I used to be something of a socialist, but I dropped my socialism several years ago. What use to dream and argue and fight for a socialistic State in which every fellow will be working for the common good when we are driving ourselves into just that sort of a State anyway?
Taxes will be higher next year. Yes, and they will be higher year after year. Evry year we are taxing ourselves more and more to build better roads, better school houses, more public buildings, and to provide better sanitation, better public health and better fire and police protection, etc., etc. Presently, when we are a little more enlightened and socially minded, we shall tax ourselves to build more libraries, more hospitals and adequate recreational facilities for all the people. Higher and higher our taxes will rise to maintain more and more public enterprises.
And so, whether we like socialism or not, we are very socialists in fact and it is already apparent that the greater part of our incomes will presently be taken from us and devoted to the greater public good and welfare. Such is the trend of our times. It is not inconceivable that we may at no far distant date throw up our hands, tell the State to take it all and to assign us sleeping quarters, give us meal tickets, and an order on the public commissary for tobacco and clothes. We shall yet show Bolshevist Russia the way to do its stuff.
From the editorial page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, May 21, 1926, W.O. Saunders, Editor and Publisher
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-05-21/ed-1/seq-4/
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