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Show COMMENTS ONE TAX BILL The other day a large Western light and power utility added up its 1940 tax bill. The compilation shows vividly what the electric industry means to the United States. This one company's total bill for taxes was something over $22,531,000, and was by far its largest item of expense. This amounted r to an increase of almost $4,500,000 over its 1939 tax bill. About three-fourths of the in-crease in-crease represented a jump in Federal income taxes. Total federal taxes came to a little more than $10,000,000. State taxes added up to more than $2,500,000. And local taxes- piid to the 47 counties and 158 municipalities in which the company operates exceeded $9,916,000. The largest city served by the company drew over $1,845,000. What is true in this case is true in the 48 states where such companies pay annually annual-ly some $4000,000,000 in taxes. The private power industry is one of the biggest and most dependable taxpayers. It will bear a -very important share of defense tax increases in-creases now needed. Government-owned power projects, socialized so-cialized power by contrast, pays little or nothing in taxes. Instead, being subsidized, they consume money. In this time of unprecedented unpre-cedented taxation we need private industries which contribute gigantic sums to government, govern-ment, instead of socialized, politically operated oper-ated industry which is an insatiable tax eater. eat-er. WE CHOOSE HUMAN FREEDOM Today the private intcrprise system is being called upon to give us and the embattled embat-tled democracies the tools of war and de- ) fense. We are determined to build for ourselves our-selves a military and naval establishment which will make it impossible for any power or any conceivable combination of powers to invade and conquer us. But, unfortunately, all of our enemies are not within our borcWs. Some of the most effective enemies' of private enterprise system the democratic system are operating within. And some of them hold important positions in governmet itself. How else can the ruthless political drive against the electric industry be described except as an attack on private enterprise an attack which has state socialism as its clear-cut goal? Or the equally agressive drive to place all national resources under bureaucratic, bureau-cratic, political domination? Or the constant attacks against business on all fronts attacks at-tacks whose obvious purpose is to destroy the confidence of the American people in the system which has made this nation free and rich and great? No one claims that private enterprise is perfect. Perfection is not of this world. But anv honest man knows and will admit that the faults of private enterprise can be corrected, cor-rected, through the orderly, democratic process pro-cess of lawful regulation. And any honest man knows and will admit that the overwhelming over-whelming proportion of businesses in this country have responded whole-heartedly to the requests of government for maximum cooperation in the name of national defense and security. This is especially true of the natural resource industries coal, power, oil, metals which are the very root of the defense de-fense effort. In his speech to the nation which the President made on the same day he signed the Proclamation, he said this : "We choose human freedom which is the Christian ideal." Freedom involves many things and one thing it involves is the right of men to engage as private, free citizens, in legitmate business, without persecution from their government. It involves, in short, preservation preserva-tion of the private enterprise system. v |