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The "Burgomaster Meyer" Madonna by Holbein. (See "Early Ma

donnas," page 114.)

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THE

HE proposed income-tax amendment to the federal constitution, as readers are aware, is urged by the President and other statesmen on fiscal grounds, not as an instrument of social reform. The argument is that the power to levy direct income taxation on citizens as citizens is necessary to national security, for in time of stress and war, if not under normal and pacific conditions, such taxes may be the only means of sustaining the government and its military-naval forces. There are others who believe in income taxation under all conditions, regarding it as more equitable, since taxes on food, clothing, shelter and other necessaries in effect fall more heavily on the poor than on the rich.

It has been decided that inheritance taxes ought to be left to the states, as many of them are already taxing estates, bequeathed to relatives and kin, or even to direct lineal descendants, and more are certain to avail themselves of that resource. Dead men, the legal theory is, have no rights, and the privilege of inheritance is one granted by the state or body politic; hence there can be no more natural tax than one on property transferred by will to those who have not earned it by labor or service. The federal government may or may not leave inheritance taxes to the states; the action of the legislatures on the income-tax amendment will largely determine that. At any rate, inheritance taxes, also, are advocated on purely fiscal or revenue grounds. But the question has arisen whether the states or the federal government might not and should not use the

taxing power as an instrument of equity and justice, as a shield against the evils of too rapid and dangerous concentration of wealth. Mr. Roosevelt was disposed, with many other thinkers, to answer the question in the affirmative. President Taft more conservatively suggests other and less "radical" means of dealing with swollen fortunes and plutocracy, so called. In one of his recent western addresses he very frankly gave his views on the subject as follows:

I already have considered in a speech which I made in Columbus in 1907 how our great fortunes could be divided without drastic confiscatory methods. It seeins to me now, as it did then, that the proper authority to reduce the size of fortunes is the state rather than the central government. Let the state pass laws of inheritance which shall require the division of great fortunes between the children of the descendants, and shall not permit a multimillionaire to leave his fortune in trust so as to keep it in a mass; make much more drastic the rule against perpetuities which obtain at common law; and then impose a heavy and graduated inheritance tax, which shall enable the state to share largely in the proceeds of such large accumulations of wealth which could hardly have been brought about save through its protection and its aid.

By some this is considered "revolutionary" languagemost amazing on the lips of a supposed "moderate" and former judge. But the majority of editors who have commented on the utterance find it entirely in harmony with American tradition and Anglo-Saxon principles. The common law abhors monopoly, and the fathers of this nation looked with fear and disfavor on primogeniture and entail. The courts have never failed to assert that the right to leave property by will is a state-guaranteed right which, for public reasons, may be modified, restricted, even denied. If, then, enormous fortunes are perilous to democracies and republics, whose "other name is equal opportunity," then it becomes the right and duty of the community to discourage them, to cause their redistribution, with the least disturbance, of course, to industry and property, and the least interference with healthy initiative and enterprise.

No one can doubt that we are coming to progressive income and inheritance taxes in the United States, and no one need fear that in employing such taxes for other and larger purposes than revenue we should endanger our liberties

and best moral qualities, our advance and improvement. Wide distribution of wealth, comfort, and educational opportunities makes for national vigor and health, while plutocracy or industrial tyranny spells decay and discontent and retrogression.

The Senate and Direct Elections

It is undeniably true that the sentiment in favor of direct or popular election of federal senators has been steadily growing in the United States. The House of Representatives has reflected this sentiment in the resolution which, on four different occasions, it has adopted in favor of that change. But the Senate has been opposed to it, and the conservative leaders in it have treated the question with undisguised contempt and hostility. It is, therefore, idle to expect Congress to submit to the states an amendment to the national constitution providing for direct election of senators. But there is another way in which the submission of such an amendment can be brought about-namely, through "applications," formal in manner, of the state legislatures to Congress requesting the calling of a constitutional convention for the discussion and submission of desired amendments. "The Congress," says the constitution, "on application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments." Amendments so proposed must, to be valid, be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states or by conventions in the same number of states. Now inquiry has developed the very important fact that thirty-one states have already made informal "applications" for the calling of a convention. There is no legal obligation on Congress to act immediately. But the fact that the required twothirds of the states have in one way or another petitioned or declared for the change in question indicates that in a short time the matter will be ripe for serious consideration in the Senate.

Formal applications have been made-in some cases

several times-by twenty-six states, it seems, and here is the

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The states whose resolutions or petitions are not formal applications are: Alabama, California, Ohio, North Dakota, Wyoming.

Of course, these or other states, when they learn the true state of things, will hasten to pass and submit formal applications for the calling of a convention. Then the only question before the Senate, which must be presumed to be ready to obey the constitution, will be whether some of the applications have not lost their validity and force through the flight of time. The constitution does not say within what period of time applications may be submitted-nothing whatever is said as to time-but lawyers and students are sure to raise the objection that applications made twenty or even ten years ago (and some of the applications date back to the early nineties of the last century) are not to be counted together with recent ones. Must not all applications be made to the same Congress? Would not the courts so hold? If not, will an application be valid a century after its presentation? The problem is novel and full of perplexity, and there are those who predict that the Senate will find a score of reasons or excuses for refusing to heed the applications that are now before it or any additional ones that may reach it. Still, the moral and general effect of the movement cannot lightly be disregarded, and there are even among the conservative elements in the Senate men who say that the people "should have their way" and that an amendment for direct election of members of the "upper house" ought to be submitted at an early day.

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