A Seventh Chapter from "The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page" The Outlook for Trouble Between Operators and Miners LETTERS OF A HIGH-MINDED MAN (Illustrated) I. Franklin K. Lane's Reasons for Public Service REUBEN A. LEWIS, JR. 513 Floyd W. Parsons 520 525 P. W. WILSON 535 MARK SULLIVAN 550 J M. CASENAVE 558 Copyright, 1922, in the United States, Newfoundland, Great Britain, and other countries by Doubleday, Page & Co. All rights reserved. Secretary of the Treasury, whose thoughtful and vigorous statements in opposition to the suggested Congressional action on the bonus for former service men is in sharp contrast to the weak and prevailing expression of opinion in Congress [See the March of Events] W THE MARCH OF EVENTS ITH the ending of the Washington Conference (its splendid achievements not yet fully realized in their future significance to the world) American thought will now have time to concentrate upon our domestic problems again, and to give more careful study to the things that are going forward in Congress. It is none too soon. Watch Washington! Desperate men, selfish men, greedy men, lazy men, dreamers, theorists, and fanatics are assailing Congress with a ferocity little short of savage. They all want money your money. Raids on the Treasury are nothing new, but never before have so many, of such extent, been attempted all at one time. The bonus, the crop purchase, the ship subsidy, the tariff-every one of them running into the hundreds of millions, and two of them into the billions-and all to come out of increases in your taxes. Every one of these measures proposes a gift of money-not the loan of it. They propose to take money out of your pocket and to put it in somebody else's pocket, and leave it there. Never mind how hard you worked for it; never mind how fully you earned it; never mind how much you need it-the other fellow wants it, and he is organized to force Congress to get it. If you don't organize to force Congress to stop him, he's going to get it. These measures propose legalized robbery. If a shipowner, who needs your money, sandbagged you on a dark street and took your pocketbook, you would recognize it as a crime, and the courts would recognize it as a crime, and you would have a redress. The shipowner knows this, so he is going to Congress and asking for a "subsidy." ing for a "subsidy." If he gets it, it will be legal. He will be relieved of the disagreeable details of the sandbag and the night air, for a polite (but inexorable) tax gatherer will send you a printed tax form that will pull the money even more surely out of your pocket, and the Treasurer of the United States will hand it over to the same shipowner in the form of a check that is good for gold at any bank. That is what Congress has power to do, and what Congress is being besieged to do, and what Congress will do if you don't let Congress know that you won't stand it. Congress thinks in terms of votes. That is the way it ought to think. That is what representative government means. But votes have a strange way of not counting for much unless they are organized. That, too, is all right-if your convictions are worth anything, they are worth taking the trouble to make them practically effective. The votes that want your money are organized. These organizations have got Congress pretty well terrorized. The only way to protect your money is to organize in defense of the Treasury. A Treasury Defense League might do the trick, or a Taxpayers' Mutual Protective Association. Only the threat of defeat next fall for every Congressman who votes for these measures is likely to prevent their passage. |