3S0 
American Agriculturist, May 5, 1923 
Look to Your Taxes 
“It Is Time That Farmers Got Together To Protect Their Interests” 
T his fiscal year the State government 
expenditures will amount to $132,- 
000,000; for next year they have been 
estimated at $150,000,000; and for 
the year following at $200,000,000. This 
means higher direct State taxes. The in¬ 
crease will have to be paid by a direct tax 
on tangible property-^this means chiefly real 
estate. If the Legislature spends more money, 
real estate will have it to pay; there is twice 
as much other property in the State that is 
not reached by this tax; why should the 
whole load be put upon one-third of the 
property ? 
Why should not part of it be raised by a 
surtax on,incomes as is done in Wisconsin? 
This would be a great advance in several 
directions: First, it would distribute the tax 
more equitably, and second, there would be 
more people interested in economy by the 
Legislature. As the law now stands, a larger 
State budget does not affect the income tax 
rate on corporations or individuals. 
. If part of the increase were to be raised 
by a surtax on income, every business con¬ 
cern and every individual liable to a State 
income tax would at once be vitally inter¬ 
ested. Were a proposition to spend $150,- 
000,000 or $200,000,000 to come up in the 
Legislature, immediately they would protest 
and the pressure on the Legislature for econ¬ 
omy would be multiplied many fold. As it 
stands now, only the owners of tangible 
property are affected by the direct tax, and 
the farmer qnd the small-house owner are 
silent and without any organized means of 
combatting extravagance. 
As the law now stands, not only will any, 
addition to the State budget be made up by 
a direct levy on tangible property, buL in 
addition, the $20,000,000 of back taxes from 
which the banks of the State have recently 
been freed by the Richmond decision of the 
By H. C. McKENZIE 
United States Supreme Court will have to 
be charged back to the several districts and 
piled upon the other item. A new tax meas¬ 
ure will have to be enacted to tax the banks 
in the future, and several bills have been 
introduced in the Legislature for that pur¬ 
pose. The one favored by New York City, 
and which is being pushed before the Legis¬ 
lature, is the Walker Bill, which provides for 
a tax of 2 per cent on the value of the bank 
shares'. A hearing on this bill was held in 
the Cities Room at the Capitol on April 11. 
There was a room full of representatives of 
bankers, of banking associations, of New 
York City, and of business organizations. 
Just one lone farmer, who got there by 
accident. 
This bill provides a tax of 2 per cent on 
the bank shares. The banks claim that un¬ 
der it they will be taxed in undue propor¬ 
tion to others. It is pertinent to inquire how 
this compares with the taxes that the farm¬ 
ers are paying. A comparison of the pro¬ 
portion of gross income, of different kinds 
of business, absorbed in taxes shows that the 
farmer was at the head of the list; a few 
of the items are as follows: 
Farming.$1,8.3 
Non-metal mines (very small number) 1,4.3 
Public utilities.*.. 1,31 
Textiles. ;... ,19 
Clothing- manufacturing.08 
Bankers.42 
This means that of every hundred dollars 
a farmer takes in he pays out for taxes $1.83, 
compared to 42 cents which the banker pays. 
Figuring another way, we come to the 
same conclusion, that the farmer is paying 
more than his fair share. Taking two typical 
rural counties, St. Lawrence and Delaware, 
we find that in St. Lawrence the average tax 
rate on the assessed valuation is $.0334. 
Adjusted to the equalized valuation, or 
actual value, it is $.0237. For Delaware 
County the average rate on assessed valua¬ 
tion is $.0369, and for the actual value $.0217. 
All the Walker Bill asks the bankers to pay 
is $.02, and still they claim they would be 
overtaxed as compared with others. 
It should further be remembered that after 
a farmer has paid his direct State and local 
taxes, he still has a State income tax to pay. 
But the Federal law has been so manipulated 
that the owner of bank stock is relieved from 
it. It might further be observed that the 
farmer is taxed on all his earning assets: 
his farm, buildings, stock, machinery, and 
equipment. Nine-tenths of the bank’s earn¬ 
ings come from the deposits WHICH ARE 
NOT TAXED. If the farmer was put on all 
fours with the banker, the banker would be 
taxed on HIS earning assets, which includes 
the deposits. 
And yet one of the bankers came to Albany 
and complained because in a certain bank a 
2 per cent tax on the shares would amount 
to a 10 per cent tax of the net income. He 
made this complaint after his organization 
had spent a year at Washington making it 
impossible to adequately tax them on their 
net income, and .when, at the same time, not 
10 per cent, but 33 per cent of the net income 
of all the real estate in the State of New 
York is absorbed in taxes, according to a 
statement made by Governor Miller in one 
of his messages to the Legislature. 
It is time that, the farmer learned from 
the example of these other groups to co¬ 
operate for the protection of their interests. 
When they do, the banks will not be able to 
charge back to the owners of tangible prop¬ 
erty $20,000,000 of back taxes and the ex¬ 
travagant expenditures of the Legislature 
will not all be loaded on the same shoulders. 
Farmers’ Hours 
8,640,000 Times A Year—100 Yanks For A Cent! 
I N the editorial of the April 14 American 
Agriculturist it is not mentioned what 
sort of farmer Mr. Arthur Pound inter¬ 
viewed, hence it is impossible to com¬ 
pare his working hours with those of others 
in similar types of farming. However, it is 
very likely that some farmers do not work 
more than seven hours a day on the average. 
My own experience has been almost entirely 
with a general farm, on which dairying was 
one of the chief sources of income, and we 
worked about eleven hours a day most of 
the year. 
I always kept two men the year round, as 
I considered it necessary to keep a man 
through the winter if one was to have him 
in the summer, and I myself did not have to 
do much work in the winter on that account. 
Our day was about as follows: start chores 
at five, one hour for breakfast, work until 
noon, one hour for dinner, and work until 
six. Sometimes the work went over a little, 
but we figured on getting done at six. Of 
this time two and a half to three hours 
were spent in doing chores until I got a milk¬ 
ing machine, and then one man spent most 
of ten hours in the lot with the four-horse 
team during plowing and fitting, and the 
other did all the milking in the same time 
that it formerly took the three of us. 
Many of my neighbors worked somewhat 
longer hours. Not many of them worked 
less. Now there are few hired men in the 
■ By A. H. DeGRAFF 
country, and the operators of the farms work 
longer hours. Many farmers put in their 
time at puttering jobs between the really 
busy seasons, owing to poor planning of the 
farming operations. I always planned to 
have productive work for every day of the 
year. I raised early and late potatoes and 
some cabbage. This made more fitting, culti¬ 
vation, and planting in the spring and sum¬ 
mer, spraying in the early summer, digging 
of early potatoes in the late summer, in a 
time that would otherwise have been slack 
between harvesting and silo filling, digging 
of late potatoes after silo filling, and cutting 
of cabbage last of all. I also was usually 
able to slide in some two to three months 
of teaming on the road every summer. 
In the winter I hauled milk to fill out the 
time. I believe that the more careful plan¬ 
ning of farming, to utilize the time to the 
best advantage, together with the use of 
tractors or four-horse tools in order to in¬ 
crease the work performed per man, offers 
the greatest possibilities of decreasing the 
cost of production which we have. 
Incidentally, I might mention that I have 
figured out the price received for milking 
cows. One pulls teats on an average of 
8,640,000 times a year. At the average rate of 
payment of farm labor, one gives some 100 
yanks for a cent. It is not the long hours 
on the farm that drive workers away; it is 
the low rate per hour. The only way we can 
improve the profit on the farm is not to in¬ 
crease production, but to decrease costs and 
to increase prices. To decrease costs we 
. must so plan our work that there will be 
profitable or at least productive work all of 
every work day in the year, preferably both 
for horses and men. You don’t get paid for 
loafing nor for puttering around to get your 
time in. 
My hours did not vary from early spring 
to late in the fall, and my men worked about 
ten hours a day the other three and a half 
to four months. Most of the farmers have 
more variation than that, however, working 
longer hours in the busy season and shorter 
hours in the slack times. 
Hod carriers in some of our Eastern cities 
are now holding up all building operations 
while they strike for $1 an hour. At this 
rate my men would earn only $70 a week in 
the summer and $64 a week in the winter, 
or an average of about $3,544 a year. I really 
cannot see any particular reason why they 
should not get the same wages as hod car¬ 
riers. The work is about as hard, and takes 
infinitely more brains. And yet people won¬ 
der what is the matter with farming! 
The only way to have a friend is to be 
one. —Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
