Ο

NE of the rashest of the many rash general statements in popular circulation just now is that boner about modern methods of government

being more efficient than those of Old. This line is pretty well on a par with the even better known and more familiar one to the effect that things are not as good as they used to be. Whereas, of course, the real truth of the matter is that things are not as good as they used to be and never were. Now I have an idée fixe, as the French say, meaning a solid-ivory idea, that the Old government methods were far simpler and on the whole considerably less painful than ours. I am thinking of the various ways, ancient and modern, of raising revenue, and discovering that my intelligence directs me to a distinct preference for the procedure of an earlier day. For while there was undoubtedly a certain brutal directness about the ways of Old, I for one am inclined to believe that in the long run they were more endurable. As far as I can make out, this feller Old did very little business with middlemen and apparently maintained no civil service whatsoever, nor did he bother with bureaus, or other cumbersome pieces of office furniture which I admit don't properly belong in offices at all. He may have had a cabinet, but I don't know. I'm sure he had no bath cabinet, and to him a Secretary of the Interior meant nothing more nor less than his cook. But from all evidence extant regarding the interesting days of Old, departmental clerks, stenogs, and all the big, unwieldy personnel which is now considered indispensable to the conduct of our modern treasury department were nonexistent.

When it came around time to collect the yearly income tax, did Old permit the hiring of a large extra office force and set it to fussing over thousands of silly little pieces of paper? Did he? Yes, he did not! I'd like to bet, if it was legal, that there was only one spot in the communities of Old where the crowd was allowed to play with little pieces of paper and that was the foolish house! No, sir! in the good days of Old when tax time came around the tax collector just went on over to the fellow who was the ancient equivalent for our present-day soup-and-fish rental establishment and hired himself a suit of dress armor, first making sure the pants

"But of the mental suffering and financial injustice endured by the average honest citizen in connection with the present income tax-I will not say it! At least, I will not say it all. I will strive to remember that I am a lady"

By Nina Wilcox Putnam

Illustrated by Frank Godwin

wouldn't split when he sat down, or the breastplate weaken if some one embraced him, or any other embarrassing thing like that occur to ruin the party after he got there. And, when he had paid his deposit and put his evening suit of armor on over his hose and jerkin or surtout and shoon, why, then he hied him forth or fifth or sixth, or whatever his number happened to be, in company with a band of other y'owe-men (as they were so quaintly and aptly called).

a tax bill in one hand

-y S.

due, and this made concealing one's assets in advance pretty difficult. Also methinks it must have occasionally been annoying to be suddenly interrupted in the midst of mendicanting, falconing, crusading, jousting, ouaiting, or whatever your medieval line of industry happened to be, and have all your savings removed without warning. But, on the oth nand, consider what we suffer now Think of being spared the we' of suspense, the agony of anticipation, the sweaty wrastling with the demon Work Sheet, and then in the end the finding that you must pay the surtax after all-yea, though the little ones go shoeless all the flaunting spring! Nay, neigh! Nix! Not for me! I prefer the dear, quaint, picturesque old revenue methods by which one saw a brainful of pretty little stars for a few moments and when you woke up it was out!

But there is no use in sighing for the drear dead days of the past. What's done's done. The days of Old are not only numbered but counted-counted up to and including ten. He is down and out. We are in a very different era of taxation and tax collecting. We are now supposed to go up voluntarily and perform an Americanized hara-kiri for the amusement of the Collector of Internal Revenue. In other words, we used to pay in groats and now they get our goats! Internal Is Right

'LL

their method was simplicity itself.

"That'll be nine hundred and ninety-eight dollars and fifty-three cents, including the supertax," ye collector would say with all the impersonal cheerfulness of a dentist. And you paid of your own accord, or hesitated and were knocked senseless with the ax while the collector collected the tax and any other little knickknack of yours to which he took a personal fancy.

Now there were undoubtedly certain drawbacks to the methods of Old, yet there was a simplicity about them which appeals to me strongly. Once they had hit you on the head and taken your money, it was all over until the next time. True, you never could tell just when the tax and the ax were going to fall

the law was in the days of Old, because the only minion I am personally familiar with is filly minion -which is an undersized steak at an oversized price, as everyone knows. But I can vouch for the appropriateness of the title of Collector of Internal Revenue. Internal is right. Nothing is hidden from him: not even one little teeny weeny inside dividend or, as you might say, private stock, because, dammit all, the corporations have to report to him. the same as teacher used to report to pa, as you will recall only too well. And if you try to overlook the seventeen dollars and fifty cents which some benevolent company paid you last year on a quiet little, harmless, unobtrusive investment, why, by gum, the Government will spend three hundred and eighty-six

dollars and seventeen cents snooping out the horrid fact of your defective memory and end by taking thirty cents of that dividend away from you after all! So you might as well spit it out in popper's hand in the first place and be done with it.

What the Collector of Internal Revenue doesn't know about your internals isn't worth knowing. In point of fact his knowledge verges on the immodest. Why, if you accidentally swallowed a dime and forgot to report it, he would probably spot the guilty coin with a stethoscope or a magnet or a willow wand, or something, and get it, if he had to use a vacuum cleaner! That old surgical joke about the doctor sewing up an extra pair of knives inside the patient and never missing them is my idea of the exact opposite of a government tax collector's mental process.

No Umbrella for the Just

No wonder, considering all this, that I complain of

our modern methods of collecting revenue! In the eyes, heart, and pocketbook of at least one laywoman-meaning myself-I am unquestionably justified in so doing! And, as a matter of fact, our modern tax machine, with its huge, expensive, clumsy, and uninformed, ill-equipped army of collectors, is enough to make any laywoman, once she looked at it dispassionately, sit up and take notice-especially when the notice is to the effect that the next installment will be due on the fifteenth of the rare month of June. To say nothing of the tax itself. That is, to say nothing just yet. But wait; this article is still young! Now it is not my intention to insult the personnel of any governmental department. Far-oh, very, very far from it. Individually I have found the slaves who help me make out my return blank all over again after I have spent two weeks at home and got myself in wrong with the entire family over the darn thing, and taken the good lamp away from little Mary in the evenings when she ought to have had it for her home work and got my husband ready to sue for separation on the ground of extreme mental cruelty, and ruined his best fountain pen, and several so forths: when, as I say, I have done all this, and come at last into the hectic atmosphere of the modern torture chamber over the door of which is a sign reading "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate," which translated means pay income taxes here, why, I have found the individuals who do my two weeks' work all over again for me, in twenty minutes or so, to be universally kind, courteous, and helpful and possessed of a patience which should win them a crown of glory in heaven. And very likely it does, for I don't see how they live all the way through the nervous strain they must endure, nor do I see that they get much of a reward unless it be up above. No, never, and again not! I have no complaint of these clerks. But of the mental suffering and financial injustice endured by the average honest citizen in connection with the income tax itself-gosh all hemlock, but I have a lot to say!

Never fear, dear, undoubtedly sympathetic reader, I will not say it! At least I will not say it all. I will strive to remember that I am a lady. The Government has put me to the supreme test with its return blanks and its so truly named work sheets, but I am a lady still, or comparatively still, and I will not let go my gen

tility to the extent of telling what I really think. Because if I I did I would be obliged to come right out and say that I consider the income tax to be without exception the most unnecessarily complicated, stupid, unjust, unfair, illframed, discriminating, preposterous, illconsidered, badly arranged, silly, outridiculous, rageous, troublesome, and deliberately irritating cause of the national paper shortage. I would further, in that impossible contingency of my failing, in the face of death and taxes, to be a lady, go on to remark, in a well-modulated voice and contained manner, that the law it

self is altogether too much like the gentle rain from heaven, because of the way in which it falls upon the just and the unjust alike-only in the case of the income tax it rains harder and wetter on the just-for, by gollies, the just are honest folks and don't try to cheat the Government and so of course they get soaked the worst.

The dishonest get off light, with a mere temporary dampening which soon dries out, and the dishonest are not always, but are fairly often, the rich the very birds whom the income tax was meant to trim-or if not to trim, at least to clip reasonably. I don't suppose the intention was to use the clippers on the back of the neck, but to make it look neat, George, and don't put any of that perfumed tonic ond'yer hear?

ing left for the little old savings bank or for the greasing of the wheels of industry; which wheels, by the way, are widely advertised just now as rusting in idleness for lack of capital. I am no financier, but even I, a mere female woman, can't help but realize, dear folks, that it is the sum total of small investors who make up the country's prosperity, and not the big capitalists. It is the little investors, and more particularly the crop of new investors, who are coming of age each year which make a country rich. I mean that there are folks whose normally increasing efficiency is each year lifting them into executive or independent positions where at last they begin to have a trifle of money over and above actual living expenses. And that these people are being unjustly punished by having to put their money into the tax collector's office instead of into Government bonds or industrial enterprises or insurance. Their crop of prosperity is not being permitted to ripen. Their savings pay taxes instead of old-age insurance and the even greater national insurance which comes from the longer and better education of children.

Nevertheless the dishonest rich manage to escape our income clippers fairly well, and, as per accepted tradition, the poor not only get stung but, what is worse, they are being kept poor by the simple method of confiscating what otherwise would have been a good part of their yearly savings. And the bourgeoisie are mulcted of often as much as one-half of those honest and thrifty investments which used to insure them a comfortable old age. There is precious little inducement to save, either, if you are only saving for the income-tax collector, and the small capitalist or bourgeois, which means most of us, is in great danger of being wiped out with the present generation, for the young folks approaching thirty and thereabout, who are beginning to make good, have less and less chance of getting ahead and climbing into that same abused, laughed at, despised but absolutely essential bourgeois class, and for the identical reason. Let me hereby notify the Government that the bourgeois is the backbone of our country, and that only for us bourgeese and bourganders there wouldn't be any proper government, let alone any comfortable, well-paid government jobs. It is a terrible thing and dangerous to nip the oncoming bourgeoisie in the bud, and this is exactly what is being done by an income tax which had become obsolete before it was put into practice. By taking a good part of the money which the three- to five-thousand-dollar individual with an average family should normally put away each year it is a real menace to our national prosperity. The cost of living, if one is to maintain anything even approximating what we like to call the American Standard, has already sufficiently narrowed the margin

The fellows who framed that $200 clause were in cahoots with child labor

of the average income without adding the drain of exorbitant taxes. We all believe that a decent home and a decent education are what makes a strong new generation. We must provide for the kids, and provide right. There is no argument about it. But how many of us can do it?

Now let us forget our homes for a moment and think only of our national savings, which are at present being spent on taxes. This extra money used to go into industrial investments-or, often enough, direct to the Government itself, in the form of the safest bonds in the world. To-day the tax collector gets it and in perhaps nine families out of ten there is noth

zen.

I am considering only the plight of the average poor but honest citiDoubtless there are largescale maladjustments of the income tax, but I don't pretend to the faintest understanding of them. Furthermore, I am talking only of the folks who are decent about paying up. But while I believe these to be in the majority, I wish to state right here and now, as my profound personal conviction, that the ill-framed income tax has turned more honest citizens into crooks than any other one law not excepting even the Volstead Act. Humanity as a whole instinctively cheats unfairness. I don't mean to deplore the Volstead Act, which I believe the citizens of these pretty well United States are coming to see as a splendid thing, even though they had precious little part in putting it over. But I am respectfully calling attention to the fact that because many of them resented having nothing to do with the ratification of that law, and because many of them considered it unfair, they have made sport of it, and incidentally crooks of themselves. And where there is one way of getting around the prohi bition law, there are 7,921 ways of cheating on the income tax. I am not sure that those figures are correct. I merely stick them in because an article of this kind is supposed to have some statistics in it and you know what statistics are generally thought to be, so what's the use in being too fussy?

Shedding Glycerin Tears

AM not greatly concerned with accurate statistics

man truths which can be vouched for by pretty nearly all my fellow workers and by my sisters in the bourgeois class. I have no complaint to make on behalf of the pathetic creatures who have only two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or so a year left to live on after their tax is paid, and who never did a stroke of work in their lives to earn even that pitiful amount. As a matter of fact, I would be obliged to borrow the glycerin tears of a motionpicture actress in order to weep over any family or individual having to live on any such sum even if he or they had worked like the very devil for it without the customary two weeks off in August, or anything. I would consider that they could still struggle along somehow on the money without actually suffering. No, I cannot bring myself to feel anything more than a mere passing throb of sympathy for the individual who is thus bereft to the tune of $800,000 by our cruel Government, as several families were reported to have been this year.

And then my pang is not for them, exactly, after all, but rather for the poor devils of lawyers whom they paid to sweat over their returns. That is as far, however, as my sympathy for the rich goes Nobody likes the rich. The deuce take the rich, doggone 'em! We don't want to bother about the wealthy 23) so long as the income tax (Continued on page

The Man
Who

Never Was

From the fifth tee on a pleasant spring morning many a young man approaches with smiling ease the popular hazard of matrimony

By William Almon Wolff

A

Illustrated by C. D. Williams

RCHER RAINE was rather overcome by the warmth with which his sister welcomed him. He and Margaret had always been the best of friends, possibly because they hadn't been together as much as brother and sister often are. Still, even allowing for all that, he felt she was making a great fuss over him.

Not that he minded. It was good fun; he had been away long time. Special work had held him in the service after most chaps had been sent home; he got his discharge abroad, and became involved in some reconstruction work of a highly technical sort that delayed his return unconscionably. Now that he was home he began to realize how much he had really missed America. And Margaret, with old Bill Anderson, her husband, backing her up, as he always did, underlined everything.

Margaret and Bill took him off his feet in other ways too. He knew they had moved to New York; he had to see them to realize just what that migration from a Chicago suburb had implied. He had left Bill a prosperous, steady-going business man, with a comfortable income. He found him now a millionaire, or something very much like it.

"We're living in Maybrook, Arch," Margaret told him. "I didn't bring the youngsters in to meet you -it's hard enough to keep them in order as it is. But they're crazy to see you. You're coming to us, of course-we've plenty of room."

It took Maybrook really to bring home to him the change in Bill's estate. The big motor to which Margaret had led him at the pier, the way a head waiter had behaved during lunch at the Ritz, even Margaret's clothes, had made an impression. But it was Maybrook, and, above all, the house, that really opened his eyes.

The suburban country about New York was unfamiliar to Raine. He had spent week-ends here and there; had played over half a dozen golf courses, at one time and another. But Maybrook, even as seen from the windows of a hurrying motor, was a revelation in luxurious living. As for the house, it was overwhelming. It was a stunning place; a great, stone house, set on a ridge, surrounded by acres of land. You caught glimpses of the Hudson from the veranda; when he reached his room Raine could see the Westchester hills, rolling away to the north and east.

"Stunning!" he said, when Margaret asked him what he thought of it all. "Great place for the kids. I'm tickled to death, Madge. Old Bill had it coming to him, too-he's the hardest worker I ever knew." "He's a dear," said Margaret. "Aren't the babies wonderful?"

"They are!" said Raine. He approved highly of his nephew and his niece. "If I ever get married, it'll be their fault."

Bill turned up and began to talk about his roses. "He's got all the roses he wants at last!" said Margaret. "They make me jealous sometimes." "Good people around here?" Raine asked. "Splendid!" said Margaret. "That's one reason

we came-it's so important to think of that for the children."

"You can't prove it by me," said Bill. "They never drop in evenings."

Raine grinned at the exasperated look in his sister's eyes.

"Bill's hopeless!" she said. "Socially he doesn't exist. I'm glad you're here, Arch. I can go to a dance sometimes now. He won't learn."

"You're darned right he won't!" said Bill, getting up. He knocked the ashes from his pipe; looked at his watch guiltily. "Guess I'll turn in. I want to do some work in the garden in the morning before I go to the office."

"I wouldn't trade Bill for any man on earth," said Margaret. "But he does try me sometimes."

Margaret motored Raine over to the club next day and took him over the links. Then she gave him tea --and, since the piazza was crowded, introduced him to a score of people. The next day was Saturday; that night she took him to a dance at the club.

TOW, to a woman the situation and Margaret's plan would have been as clear as crystal by that time. Raine was as obtuse as any man would have been-which, of course, was what made him valuable to Margaret.

She had discovered, you see, that Maybrook saw no reason why it should take to its bosom a strange family from the Middle West-no matter how much money it had. They had not encountered hostility; there had been no trouble about the club, for example. Everyone was pleasant enough; people just didn't cross the line that, for Margaret, marked the difference between failure and success in establishing herself and her family in Maybrook.

She wasn't in the least resentful, nor was she at all seriously disturbed. She rather approved of the restraint, the inertia, that kept her out of things. The sort of place in which any presentable new

comers could feel at home at once wasn't at all what she wanted for the children. And, ever since Arch had written that he was coming home, she had been counting upon him.

He was good-looking; he was young; he was interesting. He had a good war record; his name had been mentioned rather prominently once or twice; the papers had noticed his home-coming. He was bound to be popular in a place like Maybrook. And people couldn't make much of him without noticing her, naturally. Through Arch, Maybrook would have to give her a chance to gain recognition. And a chance was all she wanted. She was perfectly sure of herself, once she had that.

Even at that first dance Margaret saw her plan working out. Arch danced as beautifully as ever. He met three or four men he had known abroad; Margaret was conscious of a change almost at once. People were charming to her; as for Arch, he was a success from the start.

All he knew was that he was having a particularly good time. He danced a good deal with Margaret; showed his gratitude. "Corking place, this!" he said. "Do you know Cathcart? We fooled around a bit in Paris after the armistice."

"The Cathcarts are all nice," said Margaret. This was even better than she had hoped!

But there was a fly in the ointment. "Who's that girl in black, Madge?" Arch asked. "The one who's dancing with the tall chap with the grayish hair?"

Margaret hesitated just a moment as she followed his eyes. "That's Natalie Thorne. She's pretty, isn't she?" "Ye-es-I guess she is. She's the best dancer I ever saw. Who's the man?" "Crosby Parrish."

Raine whistled; stared at the couple with a new interest: "Funny! I've always thought of him as a fat man with white hair! Does he live here?"

8

"Not exactly in Maybrook. He has an enormous place back in the hills, you know."

"Do you know her, Madge? I'd like to meet her." "I'm sorry-I don't, Arch," said Margaret. "She -she doesn't go about much. She lives alone, except for an aunt or a cousin-some sort of an elderly relative. But you'll meet her easily enough, of course "

His eyes followed Natalie Thorne about the room. Margaret saw, with resentment and a curious uneasiness, how interested he was. It wasn't strange; Natalie Thorne was the most interesting girl in the room. Margaret was prepared to admit that frankly. A tall, lithe girl, her solid black made the gleam of bare arms and shoulders only the more vivid. Her hair was a rich, warm, coppery brown. Eyes and lips were sullen. But once or twice, as they danced, she smiled at Parrish; tall as she was, she And her smile was a had to look up to do that. revelation of things her habitual expression denied; it was eloquent of tenderness and deep feeling. Curiously, though, even before the smile had passed, each time, the softness vanished from her look. It was in her eyes that you had to look to understand that. . . .

ARG

RCH went home that night without having met Miss Thorne. And the chances are that nothing more would have come of that flash of interest in her had Raine been able to stay in bed until a civilized hour. But, unless he was worn out, he couldn't sleep after daylight, and he developed a way of slipping over to the club to play a few holes before breakfast.

One morning, as he was playing the fourth hole, he saw a man and a woman come through the underbrush from the road and start from the fifth tee. He recognized Parrish and Miss Thorne. played well and fast; he stayed behind them.

They

Seen thus, early in the morning, the girl was as fascinating as she had been in her ball gown. She was as lithe, as graceful, as she swung her driver, as she had been when she danced. She and Parrish talked a good deal as they followed their balls. And he could not help noticing the vehemence of their talk; he wondered if they

It was she who talked most, and most earnestly; Parrish kept pretty quiet.

were quarreling.

They didn't finish their round. They played six or seven holes and then cut across the links to go back to the road through

Raine frowned when he saw that; there was something unpleasant about the idea such conduct was bound to suggest. That was what people would do who didn't want to be seen.... He wondered whether they had noticed him!

the gap behind the fifth tee.

By this time, of course, he did know a little more about Natalie Thorne than Margaret had chosen to tell him the night of the dance. She lived practically alone, as Margaret had said. She was her own mistress, and the mistress, too, of a comfortable income. She could do very much as she pleased. And -she pleased to accept the conspicuous attentions of Crosby Parrish, a man twice her age, whose wife spent her time in wandering from one health resort to another.

The thing wasn't exactly a scandal; rather, it was matter for gossip. None really believed, as a matter of fact, that there was ground for scandal; they felt that Natalie was unwise, and Parrish something of a cad, in that he was making a young girl unpleasantly conspicuous. People had undertaken to talk to Natalie, of course; friends of her parents. They had succeeded only in rousing in her a sullen, young defiance that had made her underline the things she did that people didn't and couldn't like. Also, she had chosen, by way of defying this sort of talk, to drop out of Maybrook life almost entirely. She saw her old friends only in the most casual way; when she did appear at a dance at the club it was to outrage public opinion as she had done the first time Raine saw her.

He saw her and Parrish twice again in the next week; they went through the same program each time. Then, for three mornings, he had the links to himself. And then, on four successive mornings, she came alone.

RAINE

DAINE was deeply interested in the situation by that time. He was growing distinctly angry, too. There was something about this business. he couldn't understand, but instinctively resented and disliked. This girl was fine; he was ready to stake a good deal on that conviction. Each morn ́ing now, as she played alone, she kept looking back. She would stop, her head thrown back, listening. And then she went on, drooping. He wanted to help her. But he knew he couldn't.

He was alone on the fourth tee on the fifth of those mornings. She had not appeared yet. He played an iron shot from the tee; sliced abominably, and saw his ball clear the trees to the right; it must have dropped in the road. He plunged through the undergrowth; saw a small car stop; caught the flash of a white skirt as Natalie Thorne went to the fifth tee. He found his ball; pitched it back toward the

He made a good deal of noise. As he came in to the open he could see Miss Thorne, sitting on the bench beside the tee; for the moment, though, she couldn't see him. But she heard. He saw her start; saw her hand go to her breast. She got up, swaying a little, and threw out both arms in a welcoming gesture. And her sullen, smoldering eyes blazed.

He stopped short, appalled. He felt as if he had inadvertently begun to read another man's letter. It was frightful to see emotion so nakedly displayed. His instinct was to back away. But he realized at once that he couldn't. The situation was damnably plain. She thought it was Parrish who was coming. She turned, facing him. But her eyes didn't warn her of the truth in time to check her tongue.

"Oh, my dear-my dear-at last-" she said. She was still. She stood like a statue, like a woman frozen into immobility. Her lips were parted still. But it was Raine who broke the dreadful silence, so clamorous with unspoken words.

"There's nothing for me to say-except that I'm awfully sorry," he said lamely.

She made a gesture with one hand, as if to push him away. Then she sank down on the bench. She looked straight at him. There were no tears in her eyes, but she was racked by sobs.

"Miss Thorne!" His voice was desperate. "I wish I could help you! I mean that-I really do-"

HE was fighting hard. And in a moment she had her voice in leash. "I wish you could!" she said. "But you can't-no one can-" He waited.

"I've one thing to thank you for," she said, suddenly. "You understand-don't you? And you're I couldn't have stood not pretending you don't! that-"

"I suppose I do understand-some of it," he said, reluctantly.

"You couldn't help it," she said, bitterly. "I've seen you, these last few mornings. You're Mr. Raine -Mrs. Anderson's brother?"

He nodded. And again there was a silence. Again she broke it.

"It's grotesque!" she said. "But-I'm glad this has happened, Mr. Raine! It-oh, it nearly killed me when I saw you-when I'd been thinking it wassome one else I heard. But-it's something to have some one else know. Can you understand that?"

"I think I can," he said, steadily. "Miss ThorneI said I wished I could help. Would it help just to talk about it?"

"I don't know," she said, (Continued on page 19)