EDITORIALS

...On this matter, the judgment of the engineers may be rejected by men of broader views...

...He may have been just reelected...

...This is something more than a coincidence...

...In the first place, the Rhine traffic has governmental protection against railway competition...

...The estimate of the engineers is that the fourteen-foot channel—which is six feet too shallow—will cost something like $160,000,000 to construct and $6,800,000 per year to maintain...

...And all this railway outlay must be borne by the people just as certainly as if it were made directly by the government...

...The railways have not spent the $5,000,000,000, nor any part of it, in the things necessary to enable them to handle freight...

...Whether amendments which are really proposed can be won in any other way remains to be seen...

...The army engineers urge the argument that the commerce on the river now existing does not warrant the expenditure...

...Business is quickening, and the time seems not far off when we shall be as active nationally as in 1907...

...A few millions either way are insignificant, as the thing is but an estimate in any case and may be wide of the mark...

...As an attack by the flank on the income tax amendment, it would have no weight at all except for the fact that it is proposed by the President...

...When that is done, the Mississippi commerce will render unnecessary the building of railways, to the amount of far more than the $160,000,000, and effect yearly national economies of many times the $6,800,000...

...Remember, too, that now is the time to begin to look after your United States senator, no matter when his term of office expires...

...But there should be a new order of things in those states that have a system of direct primary nominations...

...There can be no doubt about that, while none of the great corporations might dissolve to evade a two per cent...

...In the second place, the Rhine is not the passageway from the ocean to such a commerce as that of the Great Lakes...

...Lyman E. Cooley has said that the complete development of the interior of a large continent is impossible by land carriage alone...

...Even if the Democratic party had not shared the responsibility of perpetuating the hold of Cannon and Aldrich and what they represent in both branches of Congress, there still would be no justification for change of parties...

...Most of the real investments in railway and many industrial corporations are represented by the bonds...

...James J. Hill is rumored to have under consideration a consolidation of his railway lines with a capitalization of $1,300,000,000...

...Our railway experience before the panic seems to prove this...

...Those who believe in the taxation of incomes, are too clear in their logic to be satisfied with a law which applies to incomes, not according to their size, not according to whether they are earned or unearned, but according to whether or not they belong to corporations or individuals...

...Looked at in this light, the sums forecasted by the army engineers are not large when the demands for the expenditure are considered...

...This is certainly true, that the success of any given amendment is very improbable...

...Salaries and other charges may be increased in lieu of dividends...

...Such a result seems far more probable than the adoption of an income tax amendment to the Constitution, desirable as that would be...

...but he seems quite sanguine that a much more infrequent thing may happen in an amendment to the Constitution...

...As a fiscal measure, while a tax on the incomes of corporation would be a good thing, a tax on their net incomes is open to the objection that it is one which the corporations may pay or not as they choose...

...TAKE ALDRICHISM TO THE PRIMARIES IT is a natural reaction from the old order of things for men to exclaim in their disgust that the Republican party will have to answer at the polls for this tariff legislation...

...The American people will decide as to the commercial advisability of the waterway themselves...

...Hill said then that we ought to spend $5,000,000,000 to equip the roads for the traffic then existing...

...The primary was for the express purpose of taking nominations out from the control of political machines and placing this first power in government in the hands of the people...

...The nation faces a great crisis in transportation...

...The Supreme Court has rather frequently reversed itself...

...He added that the Mississippi channel should not be less than fifteen feet in depth, and that eighteen feet would be twice as good as fifteen...

...First, as a flank movement against the income tax...

...Net income is a thing which a most prosperous corporation may not have at all...

...They should be glad to have the opinion of all intelligent men—including intelligent army engineers—but they will not be bound by opinions which run counter to the urgent needs of the nation—needs to which the engineering corps seems sometimes singularly blind...

...In the third place, the Rhine has no call for accommodations for a navy, as the Mississippi will have as soon as the Georgian Bay Ship Canal is built by Canada...

...We must construct the waterways, and then we must be guided by the experience of Germany and France in making it safe for capital to engage in river traffic...

...He has said of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway, "No vessel of 1,000 tons burden can compete with a freight car...

...Almost without exception the newspapers which hate this magazine are cheerfully resigned to the improbability of He-ney's ever convicting Calhoun...

...But since that time it has been found quite impossible to amend the Constitution by constitutional methods...

...The great orders they have recently given for material and equipment are but a drop in the bucket—and even they are not executed...

...The Proposed Tax on "Net" Incomes of Corporations THE PRESIDENT'S proposals to levy an excise tax on the net incomes of corporations may be considered from two viewpoints...

...He knew about boats, as well as about freight rates, and his attitude is an answer to the army engineers' objection to the deep waterway on the grounds that the type of vessel for its navigation is not in existence...

...It is good to know that the verdict is favorable on those matters on which the engineers are competent to speak, and against it only as to those concerning which they know no more than the rest of us...

...The cases are not parallel...

...We have let the railway drive it off...

...They think that the Supreme Court will, when given another chance, return to its old and traditional position before George Shiras reversed it over night...

...The fact is basic, that the capacity of a vessel, on ocean or river, increases with the cube of its dimensions, and that a channel ten feet deep will accommodate vessels eleven times as capacious as one three feet deep, and that economy in freight is in the larger load...

...The best lawyers in the country find it hard to believe that it will stay reversed...

...We should remember that it was because experience had demonstrated that a change from one party to another party did not bring relief, and that the Interests controlled whichever party was in power, —that the long struggle for direct nominations of all candidates by the people was made...

...They are no better off than when the congestion was at its worst in the winter of 1906-07...

...A double track railway from Chicago to the Gulf, with terminals at Chicago, St...

...The next great bulge in business will bring a greater volume of tonnage than we have ever had, unless the uplift is checked by railway congestion...

...Its bonds and stocks under the flotation now under way will amount to $124,000,000—almost as much as the cost of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway, if the contribution of the State of Illinois be deducted...

...The stocks are in many prominent cases mostly water, dividends on which could not be paid in the absence of extortion which proper laws would abolish...

...Word comes from Kansas that those Republican congressmen who supported Cannon for Speaker have opponents in the field, and Cannonism is the issue...

...The interior of the continent is in danger of being strangled by lack of transportation...

...The income from these, under the proposed plan, would not be taxed...

...We must do the same...

...President Taft's hosts of admirers can drink to him no more gracefully than to express the wish that he may live until he gets the constitution amended...

...It savors of engineering impertinence to place limits on invention by suggesting that the non-existent type, when produced, will not be as economical as the shallower hulls...

...The Chicago Great Western Railway is a short system, altogether between the Missouri and Chicago...

...A Comparison of Probabilities THE PRESIDENT thinks that Congress should not assume that the Supreme Court will reverse itself on the constitutionality of the income tax law...

...A corporation may have a huge net income this year, and none at all next year, though just as prosperous...

...If we must have more highways, it is by all means best to have free water highways, paid for directly by the government, than more railways costing twice to ten times as much per unit of freight capacity, the expense of which we as a people must carry...

...James J. Hill's judgment may be taken as quite as good as that of the army engineers on this point—for he operates railways and steamers as well...

...tax, such an excise would tend powerfully toward the diversion of great interests into the hands of unincorporated bodies like the Beef Trust and the New York Stock Exchange...

...Corporate capacity is a thing which can be put on or put off at pleasure...

...The Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Great Lakes, and the waterway from Chicago connecting the two great systems must carry the increasing tonnage of the developing continent...

...and would not have a tithe of the carrying capacity of the fourteen foot channel...

...One touch of larceny makes the graft world kin...

...that it will be "punished" and will "reap the whirlwind...

...Democratic members of Congress who followed the Fitzgerald leadership should have opponents in the field making their party betrayal the issue...

...Water transportation is the only way out...

...Railways simply cannot be built to do it, and if built, the expense of land carriage would be an incubus on growth...

...The Value of an Engineer's Verdict THE United States army engineers have given judgment in favor of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway as to its engineering feasibility, but against it as a commercial proposition...

...It did so when it declared by a majority of one that the income tax was unconstitutional...

...The primary law is still new, but we must not forget its application in this national crisis,—nor elsewhere...

...The avoidance of net incomes has already become an important part of high finance, and if President Taft's proposal is adopted, it will be an essential part of the curriculum of every Captain of Industry...

...Louis, New Orleans and all the intermediate points would be cheap at $160,000,000...

...The men you choose to represent you in your next state legislature are likely to be reelected and may determine the choice of your United States senator, who still stand for progress against Aldrich, or for Aldrich against progress...

...Bonds may be issued, the interest on which will absorb the income...

...Certainly not...

...The engineers say that nine feet is deep enough for river navigation, and point to the Rhine traffic as proof of this...

...The Civil War amendments were put in the Constitution with guns...

...All governments which have adopted a waterway policy have had to force the railways to cease cut-throat competition against the rivers and canals...

...Of course, as a general rule, and in the long run, they will choose not to pay...

...The problem is this and nothing less...

...The first twelve amendments were adopted by common consent as things which ought not to have been omitted in the first place...

...A law which taxes a class of corporate incomes only which in such large measure should be abolished, and which may be paid or not as the so-called taxpayer chooses, can never be accepted as satisfactory by real believers in the taxation of incomes...

...When that time comes, the railways of the country will break down in car famines, track and motive-power limitations, and all the old story of 1906 and 1907...

...Second on its merits as a fiscal proposition...