“I suppose they would have done so”, Mr. Forest admitted. “But I am, nevertheless, convinced that a law of this kind would not only have been just but that it would have done a great deal to save humanity from communism. Civilized countries would have been obliged to pass a similar law at the same time”.
“The temptation to avoid the consequences of the statute would have been very great”, I remarked. “Many people would have tried to evade the tax by declaring to the authorities a smaller amount of property than they really owned, or by presenting during their life time, a part of their fortune to their children”.
“Any attempt at fraud should have been punished by a confiscation of all the property”, said Mr. Forest. “And as for gifts they could have been taxed at the same rate as inheritances from one percent up to fifty.—But such a law would have been necessary only during the first fifty or sixty years of a new order of things. As soon as mutual producing associations were in general operation, selling their goods directly from the factories to the consumers, and buying all the necessities of life and commodities, as far as possible, at wholesale, and selling them a little above cost price, there would have been little occasion for men to amass millions of dollars. The number of middlemen and traders would have largely decreased. Everybody would have been compelled to do work of some kind and would have received a compensation according to both the quantity and quality of his performances”.
“But would not cliques like the one you are charging with having control of your government have taken possession of a mutual producing association, thus depriving the clever workers of a part of their earnings and paying the poorer men more for their work than they deserved?” I queried.
“In such a case the good men could have left an association, where they were cheated and joined another partnership. Good laborers are always appreciated wherever competition rules. But the association, thus driving away their ablest members, would soon have been unable to compete with others. Difficulties, therefore, could have been regulated without much trouble”.
“You must advocate, as a matter of course mutual insurance companies among the guilds for the protection of the members against accidents, sickness, infirmity and old age, and these mutual insurance companies would, perhaps, have also written life and fire policies?” I suggested.
“That would, indeed, have been a consequence of the whole system that would unite the few advantages of communism with the benefits of competition”, Mr. Forest answered.
“Would you have encouraged immigration?” I asked. “At the end of the nineteenth century, many honest, liberal and fair-minded people, whom nobody could fairly class as know-nothings, were of the opinion that the United States had all the foreign elements the country could assimilate, and that the rest of the public lands should be preserved for the children of the people living in the Union, in the year of our Lord 1887. The objection against further immigration was largely due to the actions of the German and Irish dynamiters”.
“I can imagine”, Mr. Forest answered, “that some of the customs and notions of the numerous immigrants of your time were objectionable to the native Americans, and that the crimes of the anarchists, their crazy revolt against the laws of a country that had offered them hospitality, must naturally have created a deep emotion among the Anglo-Americans. But I think they had, nevertheless, many reasons for encouraging immigration, especially under your form of production. A strict execution of the laws of the country”, he continued, after a pause, “against all transgressors, native as well as transplanted, would have done the country good and have made all attempts to restrict immigration entirely unnecessary, all the more so, as the really objectionable foreigners could reach the United States via Canada or Mexico if they desired strongly to become inhabitants of the United States.”
“These arguments were frequently used in my time,” I remarked.