The Unfair Tax on Being Alive

To our Homes and Neighbors: As per agreement I will offer a few thoughts for the consideration of our, to be, delegates to the Constitutional Convention, upon the policy or practice of assessing a Poll Tax. Our laws require that 'taxation shall be equal and uniform.' Is it equal to tax one class of people under the same government, twice or three times in the same year, and other classes only once? Are not men between the age of 21 and 50, who own property, taxed once for the value of their property, once on their head, for poll tax, and once on their head for a road poll tax? Is not this double and treble taxation, and purely unconstitutional? Women of all ages, owning property, and minors owning property, and men over 50 years of age, owning property, are taxed for a cash value set upon their property. While neither one of these three classes are assessed a poll tax. Is this, equal and uniform, even in the light of the law, as compared with the other classes? But some argue that it is the property that is assessed, and not the individual. My answer is: that there are many head taxes whose heads wouldn’t bring the assessment under this rule. Others ask: Would you not tax the hired man on the farm, or the hundred men in a mine? Yes, if they have any property—any money to assess a value on, and No, if they have not. I do not believe in assessing a man for that which he has not, and then taking the first money he earns to pay it. The policy of assessing a poll tax assumes that certain persons’ heads are worth two dollars some times, and some times six dollars, and then it takes all the cash value set upon the head to pay the assessment. Let each person pay taxes on an equal and uniform assessed valuation of his or her property, or that under their control. If I work on a farm, or in a mine, or mill for a company, and my labor is of any value to them, that value enters into their property and increases its value, upon which taxes are assessed. If the wages paid me are only sufficient to keep myself and family, I cannot see why I should be taxed for living. If I earn more than a living and keep it, I am justly taxed on the cash valuation of what I have. If I squander my earnings, over and above my living, it goes into the coffers of others who pay taxes upon it.