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A Far Reaching Decision

A Far Reaching Decision image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
May
Year
1895
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The meóme tax is dead. ine wnoie law was declared nncousitutional by the O3nrt of last resort last Monday by j a inajority of one, Jnstice Shiras having "flopped" since the handing down of the praviana decisión of the court a few weeks ago. Tl e result is one more victory for wealth in its efforts to escape the payment of its due share of the burden of taxatiou. The overturning of the law will deprive the govemment of I revenue variously estimated at from $30,000,000 to $50,000,000. The question of the needs of the gorernment and the justice of the tax seem not to havo been considered at all by the court. Former precidents, likewise, appear to have had no weight with the majority. There is little in the decisión that can be considered liberal and broad. It peaxs to be based upon a strained and far-fetehed constructon of the letter of the constitntiou rather than its spirit. It is a decisión which might have done honor to the sticklers or ' ' strict constructinists" of former days The decisión is the more surprising wben it is understood that every man of the majority is from the north. The decisión is deprived of nrach of its weight and impressiveness by the fact that in order to obtain a bare majority against the law it -was necessary for one of the justices, who is best known to the people as a corporation attorney, to reverse the position occupied by him in the previons decisión of the cotirt on which the ink is scarcely yet dry. Those who dissented frora the decisión are Justices Brown, Harían, Jackson and White. Their opinions are ia accord with the preoidents of the first hundred years of otir national history and are rnarked with deep conviction and grave fears as to the resnlts of the new doctrine npon the taxing power which lies at the very j bas'R of all government. The destruction of long and well established principles of taxation by this decisión is viewed by the dissenting jiastices us a menace to the future. Their language while températe, as is to be always expected.when coming from such a pouree, is vi?orous and strong. "The decisioa" sr.ys Justice Jackson, "is a disaster and jnrisji be regarded as a public calamity. ' ' Justice Hai-lan in closing used the following remarkable language: "Such a resnlt is one to be deeply deplored. It cannot be regarded otherwise than as a disaster to the country. The practical, jf not the direct, effect of the decisión today,is to give to certain kinds of property a position of favoritism and advautage that is inconsistent with the fundamental principies of our social organization, and to invest them with power and influence that may be perilons to that portion of the American people npon whom rests the larger part of the burdens of the government, and who onght not to be subjected to the dorniuation of aggregated wealth any more than the property of the country should be at the mercy of the lawless." When men of their leaming and ability and habit of thought use such language with reference to such a matter, there eau be little doubt but that well established principies of equity and justice havo been violated. The principie involved in the overturned law still lives in spite of the decison of the court. And if the constitution does not give to congress the power to tax the great incomes of aggregatedwealth, it should be amended and that power granted it at the earlifist moment. On Wednesday the house passed the senate bill establishing anotuer State Normal school at Mount Pleasant. Shonld the measure receive the executive approval, Michigan will soon have a mnch needed want supplied. There need be no delay in putting the school in operation, since the Mount Pleasant people dónate the fine building and site now occupied by the private normal there. There niight and probably would have been some advantages in leaving the question of location out of the bill entirely and permitting it to be fixed by a disinterested commission after it had carefnlly considered the varioufl oifers and claims of the different cities competing for the institution. but the issue had become so warm and so much antagonism had been aroused th;.t it was Mount Pleasant or no new normal this 3ession. Under the circninstances, therefore, we believe the legislatura did wisely iu passing the Mount Pleasant bill. That there is urgent need for another normal school, few will deny. The demand upon the school at Ypsilanti is ir than it can supply. lts gradnates nearly all go into the village and city schools while the rural schools where the professional teacher is so nmch needed are almost wholly without trained teachers. Yet the greater part of the children of the state proba bly receive all their early training it least in the district schools. Teaching has become a profession, as much as law or medicine, and those who would follow it and honor it shonld have as careful technical preparation therefor. Bat it i.s impossible for one normal school to fnrnish this preparation to so large a number of teachers as is required. Besides the question of distance enters into the problem. Many would be teachers in the northern part of the state prefer to retnain nearer home and put up with poorer yet more expensive instruction, rather than to go to Ypsilanti. Now unless the schools are ;o continue to suffer for the want of .rained teachers normal instrnotion must be brought nearer to those in the more distant parts of the state who desire to enter the teacher's profession. We beieve the legislature has shown wisdom, herefore.Jin providing for another nornal school and iu a mauner to canso ;he least possible delay. With writers like the author of 'Coin's Financial School" it is constantly assurned that a law of congress, ;ouohing money, is omnipotent; that ;he precious metáis are valnable because they are coined, and not coined 3ecause they are valnable ; that there is no law to "demonetize" silver or gold except the law of congress, and that the United States, in issuing coins and declaring legal tender, m,ay disregard all nations of the earth and dictate to eveverybody under the sun. The simple f act is that coining does not increase the value of the precions metáis; that the law of value, i.e. ,the estimation which men who buy and sell upon one or the other of these metáis is superior to any man-made law and cannot be overruled, and that the surest way to "demonetize" either of them is to allow something cheaper to take its place. What would be the effect of free coinage when the bullion in the silver dollar is worth but 50 cents? - Cincinnati Trii bvtne. _- - - - - Yesterday wheat in Chicago went a booming. Ifcwent to81c, andreniained abotit there in spite of the strenous efforts of the large speculators to keep it down by dumping millions of bushels on the new blood. If this sort of thing continúes in the wheat market in conjunction with the recent like advance in cotton, the free silver crowd will be without a vocation and will have to betake themselves to the región of inocnous desuetude, occupied by their fathers, the flatists of the 70 's and early 80's. Five to four is the way the suprerae conrt stands on the in come tax, with one of the five a fresh convert and very shakey. And still the supreme court decisions stand five for the income tax and only one against it. There was once a Dred Scott decisión which the supreme court never reversed But it was wiped out by constitutional ments. -

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News