Show PRESIDENT HARDING DELIVERS ADDRESS TO CITIZENS OF UTAH CHIEF EXECUTIVE MAKES PLEA FOR ADOPTION OF WORLD COURT thousands throng tabernacle and grounds to receive message from lips of nations executive T text a at of 0 president ident hardings address delivered at salt lake tabernacle tuesday evening june 20 26 1923 my follow fellow country countrymen r e n there la Is a suggestion of personal per im nal tribute in choosing my topic for an address in salt lake city I 1 have so go long loner associated senator smoot with great problems ems of taxation and have witnessed so much of his able and faithful endeavor to enforce economy and thereby lift the burdens of taxation that I 1 find myself involuntarily thinking when I 1 come to your state of th the menace of mounting taxes and growing public indebtedness the removal of this menace Is not alone a federal problem for we are recording gratifying progress so no tar far as the nation Is concerned but the larger menace today Is to be faced by the municipality county and state the federle government Is diligently seeking ib fin prove itself a helpful example but the improved order must come in t the units of government into which federal government never intrudes there Is in no particular reason why I 1 should speak of it ft except that wo we are all 11 concerned about general public welfare and I 1 have tho thought u that possibly a recital of fe federal deral accomplishment would serve to encourage in 9 a state any local work which aich must be done d one A short abort time before I 1 became president a trusted but cynical old friend said to me one day that he understood I 1 intended to make a specialty of economy in administration I 1 admitted my aspirations in that direction and ho he replied well the right idaa but dont tell anybody about it you may think it will bo be appreciated but it will not every t time ime you lot lop somebody off the government g payroll or keep him out of a profitable piece ot of government business you make bl him m and all his friends and a associates noc late s your enemies and on the other side not a soul in the country countr will ever tha thank n k you on for it everybody dy grumbles about taxes and nobody ever demonstrates demon strates any appreciation of the man that tries to save gave them from taxes A short time before we lef left t washington on the present trip another friend said to me the administration has saved aved the country a good deal by reducing its expenses and cutting down the tax burden but take my mv advice and dont talk to any of your audiences about it people always g grumble r umble about taxes but they dont w want ant to hear anybody talk tol to that fact does docs not make the results any easier to deal with tile the cost coat ot of government of business ot of every domestic establishment went ant up enormously every business man and every householder knows known how it affected his pers personal oruI concern I 1 want to suggest some gome 0 of the ways in which it affected the whole business of government ern orn ment government of the states the cities the nation the expenses of every revenue raising and spending division throughout the nation recently I 1 have been furnished with some specific figures on this subject of the co cost et of government by the bureau of t the g a census I 1 am not proposing to impose upon your patience with art an elaborate presentation of figures but I 1 want to suggest a few that thai will point my observations about the enormously increased cost of 0 government everywhere take the cost of state government rovern ment I 1 am informed d that the revenues of the states in 1 it gi gated and t that hat in 1921 brej they had increased to that Is they had increased per cent and every dollar of that increase had to come in 6 some 0 me way or other from the public the expenditures of the states in aggregated and in 1921 they were war a oo oooo an increase of 0 I 1 ills 63 per cen cent t the indebtedness of the states mates in 1013 1413 amounted to and I 1 in 1921 to an increase ot of per cent the figures of both the treasury and the census bureau in short make it perfectly plain that whereas the cost of 0 the federal government la is being steadily reduced the cost of state and local governments government la is being just as steadily increased year by year in nearly all of the states the cost of state tat a and local governments increased from 1919 to 1922 the treasury made up statistics on this point from one group of ten states arizona connecticut michigan minnesota new hampshire ohio oregon south dakota washington and wisconsin for this thia representative group it is shown that while federal taxes paid by these ten states declined C from over a billion dollars in 1920 to in 1922 their state rind and local taxes rose from i to in the sarie sane period in another tabulation covering twenty eight states which was the entire number tor for which the statistics were available it was shown that from 1911 1919 to 1921 there were increases in local ta taxes x ea in twenty three states and reductions duct ions in only five in spite of the enormous burden of paying for the war and paying interest on the war debt state rate a and local t taxes axes in 1922 represented 00 60 per cent of all al I 1 taxes t aes paid let me present another aspect ot of the same matter we hear much anu about the grievous burden of the income tax and every one of us ua who pays it is able fully to ith everyone else who pays it but it Is fai fair r to consider what our income taxes would be it if we lived in some of the other debt burdened countries ot of the world A P 1 7 I 1 v S I 1 11 I 1 I 1 1 I 1 11 1 I 1 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 1 4 I 1 V I 1 I 1 1 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 1 1 1 I 1 1 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 I 1 presidents cur in alain street parade ill them on that subject to which I 1 replied that I 1 believed in the present state af pf it affairs all such buell rules were suspended and any ny public m man an w who ho had anything chee cheerful 1 to say gay 0 on n th the e subject of taxes and go government yarn expenses would find plenty ol of audiences au altogether alto e ther willing to listen to him I 1 in believe effe ve the american people are so profoundly interests interested goo in the of taxation and government costs nowadays that an audience d lel 0 like this will even be willi willing ngu to 1 let s t me talk to them a few minutes on the subject one of the fin cial incidents to our participation in the war was to loan a vast sum of money to our allies 1 I wonder how many of 0 you ever stop to think that the which we a advanced to our allies after our entrance t rance into the tha war was just about the 1 same as the total tal cost ot of the civil war to north and south together the civil war lasted four years and an strained eve every ry nerve end and res resource burce of the nation yet its ita actual co cost 0 t to the governments of both sides we was s considerably drably less than the amount we 0 o a advanced d to the allied governments govern menta d during ur the world war and that was only a mild beginning of our financial transactions in war for every dollar we loaned to our allies we spent about three more on our own account in ia a little more than three years between the day war was wag declared and the day peace was signed we spent twice as much money r out of the public alic treasury tre as an had been spent by the national government in all of its previous history I 1 am not going to talk to you toddy today bout about whether the money was all wisely spent whether it was or not the results were worth all they cost and a good od deal more what I 1 propose to pre present gasent to you now la Is some som 0 consideration of the tact fact that no to matter ater how willing we were to make fee the bacri flee no matter how cheerfully we in incurred the obligations we had to taco face at the end the bis big and very practical reality that these obligations must be paid you have interred inferred from what I 1 said a moment arnom a n t ago afro that we spent roundly 4 allo on the world war how many of us ua ever stopped flopped to think that that was rather more than th the e t total weal wealth t h 0 of f the nation at the t time arri e oro of al the ivil civil war we paid out of our current taxes while the war was waa going 0 on more than 25 per ce cent n t of its to c coat 0 alt that Is as much as ill the e malre n national lo 10 nal wealth so late as an LI lie ire e year yar 1920 at tile the beginning of august I the tha public debt rea b d P highest point lit in its history nl ni atory story 27 that was just about ten times tile the amount of the national deat debt the close of nf the civil war we are still mill too clua close to the events of the great war to be able to realize the enor enormous moun bur burdens doris placed on our country quite aside from the large larce operations ot of public finance which it necessitated private pi avate finance has been called upon from the very beginning in to make fc arrangements for or financing tile the foreign trade that resulted cd from europea extraordinary demands lons long before we warre abro in the war our financial machinery had been compelled to shoulder the tha financing of an enormously exaggerated export trade to the warring for I or a time europe withdrew kold gold from us in great quantities but presently it returned in vet greater bringing to Us rind and to th the a g european U count countries cles the difficult problem of maintaining the exchanges exclia nes and supporting the rold nod standard costs of everything rose 10 lo an artificially high basis and in every direction expenditure pend iture was altogether the war was not only fin the greatest horror the world lisp ha ever ever known tut the greatest orgy orey of spending pending this woo ra inevitable but married citizen of the united states with two children and an income of buo paid ai 68 tax on that income in it if he had been a citizen 0 ot f canada he would havo have paid 1513 if tile the german tax rate had been applied to his income it would have co cost s t him if lie he had been a french frenchman m an the french rate would have required him to pay H and it if he had been a british citizen instead of giving up the 68 which he paid to uncle sam he would have drawn his check for 76 6 the same man in an with an income of would have paid income tax in the united states stales and sa in england the great burden of the war was of cc course urge imposed on the national government the department of the treasury states that lit in 1917 the th federal gov ornaments orn menta ments revenues were in 1018 they were nere in 1919 they were in 1020 they were and in 1921 they were for 1022 1922 the total drop dropped ed to and tor for 1923 it Is estimated at assuming inga continuation of the present bas basis Is of federal taxation the receipts for 1024 are calculated at and tor for 1025 1925 at not all of this revenue Is raised by direct ta taxation kation the treasury estimates indicate that in only 2 and in 1124 nil will be produced by direct taxation the remainder will come from various miscellaneous cel laneous receipts of the government you will I 1 ant am sure be interested in the treas statement that whereas in 1914 1114 the per capita cost to all the people leople of the federal government was 6 97 in n 1018 it reached and in info 1791 it might reasonably have been presumed that with the war now long past taxes would have beun begun to fall off but the statistics show dhow the contrary instead of a reduction taxes tor for the fiscal year 1020 1920 rose to 53 7 78 8 per capita which was the peak of the war burden even tor for 1921 they only fell to but in 1923 they will be ail 21 or less leon than halt half as much as in 1920 figures especially tile the figures which represent ouch auch on an authority as aa the treasury department are conclusive arguments these ng fig ures ure show how that tor for two rw after ir T the war ended federal taxes continued much higher than at the height of the struggle they show t that h at I 1 in n the first two years year 0 it pea peace a the cost ot of government orame 1 was waa atil i conti continuing nuin T above the 29 1918 8 evel b but ut t that but since tho the hith high point of 1920 2920 they have been reduced by more than one half it la Is a record of business busine ruf administration to witch which the tg party now in control of the ad administration in feels justified in referring with no small measure of sat satisfaction I 1 sf action I 1 have observed that the cost of the war to our government was around ar 0 u after paying a g generous ener dmd share bout about 25 per cent f from r 0 current revenues collected while I 1 e the war was in progress cbs we still had bud to borrow enor enormously 11 at jim its highest point on august 31 lolu 1910 the national debt west waa I 1 know you will bo be interested to be told that from that day august 31 31 1910 1919 to june au 1923 1 we have r reduced e it to im oti 00 a reduction of considerably more than a billion dollars a year moreover Alore Nore over we are now working under 9 a program which involves extinguishing a half billion of the debt each year r no 0 other t in e r country in the world me has been able t to 0 make tuch such a a record in addition to all this we have within the past year settled battled the british war debt to our government ar ranged danced for its funding and its gradual enair extinction n c t lon over a long period of years year I 1 in recognition e e 0 n I 1 tion of the notable service 0 of f secretary mellon his associates at the treasury and the members ot of the debt funding commission and the american americ 11 n ambassador to great britain I 1 wish to say any that this settlement 0 of the british debt has ban been acclaimed all over the world as one 0 ne of the most notable and successful fiscal accomplishments ace 0 1 lish ments ever recorded not only buxo does es it injure that the regular quarterly payments which tho the british government will make to our treasury will ill relieve the burden upon american taxpayers but the more important fact in a time of widespread uncertainty and misgiving throughout the world of business everywhere ery where that these two great governments ern ments could get together and arrange such a settlement has ban been a e n one of the most reassuring events since the armi armistice 8 ties there had bad been too much talk 0 ot f possible cancellations or repudiations repudiate na of the war debt such a program w would ou id have wrecked the entire structure re of business faith and of confidence conn dence in the obligations of governments throughout the world theta was aas need pr pressing e aging and urgent need tor for such a 8 sign 1 agn of confidence assurance and faith in the future as an this sentiment settI ment furnished when the british and amer american lea n governments ern ments united in this pledge that their obligations obligation a would be met to the last billing and the last dollar there was wag renewed financial confidence conn dence in the wo world ra d I 1 undertake to say that no a event v a t g since inc tile the conclusion oi of hostilities has contributed so much to putting the world back on its way to stabilization to confidence in its governments and to the established conviction that our social institutions are yet secure no consideration of public finances can om omit it the tact fact that the single item or of interest on the jujube public debt exceeds if annually n ay for th the 6 fiscal year 1923 this 9 item will ill be 11 beyond this we will reduce the public public debt this year by and n next year by approximately that I 1 is s 0 over ver 3 85 5 per er c cent ant of 0 the national rave revenue n ue w will I 1 t this is to paying interest or the |