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.
The scope of a modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish
for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by
the old "laissez faire" school of political writers, and this widening
has met popular approval.
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