PAPERS ON LABOR AND CAPITAL.
PAPERS ON LABOR AND CAPITAL.
PAPERS ON LABOR AND CAPITAL.
PAPERS ON LABOR AND CAPITAL.
The great object of a republican form of government is to arrive at that condition wherein all the people constituting its citizens will stand upon a perfect equality in all things, which can be effected by government. A government cannot determine that each citizen shall have equal capacity to apply and make use of the rights, privileges and immunities which it guarantees to its people, but it can determine that each citizen shall have an equality of right to these benefits, the perfect attainment of which must rest with the citizen.
The question of Labor and Capital, as was said before, is included in the greater and more important question of a Common Equality, or an equality which is predicated upon the fact that all mankind are brethren. A republican form of government should find its fountain in this fact, and all its causes should be governed by its deductions. All the means of providing for the administration of the government, for its maintenance and for the correction of any existing abuses, shouldbe formulated with this one greatest of all human possibilities ever in view. Thus formulated, its practices would ever tend to bring all the people into a comprehension of it, which comprehension is now scarcely existent except in meaningless words, which are dealt from pharisaical pulpits. In our last number the practice of protection to favored interests was considered, with reference to its general effect upon other unfavored industries; the unequal working of the system of levying duties does not stop with generalities; it extends and touches a still more vital point, and one which the people are more sensitive upon than almost any other. The laying of specific duties upon imported goods and wares is an indirect way oftaxingthat portion of the people who consume such imported goods and wares. It not only makes it possible for the protected interest to exist at the expense of other interests which consume, but by this operation the government obtains revenue which is an indirect tax gathered from those who are compelled to pay the advanced prices which the levying of duties implies. The amount obtained by such unequal and indirect methods of revenue for the last fiscal year was the enormous sum of $194,448,427, every dollar of which was in reality but an additional tax drawn from the individuals who purchased such imported merchandise. This manner of levying taxes would not matter so much as a system of taxation did it fall equally upon the taxable property of the country, upon which general taxes are levied, but nearly $100,000,000 of the above sum was collected upon woolens, cottons, sugar, molasses, coffee and tea, of all of which the poorest in common with the richest are almost equal consumers.
Laborers of the United States! How like you this manner of filching your hard-earned dollars, under the specious, fraudulent name of “protection to home industries.” It is no wonder that your hard-earned wages will scarcely supply your families’ necessities, when you are compelled to pay such a sum upon the most common staple articles of general consumption. It is no wonder you are continuously laborers, never being able to become producers upon your own account, when you, who should not, and, under general principles of taxation would not be called upon to pay a single dollar as a direct tax, are thus burdened.
Thus it will be seen that the levying of specific duties on imported goods is a most unequal and iniquitous manner of taxing the poor laboring classes of the country to support the government, which is administered to all intents and purposes in the interests of the rich, and under which the really poor become poorer every year.
Nor are the other means to which the government resorts to support itself entitled to very much more consideration than that of the indirect one just mentioned. There is no equality to the general people in any of them; and it is quite evident that the whole system of revenue for the support of the government should be remodeled, so as to fall where it should, in justice, upon the taxable property of the whole Union. This done, and a sound financial system also inaugurated, the lower classes of society would begin to be leveled up to the medium, and the upper classes to be leveled down to the same basis of material prosperity.
A system of taxation for the support of all government—town, city, county, state and national—should be formulated and inaugurated, based upon the proposition that all taxes should be general and none special. All of these taxes, for the several purposes, should be assessed, levied and collected by one set of revenue officers, and thereby an immense system of economy introduced, whereby the collection of the revenues of the country should not consume, by one-twentieth part, what is now consumed in the almost innumerable methods which are adopted to obtain the people’s money by indirect means. All of these subjects are for the laboring classes to take up, examine, decide upon and rectify, and never will they obtain the possibility of an equality until this is done. Never can equality be possible under the forms through which government is now administered and supported, and never will the laboring classes become independent of the wealthy classes until the freedom, equality and justice, which are the birthright of every citizen of the United States, become possible of attainment under its government.