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Show THE AMERICAN WAY) . . 'il-lJ THE wealth of a nation consists con-sists of those things which its people are able to have over and above their bare needs for existence. exis-tence. It is the surplus of food, clothing, etc., plus luxuries and semi-luxuries which people are able to accumulate. Part of this excess must be used as seed-corn seed-corn to be plowed back in order to insure necessities and luxuries for future years. Just as long as this seed-corn is . taken from surplus, a nation is progressing in the right direction the green lights are showing. But when a nation is forced to take seed-corn from food supplies essential to proper subsistence of its people, it is on a dangerous road with red lights showing against it. Wealth formerly was created by human labor but today an ever-increasing proportion is created cre-ated by human imagination. With the advent and growth of the machine, ma-chine, labor has become mostly mechanical and now is of value chiefly for carrying out the ideas of the planners. Just stop to consider the amount of labor that goes' into the making of a book. An author writes a book, a best seller. While his imagination was at work, men were working months and years ahead of his book coming off the press.Men in the forests had been cutting down trees, other men in paper mills took those trees and made them into pulp and then into paper. Other men transported the paper from mill to printing plant. While this was being done, other workers were digging in the ground, mining lead for the type; still others were making ink. Finally linotype operators set the type on the machines made by other men, and pressmen ran the books off the presses made by still other mechanics. All of these men were put to work through the imagination of just one man, the author of the book. Even then the author was not finished putting men to work. Men had to transport the books from the printing plant to the book stores of the nation where sales clerks were employed in the selling of the book. i IT takes far. more imagination to build up and conduct a successful suc-cessful business than to write a best seller. As in the case of the book, most of the work which enters into any manufactured product is planned months, sometimes years ahead of the day the finished article rolls off the assembly line. Since it costs several sev-eral thousand dollars for plant and machinery to put a man to work, new wealth must be created cre-ated constantly, else there can be no new jobs or a rising standard stan-dard of living. During the past fifteen years there has been an artificial temporary creation of new jobs in America. It happened happen-ed because we have made and are still making use of some of the stored wealth, or of the credit cred-it arising therefrom, to create new jobs, which means that we have, in essence, been eating our seed-corn. This can only end in disaster if long continued. The red lights are up. One of the functions of business busi-ness is to create new wealth (more seed-corn), by increasing production (increasing the yield per acre), by building new plants (planting additional acres). That and that alone gives more permanent perm-anent jobs and an increasingly higher standard of living. Excessive taxation necessitated necessitat-ed by the profligate spending of government in recent years, has put this nation in the perilous position of eating its seed-corn. If that continues the day inevitably inev-itably will come when we will not have enough left to plant the acres already under cultivation. Then, with fewer acres planted our standard of living will take a severe tumble. . The flow of new capital into industry and business must be encouraged the using up of present capital (seed-corn) must be stopped. The 80th Congress has an obligation to cut taxes so that these things can be accomplished. ac-complished. Why not write your Congressman and Senators about this vital matter? Point out to them that capital must be given an opportunity to make a profit commensurate with the risk taken; that new venture money cannot be lured into taking a chance of backing new. enterprises enterpris-es and expanding old ones, unless un-less taxes permit a fair profit-that profit-that only by lending such encouragement en-couragement can new wealth be created. |