But there is no warrant for the assumption that the more civilized we are—that is, the greater our self-control—the more are we in need of inspection and regulation. Such an explanation of the enormous increase in public expenditure is worthless. The true explanation lies in the greed of politicians and the delusion of social reformers. To both of these causes must be attributed the evils that Mr. Roberts deplores. “The truth of history,” he says, referring to the thirty-six new offices and commissions created since 1880, “compels the statement that it looks as if many of these creations were made not so much to satisfy a public want as to relieve a political situation.” That is to say, they were designed to provide spoils for the insatiable maw of politicians. One of the most flagrant examples of this popular method of forwarding the beneficent work of civilization and hastening the dawn of the millennium is the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, created in 1886. Up to the present year it has cost the taxpayers $195,828.57. For this expenditure little can be shown but a shelf full of reports seldom read, and a pigeon hole of vouchers for salaries never earned. With one of the former members of this board, who served thirteen years and received $39,000 for his able services, I am personally acquainted. Of my own knowledge, I can say that for nearly three years at least his duties as commissioner never interfered perceptibly with his duties as editor. That most of the other offices and commissions are equally worthless there can be no doubt. Altogether they have cost the State the startling sum of $31,768,899.85, and are increasing the public burdens at the rate of more than $1,000,000 a year. But their true character as asylums for decayed politicians, or as stepping stones for ambitious young ones, and at all times as centers of political intrigue and personal profit, is gradually dawning upon the public. Already several Governors have demanded, in their annual messages to the Legislature, that they be consolidated or abolished. As yet, however, it has been impossible to relax their grip on the taxpayer. Obedient to the instincts of their kind, they are inventing new arguments to establish their claims to the confidence and gratitude of the victims of their greed and incompetency.
But the creation of new and needless offices is not the only manifestation of what Mr. Roberts fitly calls “the vicious tendencies of legislation.” More demoralizing are the laws that actually encourage the robbery of one class of people for the benefit of another. A familiar example is the bounty law for the destruction of fishing nets. Almost as soon as passed it produced a new industry—namely, the manufacture of cheap nets, which were deposited in fishing waters, subsequently discovered and seized by a pre-arrangement, and made the basis of demands upon the public treasury out of proportion to their value. So great have been the frauds perpetrated under it that the cry for its repeal comes from every quarter. Another law even worse morally was passed to meet the clamor of the bicyclists and bicycle manufacturers. It provides that twenty-five per cent of the cost of so-called good roads to be built under it shall be paid by the State. As cities and villages are exempt from its provisions, this sum, which comes out of the pockets of all taxpayers, urban as well as rural, is, as Mr. Roberts says, simply “a gratuity to the towns for the benefit of country roads.” As a sign of the moral decadence of the times, I ought to add that one of the most powerful and effective arguments in favor of the law was this very discrimination. Still more shameless was one of the chief arguments in favor of the Raines liquor law. With a moral callousness truly astounding, its advocates framed tables of figures to show how great a percentage of taxation it would shift from the country to the city districts. In the heated political campaign that followed, these tables were made to do service again to save from defeat the party responsible for the enactment. To indicate, finally, how legislation may encourage vice, I must not omit to mention the provision that created the Raines hotel. Under it assignation houses have multiplied to a degree that Satan himself could not have foreseen nor have been more enchanted with.
But the greatest inroads on the pockets of the taxpayer have been made under the pretense of charity. I say “pretense” because it is a gross misuse of language to decorate with so fine a word the seizure of a man’s property under the forms of law and to devote it to the ostensible relief of want and suffering. It is the infliction of an aggression that has no more warrant in a court of sound morals than the seizure of his property in disregard of the forms of law. Yet this evil has reached such vast proportions that Mr. Roberts was moved to protest against it. After speaking of “the tendency of the State in building up a gigantic system” that “will call for an enormous and ever-increasing annual expenditure for maintenance,” he expressed the belief in 1896 that “the time has come to call a halt before this burden of taxation becomes too heavy.” He then mentioned the significant fact that while the State spent $6,000,000 for charity, $4,800,000 for public schools, $800,000 for the militia, it spent only $500,000 for judges’ salaries! He pointed out also that the expenditures under the head of charity had increased from $1,468,471.58 in 1887 to $5,888,193.74 in 1897, or over four hundred per cent in ten years. He added the prophecy that it would be “a matter of a short time only when the annual expenditures for charity alone in this State will reach $10,000,000.” At that time five large State charitable institutions were in process of construction, and were soon to be thrown open to the public. In the following year he reverted to the subject in still stronger terms. “God forbid,” he says, “that I should put a straw in the way of charity rationally directed; but my four years’ experience as comptroller ... compels me to say that charity is dispensed in this State with an almost lavish hand, and in my judgment it is in many cases unwisely dispensed.” In his last report to the Legislature the aggregate cost of the fourteen great institutions in operation, with a population of 6,621, is put at $6,898,304.52.
That this enormous largess, wrested from the taxpayers without the slightest consideration for their own wants and sufferings, is unwisely dispensed in many cases Mr. Roberts furnishes the amplest proof. The charges that he brings against this form of State activity are most serious. They reveal the same odious traits that characterize the management of public affairs in no wise connected with the love of humanity. “Nearly every locality,” says Mr. Roberts, “having a State charitable institution deals with it as though it were established to afford that locality an avenue through which to reach the State treasury, and in most cases, where a majority of the managers live under or are dominated by local influence, the avenue has been profitably traveled. The result of such predominance is combination among local dealers, a division of the furnishing of the supplies among them at greatly advanced prices, the palming off upon the institution of inferior articles which would find no sale in the market, a row with the superintendent if he undertakes to expend money outside of the locality, and, through friction and disturbance, the work of the institution is more or less demoralized.” He charges that “the only aim” of some institutions “seems to be the expenditure of their entire appropriation, irrespective of the number of inmates provided for or the results obtained.” Putting the same charge in another way, he says that “the cost of an institution is more frequently based upon the amount of the appropriation granted by the Legislature than upon its real or apparent necessities.” When it is remembered that the managers of the institutions against whom these astonishing charges are brought are picked people, representing much more than the average character and ability, the conclusion is not unnatural that ward heelers and caucus packers have no monopoly of the rotten ethics of politics.
If we look a little further into the management of the institutions, all the familiar footprints of the unscrupulous politician become visible. Money appropriated for specific purposes is diverted from them. Over fifty-five per cent of the amount expended in 1898 under special appropriations was used for the benefit of two institutions, leaving less than forty-five per cent for the remaining fourteen. Plans for new buildings or the improvement of old are so changed as to require an expenditure considerably in excess of the money appropriated for the purpose. Not infrequently the excess ranges from twenty-five to fifty per cent, and thus the way is paved for further appeals to the Legislature to meet the dishonest deficits. A more reprehensible use of public money is appropriations for new buildings and improvements of old ones belonging to private institutions. As examples, Mr. Roberts cites the expenditure of $77,473 upon the private property of the Malone Institute for Deaf-Mutes, and $457,556 upon that of the Randall’s Island Reformatory. “In my judgment,” he says, expressing an opinion that every fair-minded person will approve, “this is a mistaken public policy. If these institutions are to be steady recipients of State aid for permanent improvements, the title of the property should be transferred to the State.” Otherwise any philanthropist might found a charitable institution to provide himself with congenial employment, and, availing himself of the courtesy of the State to thrust his hands into the pockets of his neighbors, make additions to it and keep it in repair.
But these are by no means the only ways that money picked from the pockets of taxpayers is poured into the bottomless pit of State philanthropy. One of the most common and most expensive is the unjustifiable increase of salaries. In 1894 and 1895, when the country was still in the throes of the great panic of 1893 and when hundreds of thousands of people were glad to get work at almost any pay, the salary list of nine charitable institutions was increased forty thousand dollars a year. Indefensible variations in the per capita cost of practically the same service discloses another mode of waste. Mr. Roberts gives elaborate tables in exposure of this evil. While the per capita cost of the inmates of the Western House of Refuge for Women at Albion is $254.27, that of the inmates of the House of Refuge for Women at Hudson is $217.63. Again, while the per capita cost of the inmates of the State Industrial School at Rochester is $219.49, that of the inmates of the Reformatory on Randall’s Island is $210.59. Still again, while the per capita cost of the inmates of the State School for the Blind at Batavia is $313.74, that of the inmates of the Northern New York Institute for Deaf-Mutes at Malone is $258.36. If it be remembered that the institutions on Randall’s Island and at Malone are under private management, the lower rate prevailing there, compared with the higher rate at the Batavia and Rochester institutions, suggest a fact of no slight significance. “Private institutions,” says Mr. Roberts, calling attention to it, “are only paid in some instances $110 per annum for the care and support of inmates, ... while the cost in State institutions is more than $200 per annum.” Yet, despite the possible indefinite multiplication of such facts, the “new” reformer pins his faith to the State as a fit agent for the regeneration of his fellows.
Before leaving these institutions I must call attention to another characteristic form of waste. I refer to the delicacies furnished to the officials and inmates. “It has not seemed exactly right,” says Mr. Roberts, setting forth the scandal in very moderate terms, “that the taxpayers of the State should be required to pay for Blue Points, lobster, terrapin, frogs’ legs, partridge, quail, venison, and most of the delicacies of the season to supply the tables of officials already well paid and well housed by the State.” But solicitude about table economies was never known to be a trait of bureaucratic parasites. They never trouble themselves to prolong their vision to the meager tables of the poor and suffering robbed of the necessaries of life to load theirs with luxuries. The same limited vision is exhibited on holidays in their generosity at other people’s expense. “Is it fair,” says Mr. Roberts, protesting against this touching display of human goodness, “that the average workingman should wear poor clothes and live on plain fare in order that he may bring up his family decently and honestly, while the inmates of State institutions are indulged with turkey at eighteen cents a pound, footballs at $4.83 each, oranges, candy, nuts, ice cream, and expensive luxuries?... It must not be forgotten,” he adds, mentioning a truth commonly forgotten even by people that have reached a higher civilization than that of the average State official, “that the money spent for these inmates is not voluntary contribution, but is the product of enforced taxation.”[C]
[C] But I ought to add that this mismanagement of State charitable institutions is duplicated in the management of other State departments that came under Mr. Roberts’s observation. Although more than $24,000,000 have been spent on the new Capitol, it proves to be too small for the purposes it was designed to meet. Mr. Roberts recommends the conversion of the old State Hall into a finance building. The State Library has become so large that it will soon require a separate building. The racing tax law was so bunglingly framed that the collections under it in 1896 were attended with “more difficulty and expense than usual.” As the forest-preserve law stood in 1896, it permitted people purchasing State lands to strip them of lumber, and then, owing to certain irregularities connected with the sale, making it illegal, to recover the money originally paid with interest at six and seven per cent added. Because of the absence of any law covering the personal expenditures of members of legislative investigating committees, claims for seven and eight dollars a day are rendered, although four or five dollars a day are believed to be ample. Let me add that these investigations, which, during the period from 1879 to 1896 inclusive, cost $823,534.51, reveal another source of waste from State management. Still another source of waste is State printing. Pointing out the “growing expenses of State printing,” Mr. Roberts shows that they have increased from $95,029.51 in 1887 to $315,585.81 in 1896. At one time the law was so defective that it was impossible to frame specifications for bids that would allow for printing of different kinds. For example, blanks varying from two to three inches square to two and three feet had to be classed in the same schedule and price. A needless quantity of reports is printed. Some of them are printed in the highest style of the art and richly embellished with expensive plates and engravings. One report for 1895 cost $42,000, and others cost as high as $20,000 and $30,000. “It does not seem logical,” says Mr. Roberts, commenting on this extravagance, “to spend as much on the illustration of a report as it costs for clerk hire in many departments.” Another evil is the failure of the Legislature to appropriate money enough to meet the printing bills each year, thus making it necessary either to borrow money to pay them or to compel the printer to wait for his pay at a loss of interest on the amount due him. In this connection attention must be called to the failure of the Legislature to provide money enough to cover expenditures during the period intervening before funds are available from taxation. Although Mr. Roberts recommended repeatedly legislation for the avoidance of this difficulty, which causes waste, no attention was paid to him. The management of court and trust funds by county treasurers has been particularly scandalous. In disregard of the express direction of the courts, thousands of dollars were retained by parties or their attorneys for their own personal benefit. Money has been paid out by county treasurers without certified orders of the courts merely upon the assurance of attorneys that the payments were proper. The rules framed by the comptroller in regard to this matter were constantly disregarded. Excessive allowances were made for costs of attorneys. In the case of one estate of $750, thus robbed, only $60 remained for the payment of the debts against it. By the defalcations of county treasurers, court and trust funds are often depleted, and the beneficiaries, often widows, orphans, and unfortunate litigants, are robbed. Mr. Roberts has recommended legislation on this subject, but no attention, as far as I know, has been paid to it. It is one of those “parochial” questions that the American people appear to have no taste for. But it would seem as if the protection of citizens, especially the poor and weak, was the first duty of the State.
Resistance to aggression is one of the fundamental instincts of the human race. It has been enforced during countless ages by the penalty of extermination. Only the people that refuse to be killed, or robbed and enslaved, which are modified forms of the same crime, can respond to a scriptural injunction; they alone can be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. All others must succumb to the pitiless law of the survival of the fittest. Efforts to escape taxation not sanctioned by justice, so common throughout the United States, are not, therefore, exhibitions of hopeless depravity; they are exhibitions of the natural desire for self-preservation that demands study and heed.
In New York State the efforts of taxpayers to escape this increasing aggression have had a deplorable effect. To still the voice of discontent and complaint, legislators have tried to lay on their burdens as lightly as possible. Acting upon a familiar definition of taxation, they have tried to pluck the goose so as to get the most feathers with the least squawk. But in their observance of the principles of humanity they have shown but slight regard for the principles of economics or justice. Mr. Roberts characterizes their enactments as “confused, illogical, and conflicting”; he adds that they are “nearly all legislative makeshifts, and many of them blunders.” The moral effect of the aggression has, however, been more disastrous than either the economic or statutory. To escape it, the owners of every class of property, no matter what their intelligence, their religious professions, or their social standing, resort to every possible subterfuge. With the cries of the tortured fowl ringing in sympathetic ears, complaisant officials refuse to assess real estate, as required by law, at its full value. “The assessor,” says Mr. Roberts, describing this form of evasion and its evil consequences, “undertakes, by reducing valuations on his own responsibility and in defiance of law, to protect his own county or town from paying more than its fair proportion of tax, and self-interest lulls the moral sense of the community into support of his action.” The same law of assessment applies to the whole State, yet there are twenty-five rates of assessment in the sixty counties, and these rates range from fifty to ninety-two per cent of the value of the land. The owners of personal property avoid their obligations in a manner still more reprehensible. They either conceal it or lie about it. While its amount during the past forty years has reached the enormous total of $18,000,000,000, or more than four times the value of the real estate, its assessed value has not increased. It is Mr. Roberts’s conviction, based upon “study and observation,” that not “more than three per cent” of it is assessed. The result is that, although real estate pays a revenue of over $9,000,000 a year, personal property pays one of only about $1,000,000. As to the corporations, they are equally alert in avoiding their obligations. Before the enactment of a recent law they did it by watering their stocks and issuing bonds, thus creating an indebtedness equal to their capital. They do it now by incorporating in other States and carrying on business in this State. They do it also by neglecting for a certain time to make the reports required by law, and then taking refuge behind the statute of limitations. If the burdens thrust upon them can not be shirked or borne, they fly to other States, where the aggressions of the tax collector are less ruinous.