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Show r. Stymie Law By GEORGE S BENSOM President of Harding Collegs Searcy. Arkansas m AKP-IAL bombs and floating mines are Koing to seem pretty cheap on V-Day. Their values will appear again as minus quantities. quan-tities. Then slow, cautious men wiir set to work getting rid of them. But there are other instruments in-struments of war more ruinous than any. block-buster ever devised, de-vised, and we have one; trained on American industry now, ready to start doing serious damage on Armistice Day. It is a law against progress. The bill was not passed to stop scientific and industrial development, develop-ment, but if it's on the statute books in peace time it will be a jrovtrnment freeze of creative work. 1 am not criticizing the purposes of the act. It was passed in 1940 to raise money for national defense and to keep warmongers war-mongers from profiteering on the misfortunes of others. Law of THE SENSE of the law Hunger is this: Add up all the profits a firm made in four pre-war years, 1936-1939 inclusive; in-clusive; figure 25 of the total, and call it a sample pre-war year's profit. If a corporation earns more than that amount in any year of war, it must pay the government 85 of the difference in a special tax. It was effective for war ends, but how will it work in peace time? The 1940 tax law has provisions provi-sions that are ruinous to any people peo-ple at peace. Small business concerns con-cerns can't grow if the law stands. Huge corporations will fare better. They can stay big nnd avoid being wrecked by it be cause the profits of giant corporations corpo-rations (however big) grow slowly. slow-ly. But the law will paralyze small business unless a new act is passed, to take effect at the war's end, repealing the mischievous mischie-vous provisions. Stops THRIFTY little enter-Work enter-Work prises can't expand because be-cause their dollars of increased in-creased profit will be split two ways, 15i to keep and 85 for the government. Many will die as losses on development of new products wipe out their meager capital. Huge firms, which have no need for substantial growth, can develop new products with no danger at all to their strong financial position. A big company's losses on new developments can be used to reduce re-duce taxes on profits from old business. In this way, government govern-ment bears most of such losses for big concerns. It must be re-msmbered re-msmbered however, that big corporations cor-porations are too few to solve the nation's post - war employment problem. Small firms, companies that could double twice and still not be large, are the backbone of America's prosperity. ; Small companies employ four- ; fifths of the nation's workers. They handle the lion's share of our national income. What their employees eat makes farm prosperity. pros-perity. If these little firms see a chance to earn a profit, they will expand for peace . new business and new jobs in large numbers. But if until V-Day they remain scared to expand, America is stymied and so is the world. |