IV
AS TO THE INCOME TAX
"Well, Mr. Bib," said the Idiot cheerfully, as he speared a lonely pruneand put it out of its misery, "have you made your return to the incometax collector yet?"
"I both rejoice and regret to say that my income is not large enough tocome under the provisions of the act," said the Bibliomaniac, "andconsequently I haven't bothered my head about it."
"Then you'd better get busy and send in a statement of your receipts upto January first, or you'll find Uncle Sam after you with a hot stick.For the sake of the fair name of our beloved home here, sir, don'tdelay. I'd hate to see a federal patrol wagon rolling up to our door forthe purpose of taking you to jail."
"But I am exempt," protested the Bibliomaniac. "I don't come within athousand dollars of the minimum."
"That may be all true enough," said the Idiot. "You know that, and Iknow that, but Uncle Sam doesn't know it, and you've got to satisfy himthat you are not a plutocrat trying to pass yourself off as a member ofone of those respectable middle-class financial families in which thisland is so pleasingly rich. You've got to lay a statement of yourfinancial condition before the government whether your income isninety-seven cents a minute or forty-seven thousand dollars an hour.Nobody is exempt from that nuisance. As I understand it, the governmentrequires every man, woman, and child to go to confession, and own up tojust how little or how much he or she hasn't got. All men stand equal inthe eyes of the law when it comes to the show-down. There is nodiscrimination in favor of the rich in this business, and theinconvenience of having a minion of authority prying into your privateaffairs is as much a privilege of yours as it is of Uncle John's, orgood old Brother Scramble, the Egg King. Uncle Sam is going to put hiseye on every man-jack of us and find out whether we are any good or not,and if so, for how much. He will have sleuths everywhere about toestimate the cubic financial contents of your trousers' pockets, andwhether you keep your money in a bank, in a trust company, in a cigarbox, your sock, or your wife's name, he is going right after it, andhe'll get his share or know the reason why. There isn't a solitarynickel circulating in this land to-day that can hope to escape the eagleeye of the Secretary of the Treasury and his financial ferrets."
"You surprise me," said the Bibliomaniac. "If what you say is true, itis a perfect outrage. You don't really mean to tell me that I have gotto give a statement of my receipts to some snoopy-nosed old governmentofficial, do you?"
"Even so," said the Idiot, "or at least that is the way I understand it.You've not only got to tell how much you've got, but you must alsodisclose the sources of your revenue. If you found a cent on the cornerof Main Street and Desdemona Alley on the fifteenth day of December,1916, thereby adding that much to your annual receipts, you have got toenter it in your statement, and so clearly that the authorities willunderstand just how, when, and where it came into your possession, allunder oath; and you are not allowed to deduct your current livingexpenses from it, either. If in stooping over to pick up that cent youbusted your suspenders, and had to go and pay fifty cents for a newpair, thereby losing forty-nine cents on the transaction, you aren'tallowed to make any deductions on that account. That cent is 'Net'--not'Nit', but 'Net.' Same way if in a crowded car you put your hand intowhat you presumed to be your own pocket, and pulled out unexpectedly aroll of twenty dollar bills amounting to two hundred dollars in all, andthen in an absent-minded moment got away with it before you realizedthat it belonged to the man standing next to you, you'd have to put itdown on your statement just the same as all the rest of the items, underpenalty of prosecution for concealing sources of revenue from theofficers of the law. Oh, it's a fine mess we smart Alexanders of thehour have got ourselves into in our effort to establish a pipe linebetween the plutocratic pocketbook and the United States Treasury. Weall hypnotized ourselves into the pleasing belief that the income taxwas going to be a jolly little club with which to hit old Brother Pluteon the head, and make him fork over, while we Nixicrats sat on the fenceand grinned. It was going to be great fun watching the Plutes disgorge,and we all had a notion that life was going to be just one exgurgitatingmoving picture after another, with us sitting in front row seatsgloating over the Sorrows of Croesus and his coughing coffers. But,alas for our dreams of joy, it hasn't worked out quite that way. Thevexation of the blooming thing is visited upon every one of us. Them ashas has got to pay. Them as hasn't has got to prove that they don'thave to pay, and I tell you right now, Mr. Bib, it is going to be aterrific proposition for a lot of chaps in this land of ours who areskinning along on nothing a year, but making a noise like aten-thousand-dollar proposition."
"I fear me their name is legion," said the Bibliomaniac.
"I know one named Smythe," said the Idiot. "If a painter were lookingaround for a model for Ready Money in an allegorical picture Smythewould fill the bill to perfection. You ought to see him. He walks aboutthe streets of this town giving everybody he meets a fifteen-thousandper annum look when, as a matter of fact, he hasn't got ten cents to hisname. If he was invited to a submarine masquerade all he'd have to dowould be to swallow a glass of water and go as a sponge. He makes aboutas big a splurge on a deficit as you or I could make if our salarieswere raised nine hundred ten per cent., and then some. As a weekender heis in the A 1 class. He hasn't paid for a Sunday dinner in five years,nor has he paid for anything else in earned cash for three. His onlysources of revenue are his friends, the pawn-shops, and his proficiencyat bridge and poker. His only hope for staving off eventual disaster isthe possibility of hanging on by his eyelids until he dawns as the lastforlorn hope on the horizon of some freckle-faced, red-haired old maid,with nine millions in her own right. He owes every tailor, hatter, andhaberdasher in town. When he needs twenty-five dollars he buys afifty-dollar overcoat, has it charged, and takes it around the cornerand pawns it, and ekes out the deficiency with a jackpot or a grandslam, in the manipulation of both of which he is what Socrates used tocall a cracker-jack. If you ever saw him walking on the avenue, orentering a swagger restaurant anywhere, you'd stop and say to yourself,'By George! That must be Mr. Idle Rich, of whom I have heard so muchlately. Gosh! I wonder how it feels to be him!'"
"Him?" sniffed the Bibliomaniac, always a stickler for purity of speech.
"Sure thing!" said the Idiot. "You don't stop to think of grammar whenyou are dazzled by that spectacle. You just give way, right off, to yournatural, unrestrained, primitive instincts, and speak English in exactlythe same way that the caveman spoke his tongue in those glorious daysbefore grammar came along to curse education with its artificialrestraints upon ease of expression. 'Gosh! I wonder how it feels to behim', is what you'd say as old Empty Wallet passed you by disguised asthe Horn of Plenty, and all day long your mind would continue to advertto him and the carefree existence you'd think to look at him he wasleading; and you, with a four-dollar bill within your reach everySaturday night, would find yourself positively envying him his wealth,when, as a matter of fact, he hasn't seen a single red cent he couldproperly call his own for ten years."
"Oh, well--what of it?" said the Bibliomaniac. "Of course, there aresponges and snobs in the world. What are they to us?"
"Why, nothing," said the Idiot, "only I wonder what Smythe and his kindare going to do when the income tax collector comes along and asks forhis little two per cent. of all this showy exterior. It will be aterribly humiliating piece of business to confess that all thisostentatious show of prosperity is nothing but an empty shell, and thatway down inside he is only an eighteen-karat, copper-fastened,steel-riveted bluff; fact is, he'll have the dickens of a time makingthe tax collectors believe it, and then he'll be face to face with afederal indictment for trying to dodge his taxes. And that business ofdodging--that brings up another phase of this income tax that I don'tbelieve many of us realized when we were shouting for it as a means ofshackling Mr. Plute. Did you ever realize that it won't be very longbefore the government, in order to get this income tax fixed right, willhave a lot of inspectors who will be d
elegated to do for you and me, andall the rest of us, what the Custom House inspectors now do fortravelers returning from abroad? Every man and woman traveling upon theseas of life, Mr. Bib, will be required to enter the port of taxationand there submit a declaration of the contents of their boxes to thetax inspectors, which will be followed, as in the case of the travelerfrom abroad, by a complete overhauling of their effects by those sameinspectors. The tesselated pave of your safe deposit companies and bankswill look like the floor of an ocean steamship pier on the arrival of abig liner, only instead of being snowed under by a mass of shirts,trousers, Paris-made revelations in chiffons, silks, and brocades,necklaces, tiaras, pearl ropes, snipped aigrettes, and snowy drifts ofindescribable, but in these free days no longer unmentionable, lingerie,it will be piled high with steel bonds, New Haven deferred dividends,sinking fund debenture certificates, government five eighths per cent.bonds, certificates of deposit, miscellaneous stocks, mining,industrial, railway, gilt-edged and wildcat, in one red unburial blent;while the poor owner, fearful lest in the excitement of the ordeal hemay have neglected to mention some insignificant item of a million ortwo in Standard Oil, will sit by and sweat as the inspector tears hisruthless way through his accumulated stores for wealth."
"It will be almost enough to make a man sorry he's rich," said theDoctor.
"Oh, no," said the Idiot, "for the rest of us will be in the samepickle, only in a more humiliating position as the intruder reveals thatthe sum total of out lifetime of endeavor consists chiefly in unpaidbills labeled Please Remit. The Custom House inspectors are harder onthe man with nothing to declare than they are on those whose boxes arefull. They slam their things all over creation, and insult the ownerwith the same abandon with which they greet a recognized past-mistressin the arts of smuggling. Innocence is no protection when a Custom Houseinspector gets after you, and it will be the same way with the newkind. None of us can hope to escape. The income tax inspectors will comehere just as eagerly as they will go to that palatial mausoleum in whichMr. Rockernegie dwells on the corner of Bond Avenue and Easy Street, andthey'll rummage through our trunks, boxes, and bureaus in search of suchinterest-bearing securities as they may suspect us of trying to get bywith. Mr. Bib will have to dump his bureau drawer full of red necktiesout on the floor to prove to Uncle Sam's satisfaction that he hasn't gota fourteen-million-dollar bond issue concealed somewhere behind theirlurid glow. The Doctor will have to sit patiently by and unprotestinglywatch the inspectors going through the pockets of his unrivaledcollection of fancy waist-coats in a heart-breaking quest for undeclaredinterests in mining enterprises and popular cemeteries. Trunks, chests,hatboxes, soapboxes, pillboxes, safety razor boxes--in fact, all kindsof receptacles in this house, from Mrs. Pedagog's ice chest to Mr.Whitechoker's barrel of sermons--will be compelled to disgorge theiruttermost content in order to satisfy the government sleuths that we whodwell in this Palace of Truth, Joy, and Waffles, have not a controllinginterest in Standard Oil hidden away lest we be compelled to pay our dueto the treasury."
"You don't mean to say that the law so provides, do you?" said theBibliomaniac.
"Not yet," said the Idiot, "but it will--it's bound to come. In the verynature of the beast it is inevitable. There never was a tax yet thatfound a warm spot awaiting it in the hearts of its countrymen. The humanmind with all its diabolical ingenuity has never yet been able todevise a tax that somebody somewhere--nay, that most peopleeverywhere--did not try to dodge, and to catch the dodgers thegovernment is compelled to view everybody with suspicion, and treat hoipolloi from top to bottom as if they were nothing more nor less than alot of unregenerate pickpockets, horse-thieves, and pastmasters in thegentle art of mendacity."
"Frightful!" said Mr. Whitechoker. "And is not a man's word to be takenas a guarantee of the accuracy of his return?"
"Not so's anybody would notice it," grinned the Idiot. "When thegovernment finds it necessary to nab leaders of fashionable society fortrying to smuggle in one-hundred-thousand-dollar pearl necklaces bysewing them up in the lining of their hats, and to fine the mosteminently respectable citizens in the country as much as five thousanddollars for returning from abroad portly with five or six-hundred yardsof undeclared lace wound inadvertently about their stomachs, having inthe excitement of their homecoming put it on in the place of the littleflannel bands they have worn to ward off cholera and other pleasingforeign maladies, it loses some of its confidence in human nature, andacquires some of that penetrating inquisitiveness of mind which is saidto be characteristic of the native of Missouri. It wants to be shown,and if the income tax remains in force, we might as well make up ourminds that the inquisitorial inspector will soon be added to theofficial pay roll of the United States of America."
"But," protested the Bibliomaniac, "that will be a plain common-gardenespionage of so intolerable a nature that no self-respecting free peoplewill submit to it. It will be an abominable intrusion upon our rightsof privacy."
The Idiot laughed long and loud.
"It seems to me," said he, after a moment, "that when Colonel John W.Midas, of the International Hickory Nut Trust, advanced that sameobjection against the proposed tax a year or so ago, Mr. Bib, you sat inthat very same chair where you are now and vociferously announced thatthere was nothing in it."
"Oh, but that's different," said the Bibliomaniac. "Midas is a rich man,and I am not."
"Well, I suppose there is a difference between a prune and a Canadianmelon, old man, but after all, they're both fruit, and when it comes tobeing squeezed, I guess it hurts a lemon just as much as it does a lime.I, for one, however, do not fear the inspector. My securities areexempt, for they all pay their tax at the source."
"What are they, coupon bonds?" grinned the Lawyer.
"No," said the Idiot; "pawn tickets, interest on which is always paid inadvance."