Otto H. Kahn

“ Some there are who have been blinded by the glare of liberty as a man is blinded who after long confinement in darkness, comes suddenly into the strong sunlight. Blinded, they dare to aspire to force their guidance upon Americans who for generations have walked in the light of liberty. ”

“ When I speak of the militant Bolsheviki in our midst as foes of national unity I mean to include those of American stock who are their allies, comrades or followers—those who put a narrow class interest and a sloppy internationalism above patriotism, with whom class hatred and envy have become a consuming passion, whom visionary obsessions and a false conception of equality have inflamed to the point of irresponsibility. ”

“ I do not say all this to plead for a reduction of the taxation on wealth, or in order to urge that no additional taxes be imposed on wealth if need be. There is no limit to the burden which, in time of stress and strain, those must be willing [43] to bear who can afford it, except only that limit which is imposed by the consideration that taxation must not reach a point where the business activity of the country becomes crippled, and its economic equilibrium is thrown out of gear, because that would harm every element of the commonwealth and diminish the war-making capacity of the Nation. ”

“ Against foes within no less than against enemies without they will know how to preserve and protect the splendid structure of light and order which is the great and treasured inheritance of all those who rightly bear the name Americans, of which the stewardship is entrusted to them and which, God willing, they will hand on to their children sound and wholesome, unshaken and undefiled.
The time is ripe and over-ripe to call a halt upon these spreaders of outlandish and pernicious doctrines. The American is indulgent to a fault and slow to wrath. ”

“ More than ever would such a tax be harmful in times of war and post-bellum reconstruction, when beyond almost all other things it is essential to stimulate production and promote thrift, and when everything which tends to have the opposite effect should be rigorously rejected as detrimental to the Nation’s strength and well-being.
There is an astonishing lot of hazy thinking on the subject of the uses of capital in the hands of its owners. The rich man can only spend a relatively small sum of money unproductively or selfishly. ”

“ But it must not attempt in fatuous recklessness to make over humanity on the pattern of absolute equality. If and when it does so attempt, it will fail as that attempt has always failed throughout history. For an inscrutable Providence has made inequality of endowment a fundamental law of nature, animate as well as inanimate, and from inequality of physical strength, of brain power and of character, springs inevitably the fact of inequality of results. ”

“ Extortionate profits must not be [38] tolerated, but, on the other hand, there should be a reasonably liberal disposition toward business and a willingness to see it make substantial earnings. To deny this is to deny human nature.
Men will give their lives to their country as a matter of plain and natural duty; men, without a moment’s hesitation, will quit their business and devote their entire time and energy and effort to the affairs of the Nation, as a great many have done and every one of us stands ready to do, without any thought of compensation. ”

“ Some politicians there may be, here and elsewhere, so obsessed by the issues which heretofore were good election assets and so unable to shake off the inveterate habits and the formulas and calculations of a lifetime, that they are unable to recognize and to share in the sudden flaming manifestations springing from the deep of the people’s soul—and after a while, looking around for their usual followers, find themselves in chilly loneliness. ”

“ Business men, great or small, are no different from other Americans, and we reject the thought that any American, rich or poor, would be capable of the hideous and dastardly plot to bring upon his country the sorrows and sufferings of war in order to enrich himself. ”

“ He sees more closely approaching every day the dark valley through which his sons and brothers must pass and from which too many, alas, will not return. It is an evil time to cross him. He is not in the temper to be trifled with. He is apt very suddenly to bring down the indignant fist of his might upon those who would presume on his habitual mood of easy-going good nature. ”

“ Liberty can, does and must limit the rights of the strong, it must increasingly guard and promote the well-being of those endowed with lesser gifts for the [9] struggle for existence and success, it must strive in every way consistent with sane recognition of the realities to make life more worth living to those whose existence is cast in the mould of the vast average of mankind; it must give political equality, equality before the law; it must throw wide open to talent and worth the door of opportunity. ”

“ The vast and overwhelming majority have acted like true men and loyal Americans. They are entitled to claim your sympathetic understanding for the heartache which is theirs and they are entitled to claim your trust. It will not be misplaced. [7] I am taking very little account of that insignificant number of men of German origin who, misguided or corrupt, dare by insidious and underground processes to attempt to weaken or oppose the resolute will of the Nation. There are too few of them to count and their manoeuvres are too clumsy to be effective. ”

“ V Business must not deal grudgingly with labor. We business men must not look upon labor unrest and aspirations as temporary “troubles,” as a passing phase, but we must give to labor willing and liberal recognition as partner with capital. We must under all circumstances pay as a minimum a decent living wage to everyone who works for a living. We must devise means to cope with the problem of unemployment and to meet the dread advent of sickness, incapacity and old age in the case of those whose means do not permit them to provide for a rainy day. ”

“ The American excess profit law so-called taxes all profits derived from business over and above a certain moderate percentage, regardless of whether or not such profits are the result of war conditions. The American tax is a general tax on income derived from business, in addition to the regular income tax. The English tax applies only to excess war profits; that is, only to the sum by which profits in the war years exceed the profits on the three years preceding the war, which in England were years of great prosperity. ”

“ Liberty is not fool-proof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change. ”

“ America gave them everything she had to give—the great gift of the rights and liberties of citizenship, free education in our schools and universities, free treatment in our clinics and hospitals, our boundless opportunities for social and material advancement. ”

“ IV Reverting now to the subject of the conscription of men, I know I speak the sentiment of all those beyond the years of young manhood when I say that there is not one of us worthy of the name of a man who would not willingly go to fight if the country needed or wanted us to fight. But the country does not want or call its entire manhood to fight. It does not even call anywhere near its entire young manhood. It has called, or intends to call in the immediate future, perhaps 25% of its men between 20 and 30 years of age, which means probably about 4% of its total male population of all ages. ”

“ We must all join in a sincere and sustained effort towards procuring for the masses of the people more of ease and comfort, more of the rewards and joys of life than they now possess. I believe this is not only our duty but our interest, because if we wish to preserve the fundamental lines of our present social system we must leave nothing practicable undone to make it more satisfactory and more inviting than it is now to the vast majority of those who toil. ”

“ Business men are bound to be exceedingly heavy financial losers through America’s entrance into the war. Every element of self-interest should have caused them to use their utmost efforts to preserve America’s neutrality from which they drew so much profit during the two and a half years before April, 1917. ”

“ Changes the American people will make as their need becomes apparent, improvements they welcome, the greatest attainable well-being for all those under our national roof-tree is their aim; but they will do all that in the American way of sane and orderly progress—and in none other. ”

“ Taxation presupposes earnings. Our credit structure is based upon values, and values are largely determined by earnings. Shrinkage of values necessarily affects our capacity to provide the Government with the sinews of war.
There need not be and there should not be any conflict between profits and patriotism. I am utterly opposed to those who would utilize their country’s war as a means to enrich themselves. ”

“ Is it not perfectly manifest to the meanest understanding that any business man fomenting our entrance into the war for the purpose of gain must have been entirely bereft of his senses and would have been a fit subject for the appointment of a guardian to take care of himself and his affairs? ”

“ And to the extent that Socialism is an antidote to and a check upon excessive individualism and holds up to a busy and self-centered and far from perfect world, grievances to be remedied, wrongs to be righted, ideals to be striven for, it is a force distinctly for good. ”

“ We men of business are ready and willing to be taxed in this emergency to the very limit of our ability, and to make contributions to war relief work and other good causes, without stint. The fact is that, generally speaking, capital engaged in business is now being taxed in America more heavily than anywhere else in the world. ”

“ We must welcome progress and seek to further social justice. We must translate into effective action our sympathy for and [17] our recognition of the rights of those whose life, in too many cases, is now a hard and weary struggle to make both ends meet, and who too often are oppressed by the gnawing care of how to find the wherewithal to provide for themselves and their families. We must, by deeds, demonstrate convincingly the genuineness of our desire to see their burden lightened. ”

“ A vigorously progressive income tax is both economically and socially sound. A capital tax is wholly unsound and economically destructive. It may nevertheless become necessary in the case of some of the belligerent countries to resort to this expedient, but I can conceive of no situation likely to arise which would make it necessary or advisable in this country. ”

“ III Under the system of wisely ordered liberty, combined with incentive to individual effort whereof the foundation was laid by the far-sighted and enlightened men who created this nation and endowed it with the most sagacious instrument of government that the wit of man has devised, America has grown and prospered beyond all other nations. ”

“ I know I shall be answered that we have twice the population of England and twice the wealth. But it must be borne in mind that a far larger proportion of our wealth is represented [31] by farms and other non-industrial property and that a far larger proportion of our people than of the British people are engaged in agricultural pursuits which are not affected by the excess profit tax. ”

“ Let me add in passing that the children of the well-to-do have been taken for the war in proportionately greater numbers than the children of the poor, because those young men who are needed at home to support dependents or to maintain essential war industries are exempted from the draft.
Moreover, to an overwhelming degree the sons of the well-to-do have not waited to be conscripted. They have volunteered in masses—a far greater percentage of them than those in less advantageous circumstances. ”

“ I believe the Socialistic state to be an impracticable conception, a utopian dream, human nature being what it is, [15] and the immutable laws of nature being what they are. But there is not a little in Socialistic doctrine and aspirations that is high and noble; there are things, too, that are achievable and desirable. ”

“ Nothing is plainer than that any sane business man in this country must have foreseen that if America entered the war these profits would be immensely reduced, and some of them cut off entirely, because our Government would step in and take charge ”

“ Some there are, a small minority always and getting smaller every day, among Americans of German birth or descent who lack the vision to see their duty or the strength to follow it, and who stand irresolute, hesitant and dazed. ”

“ And if we do talk about the formula, “conscription of men—conscription of wealth,” let it be understood that we have called less than 5% of the Nation’s entire male population, but have called from incomes, business profits and other imposts falling principally on the well-to-do, approximately 90% of our war taxation, not to mention the contribution to the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A. and other war relief activities. ”

“ But, generally speaking, men will not take business risks, will not venture, will not be enterprising and constructive, will not take upon themselves the responsibilities, the chance of loss, the strain, the wear and tear and worry and care of intense business activity if they do not have the prospect of adequate monetary reward, even though a large part of that reward is taken away again in the shape of taxation. ”