Newspapers / The Carolina Union Farmer … / Oct. 3, 1912, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page Two THE CAROLINA UNION PARMER [Thursday, October 3, 1912- (ADVERTISING.) GIVE TOBACCO FARM ERS A SQUARE DEAL. Judge Walter Clark, Candidate for United States Sen ate, Demands Repeal of Tobacco Tax. Judge Clark spoke on Saturday at Bain’s Store, in Caswell, and at Me- bane and at Burlington. At all three places he earnestly advocated the re peal of the eight cents per pound tax upon tobacco. He said in substance. We owe to the farmers and the working men everything we eat or wear or use, >et the entire weight of government is made to rest upon them and they receive none of its favors. There is an especial discrim ination made against the farmers in the tobacco section of North Caro lina. When the illegal tobacco trust was formed at Durham and which has been operated ever since in open and contemptous defiance of law, both State and National, the tobacco section of North Carolina was the most prosperous on the planet. Lands were going up and the people had more money than they knew what to do with. That trust was formed and blight fell upon this section worse than war, famine, or taxes. The chief means by which that trust has maintained its strangle hold upon the farmers has been by maintaining the unjust and discriminating tax up on tobacco. No other agricultural product pays any tax. Corn, wheat, hay, butter, cotton, are all free. There is a bonus on sugar. There was a tax of three cents per pound on cotton, but it was removed as unjust. • The tax on to bacco was removed once from eight to six cents. But the trusts prompt ly sent enough Senators and mem bers to Congress and a sufficient lob by to put the tax back to eight cents At Creedmoor recently when I spoke there, a prominent farmer told me that taking all kinds of tobacco and the prices, the average sum received since the trust was formed the aver age price has been eight cents per pound. The manufacturer therefore has been paying on an average of six teen cents per pound for tobacco, eight cents to the farmer who takes all the risks of the seasons, of labor and of the prices and eight cents to the Government who thus practically has worked on shares with the farm ers getting one-half of the proceeds of the tobacco crop without paying one cent. This has been done not out of any love that the trusts bore the Government, but because by means of it the Government was practically made to forbid any manu facturer of tobacco by the trusts. A farmer who made $1,000 worth of to bacco at an average price of eight cents per pound could not raise an other $1,000 in cash to pay the Gov ernment tax. The result was to break up all manufacture and sale by the farmers. Suppose the tax of eight cents per pound on cotton had been laid and the farmers before he coxild gin and sell his cotton had been compelled to pay it. A cotton mill trust would have been speedily formed which would have controlled the cotton of the South and the farm ers would have been getting on an average of 4 to 5 cents per pound for cotton, or any other price that they thought would have been suf ficient to induce the farmers to make another crop. This is what they have been doing to the tobacco farm ers. Suppose a tax of 60 cents per bushel had been laid on wheat and corn, an elevator trust would have been formed that would have kept the price of those articles at the dic tation of the men who would have had the capital to control the busi ness. The tax upon any agricultural product is odious and unjust and it is especially so when one article is singled out for taxation. Tobacco is as legitimate an article of commerce as any other product. There is no cause to discriminate against it and it would have long since been repeal ed except for the enormous power exerted by the Tobacco Trust and its allied industries over national legis lation. I have been told by men who know that before the trust was form ed that in Granville there was 157 tobacco factories and now there are none except under the control of the trust. 1 have been informed by men who know more about the business that I do that putting the average price of tobacco at eight cents and the tax at eight cents, that the cost of manufacture is a cost of three cents, a total of nineteen cents, and that the manufactured article is sold at an average of between forty and fifty cents. The difl:erence between the two account for the $200,000,000 that Buck Duke owns and for the hundreds of millions held by others who belong to that great trust. The loss to the farmers is even greater than these hundreds of millions which the trust has made because there is the eight cents per pound on tobacco which the Government has taken as its share and the restriction upon production by reason of the business having been made unprofit able to those who raise tobacco. Some will say that the Government must have revenue and therefore there must be a tax on tobacco. If this were true and the Government must raise money upon raw products, why was not the burden shared and two cents put on sugar, two cents on cotton, twenty cents on the wheat and corn of the Northwest and $5 per ton on their hay? But a tax on production is the most unjust of all taxes because it falls upon the farm ers and working people who already pay far more than their fair share of the burden of government, because they are less able to organize and to resist oppression of the taxation thrown upon them by the classes who are better able and ought to pay tax ation. The truth is, this very taxa tion of eight cents per pound can be replaced three times over if the to bacco tax is repealed by putting it on those who ught to pay it. There are two sources to which we should turn. (1) In England where they have a graduated and inheritance tax one- third of the revenues of the Govern ment are raised from that source. This tax ranges from one per cent on small estates and incomes up to 15 per cent on larger. If Rockefeller was to die in the United States the Government would receive no income tax from his $1,000,000,000 to re duce the taxation on the people. On his annual income of $200,000,000 per year in the United States he pays to the Government not one cent of income tax. If he were living in England he would pay his $30,000,- 000 of income tax, and he is but one of over 1,000 men in the United States who own between $5,000,000 and $1,000,000,000. Indeed the graduated income and inheritance tax would produce far more here than in England because by reason of the control of our national legislation by the Trusts since the war we have a far larger aggregation of the wealth of the country in a few hands than in any other country in the world. Indeed I should favor not only sub stituting this tax for the tax on to bacco and the burden of other taxes which falls upon the wealth produc ers of the country, but I should make the graduation much steeper, for I believe that when a man’s income exceeds $10,000,000 per year, or the bulk of his estate exceeds $50,000,- 000, the taxation ought to be 100 per cent, for every man knows that these vast sums could not be acquired hon estly, but that they have been accu mulated by the dishonest control and manipulation of legislation in the in terest of the few and against those who created that wealth and to whom it should properly belong. To them it should be returned by a heav ily graduated system of taxation that would discourage and end such wholesale injustice against the great mass of the people. (2) A tariff for revenue only means such a rate of tariff that will produce the greatest revenue for the Govern ment. That would mean a moderate rate that would permit articles to come in such quantity as would pro duce revenue. It requires of course some skill and experience to fix that rate on each article. But that is what ought to be done honestly and fairly. What is really done is that the Tariff Barons by their control of legislation fix the rate on such arti cles as they see proper so high that almost none of those articles are brought in and thereupon the tariff barons add that rate to the price of their goods. They form trusts to prevent competition among them selves, the high tariff prevents com petition from abroad and the result is that while the Government gets about $300,0a0,000 per year* from the tariff, the tariff barons are said by experts to receive six times as much, or $1,800,000,000, from the American people in the added price of their goods. Put down the tariff to a a revenue basis, without any protection, and the Government would still continue to receive $300,- 000,000 revenue and the people would save $18,200,000 which they are now paying annually to the tariff barons and the higher prices given by protection. Take off eight cents tax on tobacco and the farmer would not merely re ceive sixteen cents instead of cents on an average, but he would free as in former years to maiiuia ^ ture and sell his own tobacco eit e by himself or by forming eompam in each neighborhood, and get a lar part of the difference between sixteen cents and the forty odd which the Tobacco Trust now taK for its profits. Even if you look at the consume^ as paying the tax or a grossly unjust, for tobacco is without regard to quantity. lionaire consumes about the quantity a year as a man in . alls with the result that P*erp Morgan who smokes cigars at $ a piece pays exactly the same tax year as a laborer using the sa^^ number of the cheapest (luality e bacco. Ought such a tax to stand? a tax woul dnot have stood if you who raised tobacco or who have never used it, hut 't' what justice means, had sat nt Senate for the last twelve jye I had sat in the House for years as a member from finest j CO districts in the known jn- would not have been silent at t justice. It is urged that gUt mons is in the Senate and he to remain there. It is becau^g such records as this that other j.g are rapidly retiring their and putting in new ones. g in new ouco. sooner you do it here in Nor ^ lina and can put a man in the who will stand for the it those who till its fields, the o will be for the State. Repeal this iniquitious and set the cultivation of free and you will have the perous farming section in ^ world. Yo.ur lands will go up times their present value. . jj^r- farmer, or at least tO' hood, can manufacture tb® bacco as they used to do of profits of manufacture as we raising tobacco. A no less ^ will be that the graduated income and inheritance if ^ joauh' heavily enough will stop facture of millionaires and b® a consummation most devou wished for. To the Tennessee Brotherhood- Orgat^ , Presi' Of tne lennessee umuit.—j-l tjin i ^ jjje- dent Rhodes to Put the Organ in Every Members Carolina join hands across the The Carolina Union Farmer has Been Adopted as of the Tennessee Union.—A Stirring Appeal from At the close of the best year’s work of the Tennessee State Union, in State Convention at Chattanooga, September 6, 1912, we adopted The Carolina Union Farmer as our State organ. We are to have a Tennessee page, or pages, and I most earnestly request State and county officials and other Union members all over ‘the State, to write to our Teiuiessee de partment. Write short, readable let ters; tell what you are doing, when your County Union meets and what kind of meetings you are having. Make the Tennessee page a red-hot live wire, sparkling with unionism every week. Let every Local make a special ef fort to get every member to take this paper. Every Local Secretary should send In a club at once. Let us put The Carolina Union Farmer in every farmer’s home in Tennessee. North Carolina, the foremost State in the Farmers’ Union, and Tennessee, one of the foremost, can certainly get out a paper that will interest, encourage, strengthen and enlighten every farm er who reads it. We must be up and doing. So let Tennessee and North tains and make The Caroim Farmer the greatest farni gou**' and Union nauer in the w paper try. Every farmer should treasure up its truths, fo^ is power, and practical in properly applied, is the g po"'®, tive force on earth. But fe" of knowledge exercised h»*’ and neglected by the .jge mocked equity, dethroned J . torn the Golden Rule in Farmers, we must take .jjgds steps until intelligent tn ^^ jjia production, scientific met ® j.gpjS keting, and co-operative rural credits transforms ^ in into a nation of happy nnd fro^ homes and our farmers trial slaves to industria ^ in‘’’***’jjjy Our slogan is double t > of itr>' lOS dn^' An‘ lUrP ship ill Tennessee this p motto has always been, once fixed, then death or lOS® Fraternally, L. M. State
The Carolina Union Farmer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Oct. 3, 1912, edition 1
2
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