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Show BETTER LEARN HOW TO FIGURE The greetest minds in the country have been at work trying- to find out why heart disease, insanity and homicide have increased so much in the fast generation. As usual, it has taken the Pathfinder to run down the reason. Would you guess it? It's the income tax. We imported this pest from Europe, back around the ill-fated year 1913. Of course we don't expect you to take our word for it, but if you will refer to that greatest of all reference annuals, the World Almanac a Democratic product; you will see that the number of insane in New York state in 1913 was 373 to the 100,000, while in the last reported year it was 486 an increase of about 30 per cent. For the entire United States, according to the census, the number of insane was 160 per 100,000 in 1910, against 310 in the last year or almost double. As to heart disease, the ratio has jumped from 156 to 210 during this period or an increase just about the same as insanity 30 per cent. And as for homicide, the rate has leaped from seven in 1913 to ten last year or a "gain" of about 40 per cent. People have been known to drop dead in their tracks when the postman just handed them one of those dreadful looking big government envelopes inclosing income tax paper with warning that they must be filled out and sworn to and returned, with the proper tax by the ominous stroke of midnight of March 15. The fanners always have been scourged with visitations of poll-evil, boll-weevil, foot-and-mouth disease, epizootic, heaves, spavins, bots, roup, mange, wood-ticks and even echinococcus but thus far they have mostly escaped the attention of the income tax gatherers. The reason was that so few of this class had incomes big enough to be visible. But from now on the farmers will be compelled to spend the winter and spring shut-in season studying the income tax, and trying to understand what it's all about. The farmers will even have to get acquainted with "originals", "duplicates," and "triplicates," as well as with those modernistic creations of tax lingeries called "pink slips," "green slips", etc. This may be difficult to explain to the wives in some cases but they will have to learn to rest easy. Pathfinder. |