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Show THE CITIZEN dom and an untranimclcd vote, if the religious trend of the day is in administration direction of another the straight-lin- e of secular affairs, when a mans soul was not considered his own? So we may, indeed, welcome the recent implication that preachers believe they were ordained to enter the political arena as well as the pulpit. At least we, who believe in the old order, will know whom we have to fight to retain our present measure ot personal liberty gained through the strife of past ages. In a large number of the people there has been wrought a great accordchange. From being merely able to think collectively and ing to the mandates of their religious mentors, they have shed the mantle of a group soul and have become individual entitles, capable of thinking individual thoughts'. They now view things religious as that quality which points the way to life eternal and not as their sole guide and master in all worldly affairs. The majority of the charpeople of today have achieved individual personality, individual acteristics, individual mentalities. They are no longer one of a group to be led, driven, harangued and administered unto like bands of sheep super-religio- v us 1 DOWN WITH STATE OVERHEAD! In early pioneer days the belief was unanimous that Americas it is known that our forests were inexhaustible. In these latter-day- s forest reserves have dwindled to a mere skeleton of that vast expanse of havily timbered lands which the Indians bequeathed to the white invader, and that in the near future all trees and even underbrush may become as extinct as the'celebrated Dodo. No alarm was sounded in behalf of our disappearing forests until they were practically gone forever. And, today, this cheerful belief in things inexhaustible still persists. While, perhaps, it has been lifted from our denuded forest ranges, it nevertheless obtains, in large measure, in connection with the levying and collection of internal, state, county and municipal tax rolls. The lesson of the trees once so limitless in reach and so numerous as to betray the confidence of man in his power to destroy is inextricably bound up in this new, widespread belief that the source from which all taxes flow is inexhaustible. Whenever a prosystem goes to bat he invariably ponent of the prevailing high-ta- x purs an enchanting tale of increased and increasing wealth, which he envisions as the one method to solve the situation. These glib protagonists of the status quo in tax affairs, which mean mounting governmental costs to the very point of exhaustion for the man who must pay who cant help himself, being too poor to sink his capital in bonds, and just strong enough to hold his head above the rising tides, of national, state, county and municipal extravagance, never seemingly pause to consider the most vital point of the tax dilemma, the overhead. Utah has been handed a practical example of this tax miasma, which is predicated on increasing taxable wealth to keep up with the growing overhead, rather than to lower said overhead to meet present taxable wealth conditions in a practical way. Unite within the annals of recent history, our various state officials, trading on the political history of the past, and apparently mindful of their obligations- to the prevailing system, to party preference and to party solidarity, compiled and sent in their requisitions for the ensuing biennial term. And lo and behold! their combined total was found to exceed the estimated state revenue by $1,700,000. The forty-od- d state departments and institutions asked for $4,900,000, as approximating the least possible revenue they could get along with for the next two year period; whereas, a careful recapitulation of all state income after anticipating the passing of some $500,000 worth of inheritance tax payees indicated that it will amount, in round numbers, to something like $3,200,000. Monday, the 8th day of this month, new in catalogue of years, young in numbers and decidedly unsophisticated as to experience will witness the assembling of our state legislative body, for a sixty-da- y term. And it is presumed that this matter of permitting the state to inflict a deficit of $1,700,000 on the taxpayers, to mortgage tax-exem- pt - the future in this huge amount, will then be threshed out in local parliamentary circles. Manifestly the trend of thought among those who carry the tax burden, is directed to a lowering of that burden. While this is patently the case, yet but few of the taxpayers have advanced anyv concrete plan to bring down tax rates. True it is that subterfuges, and measures galore designed to shift the load, have been proposed by local and itinerant tax experts; but nothing of a tangible nature has issued from any source nothing upon which to base a sane program for future exploitation and eventual action, unless it be the suggestion of Judge F. C. Loofbourow, that the right way to. d deflate the is to attack the overhead direct. Jlis suggestion that several and divers state commissions be scraped is timely, indeed. It seemsf an absurd thing to require the taxpayers of Utah to finance an abnormal number of state commissions, at fancy tax-loa- salaries, when they invariably and consistently function close to a thousand per cent in favor of corporate wealth, in all matters per taining to issues as between the public and a corporation. It is an axiom as old as civilization, itself, that no business concern can prosper when its overhead expense account totals its income. What may be said, then, of an .institution where the overhead not only totals its income, but exceeds it by more than one-hal- f, This is the anomalous conditions under which European nations are now attempting to do business, and the sad failure of the is being forecast in an eventual debacle which spells utter impoverishment total exhaustion ! ' They have reached 'that stage in their miasma of spending where they may be said to be in the same category as our national forest and bordering on a pitiful state of innocuous desuetude. Comparisons may be odious, but it is becoming increasingly evident to many taxpayers, that Utah' is fast slipping into the same distressing conditions that now confront several European states, because of their inflated budgets, and their utter lack of any comprehension that the outgo must not be greater than the inflow. It is to be hoped that a sizable majority of our state solons will be discovered wedded to the belief that the only way to lower the tax burden is to lower the overhead. In their willingness to lop off a few fancy salaried commissioners and to check the ingrained desire to kite overhead charges in other and divers directions, apparently lies our only hopes for a lower tax rate. Our solons must not shibplace too much credence in this boleth. It is visionary, unethical, and irrelevant to conditions that now confront the state. Either we must mortgage the future to do business at the old stand in the same old expensive way or we must, perforce, seize the dilemma at both ends and shake the dead weight out of the middle. Utah must limit its administrative expense bill to the size and scope of its taxable income, or, like our national forest ranges, eventually reach that doleful condition where total exhaustion stares her in the face! sys-ter- m -- increase-in-taxable-weal- th ANENT EUROPEAN ADVICE. It certain that if Uncle Sam fails to function according to Hoyle, it will not be for lack of gratuitous advice from foreign lands and from our own busy batch of internationalists. There are very few statesmen of the old world who have failed to take notice of our benighted condition and pointed out the way to the full glare, of enlightment. We notice, also, that there is a great similarity in the directions, which leads us to suspect collusion of some sort is in the wind. The paths pointed out invariably lead from Uncle Sams strong box to the European pocket. n And the persistence with which international sen- timentalists urge the administration to turn to internatioal paternalis home-grow- ism bespeaks a misconception of government under. American institutions, that is little short of staggering. This misconception first assumed proportions under the Wilson regime when it sought, through the league of nations, to commit America to a program that would |