of them making incomes a good deal higher than the average
professional man, while the profits of business, generally speaking, are
rather on a declining scale and certain branches of business have been
brought virtually or even completely to a standstill.

Of our total national income, conservatively estimated at, say,
$40,000,000,000 for the last year before our entrance into the war, i. e.,
the year 1916, it is safe to say that not more than $2,000,000,000
went to those with incomes of, say, $15,000 and above, whilst
$38,000,000,000 went to those with lower incomes.

A carefully compiled statement issued by the Bankers Trust Company of
New York estimates the total individual incomes of the nation for the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, at about $53,000,000,000, and
calculates that families with incomes of $15,000 or less receive
$48,250,000 of that total; or, applying the calculation to families with
incomes of $5,000 or less, it is found that they receive $46,000,000,000
of that total.

IV

Whilst the House Bill imposes luxury and semi-luxury taxes, it fails--as
I have mentioned before--to resort to consumption taxes of a general
kind--a deliberate but, in my opinion, unwarrantable omission.

My advocacy of consumption and similar taxes, such as stamp taxes of
many kinds, is not actuated by any desire to relieve those with large
incomes from the maximum of contribution which may wisely and fairly be
imposed on them. I advocate consumption and general stamp taxes--such as
every other belligerent country without exception has found it well to
impose--because of the well attested fact that while productive of very
large revenues in the aggregate, they are easily borne, causing no
strain or dislocation, and automatically collected; and because of the
further fact that they tend to induce economy than which nothing is more
important at this time and which, as far as I can observe, is not being
practised by the rank and file of our people to a degree comparable to
what it is in England and France.

The tendency of the House Bill is to rely mostly on heavy taxation--in
some respects unprecedentedly heavy--of a relatively limited selection
of items. I am--as I have already said--in favor of the highest possible
war profits tax and of at least as high a rate of income and inheritance
taxation during the war as exist in any other country. But apart from
these and a few other items which can naturally support v