No manufacturer can possibly continue in business except by the grace of the officials in Washington.
They increased inheritances to the point where cash must be hoarded to pay the tax collector in case of death.
These taxes are a levy upon capital. There is no requirement in our law, as there is in the English law, that the proceeds from estate taxes shall go into capital improvements of the Government. In other words, capital is being destroyed for current operating expenses and the cumulative effect of such destruction cannot fail to be harmful to the country.
[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.
Labor commissions, factory commissions and investigations, commissions on every subject in the Business Directory, have chilled capital; and when capital catches cold, labor freezes to death….Is the main cause of the lack of work hard to seek? Is it not that business has had too much interference from the state…too many everlasting commissions first prying into every man's affairs, and then telling him how to run them?
I do not believe in legislation so radical that it means an attack on the valuation of real estate or driving out of our state manufacturing concerns or other large business enterprises.
We are of the opinion that if the present recommendations are insisted upon…factories will be driven from the city, labor will be compelled to accompany them, factories, tenements, and small houses will become tenantless with the final result of demoralization in tax collections by the city. What is wanted is evolution and not revolution.
You must relieve [New York's] real estate from the terrible yolk of oppression which has been throttling it for some years past…
This condition is depreciating the value of real estate, restricting its marketability, and driving manufacturers out of the City and State of New York.
The Real Estate Board of New York is informed that thousands of factories are migrating to New Jersey and Connecticut in order to be freed from the oppressive laws of New York State.
