TAXES FOR EVERYBODY
WHEN the wrack and waste of war are done, and ceased are the tumults and the shouting, the harder task lies before the statesman and the financier of paying the cost. A great war, at least down to very recent times, has usually carried with it haphazard and wasteful financing, an oppressive debt, unequal and burdensome taxation, and a depreciated currency. The aftermath of the Civil War was no exception. At its close all these evils lay heavy upon the people of the United States.
The public debt stood at $2,846,000,000, or about $80 per capita; and of this amount nearly $1,900,000,000 was paying interest at the rate of six per cent., or higher. The ordinary expenditures of the Government, including the support of the armies, were running at the rate of about $3,300,000 a day, while receipts from taxation and other sources than loans were falling below $1,000,000 a day. The man of business could not affix his signature to a check, a receipt, or a bill of exchange, receive a legacy or transfer a piece of real estate, without paying a tax. Cotton was taxed two cents a pound; salt, six cents a hundred pounds; sugar, from two to three and a half cents a pound. Manufacturers were paying licenses for the right to do business, and also taxes upon the value of their output whether a profit emerged or not; middlemen were taxed upon the volume of goods dealt in, irrespective of the fact that such goods had already paid several times. Among other taxes were those levied on matches, photographs, lottery tickets, perfumery, theaters, and carriages; and additions made by repairs to the value of a carriage or a machine paid their own distinctive tax. Incomes were taxed up to twelve and one half per cent. There existed, in short, to use the terse language of David A. Wells, “a system of internal taxation which for its universality and peculiarities has no parallel in anything which had theretofore been recorded in civil history.”