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WHO PAYS YOUR TAXES?
about his neck, and at the same time he puts burdens upon thebacks of the producing populations of the cities ; for were tax-ation taken off the products of the farm and of the factory,those things would be reduced in price, more people would beable to buy, more labor would be necessary in the productionof those things, an increased demand would come for labor, theglut of the labor market would be relieved, and wages would beraised ; and there, I think, is the whole situation in a nutshell.
The real estate owners, of whom this association is largelycomposed, realize all these things, and have also realized thatthe change which they hope to see would add to the value oftheir property, and that therefore they could easily bear theadded burden that would fall upon them through the abolitionof personal property taxes.
“ But,” says the farmer, “ you don’t touch upon the pointthat we have in mind—how about mortgages, which are alsopersonal property ?” Well, the fact is this : The money placedon farm mortgages by the banking corporations does not comefrom the Wall Street men at all. No man who does businessin Wall Street is satisfied with an income of five or six per cent.The bulk of the money placed on mortgages on the farms ofthis country is the savings of the poor people, and not themoney of what the farmer so sneeringly calls “ the Wall Streetsharks.” The Wall Street shark wants to turn his money fast;he wants to make from thirty to seventy per cent, a yegr, whilethe people who work for wages and deposit their little savingsin the savings banks are satisfied almost to know that themoney for which they have worked so hard is in a place ofsecurity, not to speak of the matter of interest. And the sav-ings banks, when they loan money on mortgages of any descrip-tion, are very sure to include in the amount of interest that themortgageors have to pay the amount of the State personal prop-erty tax on mortgages. This is a case, without doubt, in whichthe State does get its revenue ; that is to say, when money is