Quiet and Profitable
288 THE COMMONWEAL July 17, 1929 QUIET AND PROFITABLE MR. MELLON'S little error in computing the nation's income need disturb nobody. The national surplus proved to be ten times larger...
...In short, the individual state, which might desirably use this system of gathering in coin, is handicapped by many circumstances...
...During the past sixty years we have seldom permitted ourselves to reflect, apart from passing moments of reaction, upon the potentialities of state cooperation...
...Despite all revisions, the man at the bottom is the only person who has much difficulty signing a check...
...The several states have never been trained to think or to act in unison, excepting for the calamitous attempt at confederation which brought on the Civil War...
...Conferences between governors have been few, and the repercussions upon legislative bodies almost nil...
...Cooperation between states has never amounted to much...
...Turning to the federal government would only imply a confession of failure...
...Doubtless an affirmative answer is impeded by the existence of several major difficulties, among which checking up on drought is one...
...The whole tendency is toward restricting the activity of Washington, and toward a conviction that the several states ought to dispose of their own problems...
...Roosevelt's notion that wealth should cease to grow when a certain point had been reached was very popular, and the sheets which have to be handed in by March 15 seemed to be effective recipes...
...The national surplus proved to be ten times larger than the sum he had predicted, but who will regret that...
...But what is the situation in the state...
...Few of us observe that war indebtedness still totals nearly seventeen billion dollars, and that hay continues to be a fair-weather product...
...Today we realize the need for more uniform inheritance, domestic and regulatory laws, but progress toward conformity is slow...
...The attitude of industry in a given part of the country is often determined, too, on the basis of those vouchers...
...Income taxation has been merged quietly into the general routine of business, and the federal government has been gradually extricated from business...
...Even these figures, however, look less formidable under analysis...
...it may be that the government ought to have been more liberal...
...But are they...
...The experiment would certainly be worth trying, and it could do no harm...
...We are all affected most by immediate, local needs, raising money for which often seems very difficult...
...Here, then, is a field of statecraft which awaits development, and inside which the opportunities are almost worthy of an Alexander himself...
...At present, however, few states realize that they are individuals, competent to talk things over with their peers...
...A number of commonwealths have income-tax laws, so that citizens are faced with the exceedingly difficult duty of making out two pay vouchers for virtually the same purpose at practically the same time...
...When income taxation was first proposed, it seemed a "great equalizer...
...Mellon himself can give expert testimony...
...Yet if they could agree, and if this tax could be used uniformly as a method of meeting the cost of local improvements, the business of the citizen would be greatly simplified...
...We suggest that a President of the United States committed to the belief that his administration must be freed of old jobs rather than afflicted with new ones might call the first adequate conference of governors and outline a program of cooperation which they might then gradually insert into the normal outlines of government...
...If adequate schooling for all be a civic good, a community which draws from another hordes of citizens unsatisfactorily trained is necessarily interested...
...and the tug of war between those who want the federal government to spend and those who do not want the federal government to collect is bound to wax more fierce than ever...
...Both sides have strong arguments in their favor...
...At all events the money has been collected without serious injury to any large private fortune, and the nation has enjoyed its birthday with the customary zest...
...Yet even if the road were clear it would be firm and easily traversed only after a bit of preliminary engineering...
...What has really happened is fairly simple...
...But what can it do...
...And yet this same state is now unavoidably shouldering both its normal burdens and some of the loads which one used to consider the especial concern of federal government...
...The citizens who pay often feel that Washington is not in a position to give much in return, and that it ought to find a sufficient stipend in customs and similar sources of income...
...One reason has obviously been the habit of considering government in forty-eight capitals a merely political contrivance, the ultimate object of which was to devote as much attention to national elections as might be possible...
...Nevertheless it is precisely from this side that the question of education, for instance, needs to be approached...
...No one doubts either that community finance bristles with problems, or that the endeavor to solve these in the spirit of a community is still at any early stage of development...
...On the last-named point, Mr...
...Has the time come to ask if income taxation ought to be a state privilege only...
...Tax rates should, possibly, have been lower...
...Why expect, as a consequence, the states to agree upon income-tax legislation...
...and we are no longer so firmly convinced anyhow that fortunes ought to be limited...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 11
