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Show DON'T DRAIN INDUSTRY DRY There is much talk these days of taxing "excess profits" to the hilt. And to the uninformed, that brings up pictures of a righteous government taking some of the gigantic earnings earn-ings of incredibly rich corporations. However, the problem isn't so simple as that. Real "excess "ex-cess profits" are taxed now and they are taxed plenty. The great danger is that in our zeal to raise money we will tax away those modest, normal profits which are absolutely essential es-sential to the maintenance and development of all industry. It is for this reason that the excess profits tax is potentially poten-tially one of the most menacing of weapons. Business must have profits to attract new capital. It must have profits to establish needed credit. It must have profits to rapidly expand ex-pand in such extraordinary periods as the present. And it must have profits to build, up reserves against that day when the war will be over, the defense boom will have burst, and it will have to readjust itself and get back to normal. The government is entirely right in insisting that there shall be no profiteering in defense business backs that stand to the limit. But we shall make a terrible mistake if we use the taxing power to drain normal "industry dry. That, in the long run, would mean ruin for us all. M |