CAUSES OF BUSINESS DEPRESSION.

69

or visit a theatre, can stay a night in a lodging-house orboard a week at a hotel, without contributing to the taxescharged upon the buildings. Not a case of goods, a baleof cotton, a stick of timber, or a pig of iron can passthrough the city without also helping to bear the burdenof taxation.

“ The great object, then, of every real estate ownershould be to bring more people here with their personalproperty to occupy dwellings and stores ; more visitorsto buy peanuts and diamonds ; more bales of cotton andpigs of iron to be handled and stored—and so to dis-tribute the indirect taxes upon them as to make the bur-den of all taxation comparatively easy.to bear.

“ In business two policies are recognized : one is to doa small trade with large profits, and the other is to do alarge trade with small profits. The former policy is oneof the past, which has been practically abandoned asnarrow, illiberal, and ineffective. It is a policy whichshould not be adopted, and cannot be carried out in theface of competition or opposition in trade. In such acase the competitor dictates the policy. This is, in somesense, the problem which presents itself for solution tothe people of this city, as to which policy they shalladopt. In my judgment, they have no choice. In thekeen competition for trade, and supremacy in trade, therival dictates the policy to a certain extent, and nothingbut stolidity and obstinacy can justify adherence to anarrow and obstructive theory. It is the interest of the