In the mailing of a tariff bill the prime motive is taxation and
the securing thereby of a revenue. Due largely to the business
depression which followed the financial panic of 1907, the revenue
from customs and other sources has decreased to such an extent
that the expenditures for the current fiscal year will exceed the
receipts by $100,000,000. It is imperative that such a deficit
shall not continue, and the framers of the tariff bill must, of
course, have in mind the total revenues likely to be produced by
it and so arrange the duties as to secure an adequate income.
Should it be impossible to do so by import duties, new kinds of
taxation must be adopted, and among these I recommend a graduated
inheritance tax as correct in principle and as certain and easy of
collection.
The obligation on the part of those responsible for the
expenditures made to carry on the Government, to be as economical
as possible, and to make the burden of taxation as light as
possible, is plain, and should be affirmed in every declaration of
government policy. This is especially true when we are face to
face with a heavy deficit. But when the desire to win the popular
approval leads to the cutting off of expenditures really needed to
make the Government effective and to enable it to accomplish its
proper objects, the result is as much to be condemned as the waste
of government funds in unnecessary expenditure.
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