Frequently they amount
to little more than a large loss to one property interest, and a small
gain to another. They increase the element of insecurity in all forms of
property; for who shall say which form is immune from attack? Now it is
the slum tenement, obvious corollary of our social inequalities; next it
may be the marble mansion or gilded hotel, equally obvious corollaries of
the same institutional situation. Now it is the storage of meat that is
under attack; it may next be the storage of flour. The fact is, our mass
of income yielding possessions is essentially an organic whole. The
irreproachable incomes are not exactly what they would be if those subject
to reproach did not exist. If some property incomes are dirty, all
property incomes become turbid.
The cleansing of property incomes, therefore, is a first obligation of the
institution of property as a whole. The compensation principle throws the
cost of the cleansing upon the whole mass, since, in the last analysis,
any considerable burden of taxation will distribute itself over the mass.
The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less
important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward
freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between
selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting
down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act.
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