erman school, factory system, social
legislation, trade-union. If millions of Americans are shiftless,
shuffling, undisciplined and only vaguely and crudely patriotic, the
cause is to be found in our neglect of the lessons of modern social
life.

To state these conditions of human waste and exploitation is to suggest
the remedies. All such remedies cost money, hundreds of millions.
There is no progress without higher taxes, better spent, and we shall
not advance except by the path of a vast increase in collective
expenditure for common purposes. In the end, of course, such
improvements will pay for themselves. If we spent fifty millions a
year upon agricultural education, we could easily reimburse ourselves
out of our increased production. We spend over five hundred million
dollars annually upon public elementary and secondary education, a sum
much greater than that spent in any other country. If, however, we
could efficiently organise our school system, we could more profitably
spend three times as much. There are many other chances for the
ultimately profitable investment of our capital upon agencies which
make for a more intelligent, active, industrious and self-disciplined
population.

There is an added use to which such higher taxation may be put. By
means of a larger collective expenditure, a more equal distribution of
income and a wider consumption by the masses may be secured. What can
be attained by industrial action, such as strikes, can be effected in
even greater measure through fiscal action. Taxes, to redress
inequality, should be sharply graduated. By taxes on unearned
increment and monopoly profits, by the {193} regulation of the wages,
prices, dividends and profits of great corporations, we could
increasingly divert large sums to wage-earners, consumers, stockholders
and to the nation as a whole. By increasing the consumption both of
individuals and of the national unit, such taxation would give an
impetus to home industrial development. If this deflection of wealth
from the rich caused a temporary lack of capital, the resulting rise in
interest rates would stimulate saving and repair the evil.

Such a progress would mean not only an advance towards a fuller, freer
and more active life for the population but also a diminution of the
impulse to imperialistic adventure and war. An increased income for
the men at the bottom creates a broader economic base, a less top-heavy
structure, with