(1) Single Tax puts all the burden of supporting the Government on one
form of wealth, viz.: the value of land.
Populism equalizes taxation, and would compel each owner of property to
pay in proportion to his wealth.
The Single Taxer would put all the load on land, leaving money, stocks,
bonds and personal property of every sort untaxed.
Populists cannot see any justice in taking the value out of the land of
the farmer, while twelve billion dollars of railroad stocks and bonds go
untaxed.
Carnegie holds about three hundred million dollars in the bonds of the
Steel Trust. Those bonds are as good as gold. They pay Mr. Carnegie a
regal income. Why should my land have the value taxed out of it and
Carnegie’s bonds go free? There is no justice in this scheme. It does not
measure up to the Populist dogma of “Equal rights to all.”
(2) Yes. To cloak insurance rascality with his respected name. The
robbers who run those insurance companies simply bought the use of Mr.
Cleveland’s name. He consents to play the humble but useful part of decoy
duck for $1,000 per month.
Gen. Robert E. Lee, just after the Civil War, was offered $50,000 per
year by one of these very companies. He refused to sell the use of his
name. He was a poor man, and went to teaching school for a living.
In this quiet, modest, but noble way “the greatest soldier that the
Anglo-Saxon race ever produced” (see Theodore Roosevelt’s “Life of
Thomas H. Benton”) was supporting his family at the time of his death.
Mr. Cleveland is not a poor man. His income is $5,000 per year, over and
above what silly magazines pay him for occasional articles which are
valueless. Therefore Mr. Cleveland need not have sold his name to the
life insurance rascals. But the $12,000 tempted him, and he sold out.
(3) Dryden’s Prudential was investigated and very rotten it was shown to
be.
(4) No. He is simply stealing the money. Calling it “salary” does not
keep it from being loot.
* * * * *
CHICAGO, Feb. 7, 1906.
_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._
DEAR SIR: Will you please give me the information as set forth
in the following questions?
(1) How many years must an alien live in this country before he
can take out his final papers?
(2) Can an alien, on declaring his intentions to become an
American citizen, exercise the voting franchise before getting
final papers?
(3) I have been nine years in this country and never bothered
about taking out my papers as a citizen. If I were to declare
my intentions of becoming a citizen now, how long would it be
before I could exercise the vote franchise?
Thanking you in anticipation of an early answer, I remain,
Yours respectfully,
⸺ ⸺.