Full text: The ABC of taxation

INHERITANCE AND INCOME TAXES 149 
can accumulate five hundred dollars to his one, but 
because, through the operation of this special privilege, 
it is at his, the poor man’s, expense that the rich man’s 
accumulation is made. Ex-Governor Long says that 
there will be discontent just so long as certain comforts 
and possessions are within the reach of one class and 
beyond the reach of another class. This discontent 
Archbishop O’Connell calls the “tumultof theenvious.” 
But unprivileged men, whether unprivileged rich or 
unprivileged poor, have not far to look to find that 
discontent and envy start only where skill and enterprise 
leave off and special privilege begins. You are not 
envious of Edison or Marconi or Bessemer or railroad 
magnates, or captains of industry; you gladly accord 
them princely rewards as public benefactors. It is 
only when the people are called upon to provide an 
Edison fortune for every city and town in the country 
through privileged exaction that your discontent is 
aroused. It is only when they are required to super 
impose upon an unprivileged steel fortune of three or 
four millions a privileged fortune of a thousand millions, 
based upon economic rent, that the shoe begins to 
pinch. It is only when the ore baron, the coal baron, 
the oil baron, the railroad baron, and the land baron 
are privileged to take ten dollars or a hundred dollars 
from their wages and add it to the monopoly price of 
coal and iron and oil that men are swayed by the 
“tumult of the envious.” 
Legislation has been busy constituting criminal 
offences. The air is charged with criminal prosecution 
and conviction where fortunes have been swelled 
through violation of law. But is it not true that neither 
legislatures nor courts have seriously addressed
	        
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