— courtesy of Tom Giessel
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter written to William Johnson spoke of the industrial and plantation barons of his day as follows:
Still further to constrain the brute force of the people they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged order in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble adoration and submissions, as to an order of superior beings.
The successors of the barons of Jefferson’s time are the same group as are now asking that the federal income, inheritance, and gift taxes, be limited by constitutional amendment to not over 25 percent and that the deficiency in federal government receipts caused by the amendment limiting the taxes on the rich be made up by the imposition of sales tax on the poor and by taking the savings made by their cooperatives.
