be so." We go, then, to see the hat man and have the same conversation with him, and we go to see the cloth man and have the same conversation with him. Each of them then gets two taxes and pays two taxes. Three men illustrate the whole case. If we should take a thousand men in a thousand industries we should find that each paid nine hundred and ninety-nine taxes, and each got nine hundred and ninety-nine taxes, if the system worked as it is said to work. What is the upshot of the whole? Either they all come out even on their taxes paid and received, or some of the wage receivers are winning something out of other wage receivers to the net detriment of the whole class. If each man is creditor for nine hundred and ninety-nine taxes, and each debtor for nine hundred and ninety-nine taxes, and if the system is "universal and equal," we can save trouble by each drawing nine hundred and ninety-nine orders on the creditors to pay to themselves their own taxes, and we can set up a clearing house to wipe off all the accounts. Then we come down to this as the net result of the system when it is "universal and equal," that each man as a consumer pays taxes to himself as a producer. That is what is to make us all rich. We can accomplish it just as well and far more easily, when we get up in the morning, by transferring our cash from one pocket to the other.
49. One point, however, and the most important of all, remains to be noticed. How about the thousandth tax? How is it when the boot man wants boots, and the hat man hats, and the cloth man cloth? He has to go to the store on the street and buy of his own boss, at the market price (tax on), the very things which he made himself in the shop. He then pays the tax to his own employer, and the employer, according to the doctrine, "shares" it with him. Where is the offset to that part which the employer keeps? There is none. The wages class, even on the protectionist explanation, may give or take from each other,
