property by descent or devise; that the State has no just power to take property from the private owner except as needed for governmental revenue; that when so taken, it is justifiable taxation; that when taken under the guise of taxation, but for the purpose of limiting the amount which may pass by descent or by will, then taxation has ceased and confiscation has begun.

It is contended that inheritance is one of the great natural and elemental rights; that, while not expressed in our Constitution, it is "a right born with our very institutions, a right which does not need to be expressed;" and it is argued that if the State may lawfully place a tax upon legacies and devises, it follows that the State has unlimited power over the property of deceased persons and "may, without any breach of natural law or denial of fundamental rights, take to itself all property."

It is protested that this is a "monstrous doctrine;" that its application would have a most baneful effect upon civilized communities; that the family relation would be severed; that whatever bond or duty the expectancy of property places on the child would be broken; that the motive for parents to accumulate would be gone; that thrift and industry would be paralyzed; that men will not work to gather property if it has no family perpetuation; that the universal rule of the community would be, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Thus the tax has been styled 66 an infamous measure of taxation,' penalty on death," "stealing from the estate by legislative authority," "an outan outrage that can find precedent only in Oriental autocratic governments."

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It has been eloquently argued that American society is founded upon the American home, in which the father is both the protector of and the provider for the family; that it is his right and duty to make provision for his widow and children; that our social organization is built upon the idea that a man's children and kin shall take that which he has accumulated; and that, if this principle of the succession tax be acIcepted, the State has a right, if it sees fit, to step into every home desolated by

death and take from wife and children every dollar of property, not even leaving the heirlooms and the homestead hallowed by family associations.

It is not claimed that such drastic laws would in any human probability be enacted, but it is insisted that this arbitrary power over inheritances ought not to be countenanced; that the evil lies in the acknowledgment of the power; that, once recognized, there is no protection against improvident and communistic legislation. It is asked whether it is possible, after all the care shown in centuries of Anglo-Saxon legislation in the effort to protect private property and individual rights, that the only thing which now stands between this country and an absolute state of Socialism is the passage of a law destroying the right of inheritance, a law which might be passed by a chance legislature carried into power upon the wave of some sudden and sporadic popular feeling.

It has been declared by no less an authority than Benjamin Harrison that the principle of the inheritance tax destroys the very foundations upon which our institutions rest. In his argument of the Illinois inheritance tax case-the last argument made by him before the Supreme Court of the United Statesthe ex-President pictured with solemnity and earnestness his view of the injustice and viciousness of this form of taxation:

From the dawn of history, in the earliest records, both these rights existed, the testamentary right and the right of inheritance.

These great natural and fundamental rights are both recognized; and though neither of them is written out on tablets of stone, they are both engraved on the fleshy tablets of every man's heart. The statute of descents, as the courts have again and again said, is the expression of the legislature upon its conscience and duty as to what is the natural law-as to what should be the natural intention and desire of a testator.

The family relation and property rights have been built up and stand upon these two great natural rights. The legislature does not give them, it defines them. When they cease to be recognized as natural and fundamental rights, we shall have dissolved the basis upon which our society rests.

In the face of President Harrison's impressive plea, and of consequences as serious as these which have been predicted, it is evident that clear proof must

be offered to convince the public mind of America of the necessity, justice, and wisdom of a Federal inheritance tax. What are the arguments in its favor?

First. There is no "natural right of inheritance." The right to dispose of property by will or receive property by descent is not an inherent quality of private property. These rights are the creatures of human law. Without the aid of statutes, the right of property dies with the owner. The State has the unrestricted right to control and restrict the disposition of the property left by a deceased person within its jurisdiction. As was said by Chief Justice Taney, "If a State may deny the privilege [of in heritance] altogether, it follows that when it grants it, it may annex to the grant any conditions which it supposes to be required by its interests or its policy." In the eye of the law, all rights of inheritance depend upon express legislative enactment. "The right to take property by devise or descent is the creature of the law and not a natural right-a privilege, and therefore the authority which confers it may impose conditions upon it."

Second. Since inheritance is not a right, but a privilege granted by the State, it follows that a succession tax is not a tax on property, but on the succession; in other words, on the privilege of receiving property by will or by descent. In this aspect it is eminently proper that the beneficiary should pay for the privilege which he can enjoy only by virtue of the State and the protection of its laws. From his standpoint, inheritance is a sudden acquisition of wealth without labor. His ability to contribute to the support of the government is increased. Only where the head of a family dies who is supporting wife, children, or kin has there been an economic loss to any one. If the estate goes to collateral relatives, or even to self-supporting children, there is an acci.dental addition to their means, and thus a gain in their taxpaying power. What class of property can be a more fit object of taxation than that which comes to an

I Mager vs. Grima, 49 U. S., 8 How. 493.

2 Mr. Justice McKenna, in Magoon vs. Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, 170 U. S., 283.

individual unearned by his own labor and often undeserved by any personal merits?

Third. Succession taxes are not inherently unjust. The deep-rooted prejudice as to the sacredness of testamentary rights arises from existing laws which lead us to forget that these rights are not natural rights, nor even the consequence of the right of property. No good reason can be offered for the operation of inter-State laws which not infrequently place property in the hands of distant relatives, whose existence was scarcely known to the deceased, and who very likely had far less affection for him and real interest in his welfare than many friends, employees, and servants.

Fourth. Inheritance taxes-particularly those which are progressive and place an increasing burden upon legacies as they increase in value-are no discouragement to industry and enterprise. It is not to be assumed that legislatures, because they have the power, will therefore enact laws dispossessing entirely the immediate family. Whatever may be the rates hereafter adopted, every enlightened government will suitably protect the dependent wife, children, and kindred. The passage of property, whether it be from a father to a son who is financially independent, or from an uncle to a grandnephew, or from indulgent testator to the object of his bounty, is purely an artificial advantage in the struggle for existence. Without any exertion on his part, such beneficiary has been given a start over his fellows. In so far as the tax curtails this arbitrary advantage resting on the accident of birth, to this extent will there be an approach to the ideal of a greater equality.

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Finally, the inheritance tax furnishes a plan by which to grapple with "the problem of enormous fortunes." Its advocates say that the method is wise, simple, and effective-wise, because it does not touch private property during the life of the owner, and thus places no burden upon business activity; simple, because the tax is easily ascertained and collected while estates are being administered in the Probate Court; effective,

because by the application of progressive rates any result in the direction of preventing the transmission of unduly large accumulations can be accomplished which the legislature shall from time to time deem advisable. Without some legislative regulation of this character there is no check upon the accelerating growth of wealth in the hands of the few; nothing to cause its distribution except the spirit of benevolence and the proverbial profligacy of the owners of inherited means. It is poor morality, as well as economics, to intrust the distribution of the world's wealth either to folly or philanthropy..

In this conflict of argument and opinion certain facts remain unchallenged. First, the legal power of Congress to impose a graduated inheritance tax has been sustained by the Supreme Court and is therefore not an open question. Second, progressive inheritance taxes have been tried with satisfactory results both in Australia and New Zealand, the region of experiments, and in England, the home of conservatism. With the constitutionality of the tax established and its utility tested by experience, it is clear that the question is largely one of the rates which should be fixed. Should small legacies be exempted? Should the tax be progressive? If so, what should be the scale of progression? Ought the highest rate to be five per cent. as now provided by some State laws, or fifty per cent. as was proposed by Edward Bellamy? Should the legislature adopt the views of Andrew Carnegie-reaffirmed in a recent utterance of exceptional significance and exact from every large estate "a tremendous share, a progressive share"? What tribute might the Russell Sage millions properly have paid? What part of the colossal bequest held in trust for a grandson of Marshall Field and accumulating for his benefit, or injury, might the Government wisely have appropriated to the use of its citizens?

It is in the highest degree important that any such tax should be kept within conservative bounds, but what these bounds shall be—what is fair and wise, and what is unreasonable and confiscatory-must necessarily be left to the

judgment of Congress. If it be argued against the tax that there is danger of unreasonable and radical legislation on the subject, such a contention, as was pointed out by Justice White in his scholarly and luminous decision upholding the Inheritance Tax of 1898,1 "involves in its ultimate aspect the mere assertion that free and representative government is a failure."

In dealing with the problem of concentrated wealth, the progressive inheritance tax very naturally presents itself as a partial solution. Its sponsors have for years earnestly, but with indifferent success in attracting public attention, urged its adoption as a convenient method of raising revenue and an efficient means for reducing "swollen fortunes." By the sudden appearance of the President as its champion this proposition is now receiving that degree of public consideration which it well deserves. Why should it anywhere, even among the very rich, arouse fear and amazement? Is it not rather surprising that in democratic · America the unqualified moral right to inherit regal fortunes should not long since have been assailed? How absurd now appears the doctrine of the divine right of kings, rulership over one's fellow-men, vested as a thing of private property in lineage, the grave responsibilities of the crown blindly intrusted to an unborn child! Yet power resides not alone in hereditary monarchs. The ownership of ten million dollars is a power greater than possessed by many a potentate. The use or misuse of such a fortune is fraught with far-reaching consequences, moral and economic, to whole communities and to thousands of human beings; yet without astonishment or doubt we have seen such fortunes, with all their latent possibilities of good or evil, pass to the heir-at-law, regardless of his capacity to administer the great trust. May not a future generation regard the present dọctrine of unlimited inheritance in the same light with which men trained in democracy now view the transfer of the crown from the monarch to his next of kin ?

In the light of considerations such as these, the progressive inheritance tax loses its destructive and ominous aspect. 1 Knowlton vs. Moore, 178 U. S., 41.

it conscious of common interests, to secure permanent committees and develop effective parliamentary procedure, is not only educational in the best sense, but it is precisely the kind of education those citizens most need. It is, however, when these locals begin to affiliate with State and National bodies that we see the full measure of this discipline. One of our ablest presidents of a National organization once told me, "It costs me far more time, anxiety, and tact to keep our local unions reasonable than all our differences with employers. I have much more to do in stopping strikes than in carrying them on. The local is so near the sources of trouble, there are so many green men and so many hotheads, besides no end of bitter rivalry in the organization, that our National body is on the strain all the time to keep the locals in order."

The single question of "jurisdictional fights among different unions is of itself one of the most baffling problems with which the National body has to cope.

Perhaps one best of all sees the results of this long interior discipline by sitting two or three days in a convention of the Federation of Labor. I have heard very competent men assert that one saw there an average of parliamentary capacity which was distinctly above that of the best of our State Legislatures.

I repeat that so far as Socialism is thought to be a danger, this trade union tradition is not only conservative, but it has been the most active and sturdy exponent of Socialism in this country. The reason of this is that unionism practically accepts and co-operates with the competitive wage system. To uproot and cast out this system is of course one chief object of Socialism. That unionism should enter into partnership with the hated thing, should even make one of its highest aims the formation of joint agreements with employers, thereby making the partnership completer and more permanent, constitutes an offense which Socialists do not forgive. There is a body of Socialist literature containing far more bitterness of tone toward trade unions than toward the capitalists.

It is at this point that one of the most

difficult as well as one of the gravest of labor and social questions arises. Has the wage system elasticity enough to retain its hold on organized labor? Within that system can labor continue to secure what it will insist upon- -a rising standard of income in conformity to general progress? Or can a competitive system in a world market afford to give the income which labor will ask? In New Zealand and Australian colonies labor concluded that it could not get these advantages within the wage system as now constituted, and therefore it turned deliberately to the open field of general politics. When Sir Charles Dilke wrote his book on "Greater Britain," he was impressed by the fact that Australian trade unions had so long put their trust in the old political parties. This confidence assumes that the interests of labor are safe in the hands of politicians who represent the capitalistic interests of the time, as our own Republican party now does in this country. Sixteen years ago capitalism, backed by its own politics, inflicted upon unionism in Australia a defeat so humiliating that labor turned in solid phalanxes to form a party of its

own.

After years of hesitation, a strong contingent in England now boldly adopts the same policy. The powerful unions in Belgium long since turned from the wage system to politics, with signal advantage to themselves. It is the only country where one is quite certain yet that it was an advantage.

Is labor in the United States to follow these tactics, or are we to work out policies of our own, still within the economic field marked off by the old wage payment?

That the world's business in different leading countries is every year being done more and more alike and more and more under pressure of vast currents common to all, would seem to mean that the United States cannot maintain a difference in labor method so sharp as this. Yet two facts of extraordinary significance will aid capitalism in holding labor to the wage system in something like its present form. The first is the fact of race variations, including the negro; the second, the extent and