 



Capitalists are beginning to center their 

 investments at home. They prefer to put 

 their money in domestic stocks and securi- 

 ties, for these, upon their death, Avill be 

 taxable but once. They are inquiring in 

 which states, out of their own, it is safest 

 to make or maintain investments; that is, in 

 which states there are either no inheritance- 

 tax laws or no inequitable ones. They are 

 organizing corporations, wlaich never die, 

 to hold their property. They are taking 

 title jointly with their wives or children, 

 so that death leaves the survivor the sole 

 owner. 



It has been said that a country should 

 never tax anything of value which, if not 

 taxed, would be likely to find its way there, 

 and which, if taxed, would be able to 

 escape from its power. J 



The American people are quick-witted. 

 It will not take long for all of them to 

 learn in which of the states they can and 

 in which they can not do business without 

 subjecting their property, in case of 

 death, to what is practically double taxa- 

 tion. 



AVall Street is to-day the financial center 

 of a great stretch of American territory. 



*Adani Smith, Wealth of Nations, III., Book 

 v., 326. 



fEidman v. Martinez, 184 U. S. Reports, 578. 

 t See David A. Wells on Taxation, ' Cyclop, of 

 Political Science,' ad fin. 



The trust companies, the banks and the 

 safety deposit vaults of New York City 

 hold vast amounts of moneys, bonds and 

 commercial paper belonging to residents of 

 other states, who have left them there for 

 security, or to use them for investment or 

 reinvestment. Their owners are taxable 

 on them where they live. Their estates 

 are taxable on them there, if they die. Let 

 those men once fully understand that their 

 estates would be also taxable on them in 

 New York, and it will not be long before- 

 their investments take a new shape or 

 are put under different keeping. 



An inheritance tax by a state upon 

 what is left by its own inhabitants is right 

 and just. It is right and just to place it 

 upon real estate situated within its terri- 

 tory and belonging to an estate of a dead 

 man. It may be not unfair and not im- 

 politic to place it upon tangible personal 

 property of such an estate which has been 

 statedly kept within its territory, and on 

 which no such tax is imposed in the state 

 or country to which its former owner 

 belonged. But to tax it twice; to wring 

 from widow or children or creditors, who 

 have already paid one inheritance tax to 

 the state under whose laws the estate is 

 in course of settlement, another of a like 

 kind, if not unfair, is certainly impolitic. 

 It contravenes the settled conceptions of 

 private international law— conceptions 

 that, through long ages of unbroken tradi- 

 tion, have worked their way into the 

 popular mind and become identified with 

 those of social justice and economic law. 



" Ein tiefer Sinn wohnt in den alten Brauchen. 

 Mann muss sie ehren." 



According to these, the succession to a 

 dead man's goods is to be determined by 

 the law either of the country of Avhich he 

 was a citizen or of that— generally the 

 same— in which he had his home; and 

 through that law it is to be worked out to 

 the last detail. 



