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Show SPENDTHRIFT LEGISLATION DANGEROUS Commenting on the drive to take corporate reserves through taxation, taxa-tion, thereby dissipating savings laid aside for a rainy day, the Clarksburg, Clarks-burg, W. Va Exponent says: "Was it written in the old copy books by mistake where it said: 'Save a little for a rainy day.' "Is there something newfangled in the air that ought to lead us to erase the old maxims? - , . "We just sort of wondor in a homely way, as we contemplate th s-uggestion that 33 and one third per cent of undistributed corporate income in-come be taken for Federal taxes, whether the idea drummed into us since childhood about saving doesn't work nowadays. "'Undistributed corporate income ' sounds heavy, like something that ought to be carried off, but so far as our limited understanding goes It means in plain language the money that American industries, our factories, fac-tories, plants, mills and mines have laid up for that proverbial 'rainy day.' "We have Just come throunh one of those periods, and the 'rainy day.' money has stimulated employment when it was needed, paid dividends, divi-dends, provided employment. "It seems quite as sound common sense for corporations as for individuals indi-viduals to lay up something for rent, to say nothing of wages to workers and dividends to stockholders in case, next year or the next happens to be unprofitable. "That is merely prudent management. There is nothing unsocial about It that needs combing down or penalizing. "Who Is going to say, in our vast and divergent industrial set up, what is a 'reasonable' amount to lay away against the coming of lean years? "Americans own American industries. "In American Telephone and Telegraph, for example, the average stockholder owns around 25 shares, and received dividends throughout the entire depression, although the money was not earned, but had been accumulated during the flush period of business and laid away tot the 'rainy dBy' which surely came. "We do not aim to set ourselves up as financial experts, economists, or claim to be in tune with the newest philosophical theories of taxation, Jaut we just kind of wonder, in a good old-fashioned way, whether the lesson, 'Save something for a rainy day,' doesn't apply any more. "And whether saving something out of what it spends Isn't still a pretty good Idea to let American business keep. "The last 'rainy day' would have been lots worse if business hadn't . saved up something for It "There may be a 'next depression.' Maybe, after all, It might be plain ' common sense not to dig too far Into the business purse just now." |