State convention—Currency, taxation, etc. 193 
which ought to be investigated, to see whether we are paying 
more than our just proportion. I believe nearly every farmer has 
felt, that we have been heavily taxed, while the wealth of the 
country has escaped. Our present mode of levying and collect¬ 
ing taxes is but a slight modification of an old scheme devised to 
make labor pay all public burdens, and is little less than legalized 
robbery of the laboring classes. In this matter of taxation we 
farmers are more outrageously imposed upon than in anything 
else, we are not only taxed upon every farm implement we buy, 
and upon all our household purchases, but a levy is made by 
trade upon every dollars’ worth of our sales or purchases to pay 
the city’s tax, however exhorbitant it may be. so that in fact we 
bear the whole public burdens, from the road tax to the army budget. 
And men that fatten upon these taxes will never release their 
grasp upon our purses, until a farmers’ earthquake shakes the 
ground beneath their feet. 
What should be thought of the intelligence and honesty of 
those who compose a large majority of the voters of our country, 
who have cast their votes in favor of permitting themselves to be 
used as pack mules to carry the burdens which ought to be borne 
principally by the wrnalth of the country. 
The excuse for exempting bonds from taxation was that it was 
a war measure, and that we had to hold out some inducement to 
have capitalists invest their depreciated currency in bonds bearing 
six percent, interest payable in gold. So patriotic were the peo¬ 
ple at that time, that the word war measure caused them to sub¬ 
mit to paying the rich bondholders taxes. But that excuse will 
not do now, and cannot be used to palliate the gross wrong in¬ 
flicted upon labor, by exempting from taxation the new bonds, 
which have been issued to fund the 5-20s. Our guardians whom 
we elected to take care of our interests, aud transact our business 
at the national capital (many of them bondholders), agreed that 
they would compel the producing classes to pay both principal 
and interest in gold, for the bonds that were payable in legal-ten¬ 
ders, and that they should be exempt from taxation, thus permit¬ 
ting the wealthy capitalists to go untaxed and compelling us to 
pay not only our proportion of the taxes, but the rich man’s also. 
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