[Estates] are valuable only for what they can produce. If seized by the government they can produce nothing, and if such seizures increase in amount beyond a reasonable limit they must prove not only valueless in themselves but must destroy the sources of production which otherwise would continue to finance the government and provide for the people.
The Federal Government should keep estate taxes as a reserve in times of national stress. All prior inheritance taxes have been war taxes; and it is only now that it is proposed to destroy this reserve in times when revenues from other sources are adequate and even in excess of the Nation's needs. Such a course of action is not only thoroughly unsound but borders on economic suicide.
Another seriously untoward effect unavoidably inherent in inheritance taxation is that by such taxation a portion of the capital fund of the nation is transferred into the coffers of the Government, and by it used for operating expenses.
The business men of this country who have made and saved money should no longer be supervised, criticized, or controlled by men who have neither made nor saved it.
To my mind this is all wrong….The experience of the past proves conclusively that the best government is the least possible government, that the unfettered initiative of the individual is the force that makes a country great and that this initiative should never be bound...
We have been legislated to death.
'Free Business from Political Persecution' and 'The Country is Suffering from Too Much Law'.
This night work has been rendered necessary largely because of the Government’s perfectly unreasonable attitude towards large corporations, which has made it impossible for managers of large concerns to know whether….they could expand their plans to keep up with increasing demands or not.
[A federal income tax would be an invitation to D.C.] to invade its territory, to oust its jurisdiction and to establish a Federal dominion [in Virginia]. A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business. The eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house.
We have no authority until the meat becomes commerce. You see we have a right to control commerce, but not manufacture. I have the belief that it would be better if the Federal Government had general power to enact police powers for the protection of the people against impure and unwholesome foods, if it could stop with that…There is not one single thing in the Federal Constitution that expressly confers upon Congress any police power whatever, and by police power I mean the power to enact laws for the preservation of the public health, the public morals, and the public peace.
