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Show l l ll l ! t Johnson's Amendment v. to the War Tax Bill to j Take Eighty Per Cent of the Huge Profits Made During the Conflict Con-flict Lost by a Vote of 62 to 17. i . FOUR SENATORS ! HEARD IN DEBATE i : La Follette and the Cali- , -i f ornian on One Side ) and Lodge and Penrose ! on the Other ; War Profits Not Likely to ; Be Taxed More Than i Sixty Per Cent. By International News Service. WASHINGTON, Sept. 1. There la no I chance of tne Unit eel States taxing SO ( per cent of the nuge profits made during l 1 this war. By a vote of 62 to 17, the senate today rejected such a proposal, I made by Hiram Johnson of California. , The defeat came as a decided blow to the senators who have constantly urged radical levies. It is now confidently pre-1 pre-1 dieted that the senate will refuse to tax i war profits higher than 60 per cent. This ; is . the top figure of the sliding scale advocated by the finance committee. T The seventeen senators voting today for the rejected Johnson amendment, 1 were: Democrats Ashurst, '' Gore, Hollis, Husttng, Johnson of South Dakota, Klr-! Klr-! by, Thompson and Vardaman. Republicans Borah, Brady, Oronna, j Johnson of California, Jones of TVash-1 TVash-1 ington, Kenyon, Ia Follette, McNary and 1 Morris. Johnson pleaded hard for his amend ment. As soon as it was refused, La Follette hurried to introduce an amend- ment providing 72 per cent taxation. This , wan actually just 1 per cent lower than f- Johnson's. Kor the Californlan's amend-j amend-j ment read: "73 per cent." This, added to the 7 per cent Imposed in the bill, would have totalled SO per cent. La FoIIctte's Speech. Contrary to his usual practice. La Fol-1 Fol-1 lettc, instead of making a fiery argu ment, used facts and figures as his weapons. weap-ons. Now and then, however, he returned to his old form of oratory, as for Irr-i: Irr-i: stance, when he cried; ) "The penalty for not making , proper income returns is $20 to $1000 under this hill. In the name of decency, let us make the penalties for evasion of the tax law us severe as the penalties for the evasion of the draft law. "Is it a more serious offense for a mot her to evade the draft law In order to save Hie life of her boy tluin for the 1 millionaire to evade the tax law In order v to save some of the dollars he has made from the war?" I' The Wisconsin senator spoUe for three hours and will continue on Monday. He ' will submit amendment alter amendment in an effort to force as high taxation as possible. War profits must be disposed of in the bill by Wednesday afternoon, so the senate sen-ate will inert Labor day. There will be n short rei-oss Tuesday afternoon to al- lo .v senators to march in the patriotic parade. Battle of Figures. Toilay's batt le of figures was opened by Hiram Johnson. The westerner lunched at the finance committee for its a 1 1 ered attitude Iowa id the conscription of w ealih. "Kvery member of the finance commit tee," he K.ild. "reiterated and reiterated t hat in their bill t ho limit had been readied in taxation. They said that $.iG2,-OOii.ouO $.iG2,-OOii.ouO was the last possible mark in war profit taxation. t "But overnight there was so startling end radical a change as to substantially indorse t lie plan we ourselves had advised. ad-vised. 'We. were accuse, 1 of trying to I make the war unpopular. Yet now this 1 n nurlng change shows we were fully : Justified in our attitude." The dynamic California senator stated with his usual emphasis that lie and the' ot her hi eh taxatlonlsts had no wish to j take normal profits from the corpora- ' lions. j "We only want the profits coined out I of blood." he s'louted. "We would not i Islurh normal peace-time profits. But the American people do demand that we, should reach out and eateh these swollen! "ar profit' and toss them into the melt-I ing pot of war. j Should Take Plenty. "V.'c fhou! take plenty, too. Knqljuul ! t.iUrs SO per ornt. Vet we are no timid ' we take but :!1 per cent, even though we ' .aro ol'lituilinc ourselves for twentV bil-, bil-, Hons tor the tirst year of war. What are (Continued on Page Three.) RADICAL LEVIES 01 BUSINESS DEFEATED (Continued from Page One.) we waiting for? We didn't stop to watt when we took the men of the country and scattered them to the four corners of the earth." Defense of the finance committee was made by two of its members Lodge and Penrose. "The argument that the committee receded re-ceded in response to popular demand haa no sincerity," said Penrose. lie added later on: "Thtg bill is not being framed to suit stump orators and campaign speakers." Paralysis of the nation's Industries must be avoided, urged Lodge, who said that it this was done the country might be confronted con-fronted next year with a necessity for a billion dojlars of consumption taxes. Should Not Ruin Credit. "There is no argument for ruining the credit of the country in order to punish a man because he has money." said Senator Sena-tor Lodge. "We must find just how much tax business can carry without being be-ing Injured, I would take 80 per cent if we 'couid, but the rates In the bill are the limit of safety and 80 per cent would cn.i5h business." During his speech La Foilette said that treasury estimates placed this year's war profits at $4,100,000,000 and that the pending pend-ing bill takes but one-quarter of this. "If the war does not last a year," said he, "then every dollar we -have failed to collect in war taxes is gone. We will have saddled the people with a nine-bilHon-dollar debt. And the man making war profits will have pocketed hundreds of millions and probably billions." Like the other radicals. La Foilette chided the finance committee for first condemning opponents of the original plan as "trying to make the war unpopular" and then switching the scheme of taxation. taxa-tion. Not Disloyal. "It has become the policy in this country, coun-try, and, I regret to say, to some extent in this body," he said, "to condemn a disloyal and unpatriotic any man who has dared to stand for the principles of sound finance and Just taxation as a means of meeting the expenses of this war and who has ventured to have opposed the shifty and evasive methods being applied to this greatest of all problems war finance." The sixty-two senators voting against : taxing war profits SO per cent were: Democrats Bankhead. Beckham, Broussard, Chamberlain, Culberpon. Fletcher, Gerry, Hitchcock, James, Jones of New Mexico, Kendrick. King, Lewis. McKellar, Martin, Myers, Newlands, Overman, Over-man, Owen, Pheian, Pittman, Pomerene, Ransdell, Robinson, Saulsbury, Shafroth. Sheppard, Shields. Simmons, Smith of Georgia, Smith of Maryland. Smith of South Carolina, Stone, Underwood and Williams. Republicans Brandegee. Cnlder, Colt, Curtis. Dillingham, Fall. Fernald, France, Freiinghuysen, Hale. Harding. Kellogg, Knox, Lodge, McCumber, Nelson. New, Page. Penrose, Poind oxter, Sherman, Smoot, Sterling. Townsend, Wads worth, Watson and Weeks. |