CHAPTER VI. THE FARMER AND THE TAX-GATHERER. T has become evident that the pressure of taxation in the United States is to increase until our burdens are quite equal to those of the European people. There is a tendency to demand a constantly increasing service from the national, state, and local governments, and all this service costs money. We shall certainly push these demands until we have reached the limit beyond which the people will not endure taxation. The fact that there is such a limit, not difficult to reach, impairs the credit even of the richest nations, in regard to what may be termed questionable forms and occasions of indebtedness. Universal experience shows that when a certain limit of taxation has been reached, a nation, or any political subdivision thereof, will repudiate its indebtedness. It will usually be possible to raise some quibble, or even some equitable contention, but at any rate no people will tax itself above a certain limit. So long as public funds are expended in such a manner as to make an equivalent saving in private expenditure, the limit of taxation may be extended indefinitely. If they are expended wastefully, the limit will be reached whenever the public burden, added to the necessary private expenditure, according to the prevailing standard of life, consumes the income of the average man. When a people is brought to a choice between evading a portion of the public debt, or permanently reducing the standard of life, it will not, if it can be avoided, adopt the latter alternative. While we are as yet, happily, far within the limit of endurance of taxation, it is never too early to take into consideration the fact that there is a limit, or to remember that every dollar wasted in the expenditure of public funds is a dollar less to be expended for the comfort of him who has earned it. In this country there is great waste of public money-more, doubtless, than in any other nation of the blood of the thrifty nations of Northern Europe. This is not because we are not intelligent and vigorous, but because our past has been to us a time of great things, and we have been too busy and too prosperous to feel the necessity of economy in public affairs. The opportunity, as always, has brought forth the men, and we have developed a class, larger and more astute than exists elsewhere of the same sort, which expects to thrive at the unnecessary expense of the public. Habits have been formed, and precedents set, which we now find it difficult to get rid of. Our fiscal misfortunes include inequalities of taxation and extravagance in expenditure; and extravagance may include economical expenditure for desirable objects, when beyond the means of the community incurring it. It is no more possible to the poor community than to the poor individual to practice all the economies of wealth. A rural community might bankrupt itself by the building of a stone road or an irrigation system, in the absence of other capital to make use of them. There must be traffic to justify the stone road, and the use of lands to justify the building of an irrigation system, and both these involve large investments of capital in addition to the cost of the improvements. It is doubtless true that few taxes are justly assessed. Incidentally I have said something about our system of taxation elsewhere in this volume.* I do not intend to add much to what has been said there. We are committed to the system of raising most of our taxes for state and local purposes by an ad valorem assessment upon what is called the "value" of all property which can be found. Experience shows that propertyholders will lie to get rid of taxation, and that the number who do this is so great that it is a physical impossibility to deal properly with the criminals. In medieval times the . thumbscrew and the iron boot were employed in assessing rich men. Even those methods seem not to have been *See book Sixth, chapters I and IV. Farmers, and other comparatively poor men, doubtless pay an undue share of taxes, but it is mainly because they can not conceal their property. When effective. At any rate, they have been abandoned, and none better at least more effective-have been discovered. I presume it may be accepted as impossible to get an approximately correct list of property for the purposes of an ad valorem assessment, and that increasing financial pressure will, in the end, compel us, as all other countries are compelled, to rely more and more on licenses, income taxes, inheritance taxes, taxes upon traffic,* and the like, to produce a revenue. Certainly I see little use, within the limits of a chapter, to try to suggest remedies for the evils of ad valorem taxation, which have baffled the ingenuity of generations of statesmen. It will be more profitable to consider some possibilities of economy in expenditure. One great source of waste is the salary account. For that part of its work which involves little or no exercise of discretion, and no financial responsibility, the American public pays, probably, nearly twice what private concerns would pay for the same work. Under proper conditions the same men who now do the work-or as many of them as would be necessarywould undertake to do all the work that is now done, for twothirds the present total expenditure, and in so doing would be they can do so they are as bad as others. The number of pounds of wool produced in California in 1896, as compiled by the wool dealers, divided by the number of sheep assessed in the state, gives the average clip of about fifteen pounds per head. The real average could not have exceeded seven and one-half pounds, which would show that sheep owners lied about the number of their sheep. In that state "Angora" goats are assessed higher than "common" goats, and the assessors, in 1896, could find but eight thousand two hundred and thirty-four such goats in the state. The largest breeder wrote me, at the time, that there were not less than seventy thousand Angoras in the state. In my own county not a single "Angora was returned, and yet I personally know of two large flocks and there are doubtless others. To save a little tax the goats, none of them less than half bred, were listed as common "-and the lists were sworn to. * We now tax incoming foreign traffic, collecting the tax at the port of entry. It has been proposed than Congress tax interstate traffic, relying, apparently, on the books of the railroad companies for the assessment, the railroads, of course, to pay the tax. This, at any rate, would have the advantage of definitely separating interstate and intrastate traffic, so that, in assessing for state purposes, the revenue derived from state traffic, and assessable there, could be known. far better off than they now are. They would have a career, modest or otherwise, according to their abilities, but something to be depended upon. At present, outside the services to which what are known as the "civil service" rules are applied, I hardly know a more unfortunate lot than that of a bright young man who has obtained a place in the public service. As a rule these men are quite capable of sustaining themselves in private life, for it requires a good deal of vigor, wisely or unwisely displayed, to get into the public service, and the result is quite likely to be the wreck of a useful man. The two or four years of public employment are quite sufficient to sever his relations with the business world, and impart tastes and habits incompatible with business success. Then comes a new election, with a change of appointing power, and the man is left stranded, to begin life over, with no openings which he does not force. Very few in public service find themselves able to save money. They are not permitted to save it. They get their places as a reward for party service, and the party will demand all that they might otherwise save. In corrupt municipalities the tribute may be in direct monthly payments to the "boss" who secures the place and holds the man in it. More often it goes in party "assessments," and constant small expenditures to maintain acquaintance and "influence." A large number of public employees regularly anticipate their salaries by pledging them, at a heavy discount, to brokers. A party has little use for a frugal man. He must spend his money, or out he goes. From the standpoint of the public, the aspect is equally bad. The appointing officer usually has ten men to whom he is under "obligations" for one that he can appoint. He contrives places for as many as he can at the public expense. Perhaps he is himself an appointed officer, and under obligations to look out for the dependents of the man above him. Appointed state officers have told me that the work in their charge cost twice as much as it "requests" from governors and state which were equivalent to demands. for certain men, and if they did not exist, they must be should, by reason of party committee men, Places must be found created. A private printing office will send out its proofs, and make small deliveries of work, by means of boys and young men at from $6.00 to $10 per week, and one such boy will serve many customers. As I write, this morning's paper tells me that one house of our Legislature has three "messengers to the state printer"-located in the State House grounds-at $3.00 per day each, and two mail carriers at the same salary. This, of course, is robbery, pure and simple, for which the party in the majority is responsible. When the other party is in power it plunders in the same way, and is also responsible. There is, in a certain state, a state printing office. As I write, I see in the morning paper an offer from a responsible firm to take over the office and plant, pay a fair rent for it, pay the same wages that are now paid to all employees needed, and do the same work, for $100,000 per annum less than the state now pays, with no rental charge. A law of the state requires that all printing for state institutions must be done at the state printing office. A week since an officer of the State University told me that he was seeking to get that institution excepted from the rule, as it could get its work done for one-third the sum charged against the university appropriation by the state. printing office. In the city where I spend part of my time, the usual working hours for clerks are from 8 A. M. to 6 P. M., with the usual lunch time, two weeks' vacation in the year, with no deduction of pay, and occasionally, of course, a half day off when business is light. The compensation will possibly average $75 per month. At the City Hall the department clerks work from 9 A. M. to 5 P. M. There are many more than are needed in some of the offices. The report before me does not give the individual salaries, but they will doubtless average $100 per month. In a road district in a certain county, I have known a road master who employed his own sons and his own team, to leave his home at 8 in the morning, drive slowly five miles to his work, take his hour for lunch, and leave in time to reach home by five in the afternoon, the law making eight hours a "day's work." The pay was $2.00 per day per man, or $4.00 for man and team. Wages in the same community have never been higher, for |