plan or we are going to something else; and we wish to enunciate a plan whereby the Government shall issue a 4 per cent bond upon all of the prior lien security produced by the inventory which I have suggested, amounting to about $75,000,000,000. I believe that the environment of the future, leaving the rich man to protect the wealth garnered from the past, the most precious part of our prosperity will be well satisfied, if he can keep that fortune so gained by himself and his forefathers, because it must be kept. It is the safest thing we can depend upon, the $250,000,000,000 of supposed wealth which this Nation contains, but it must be reservoired not only to satisfy the pride of family, but held in its largeness for the public welfare and for all of the people and not a part of the people. I believe they would be willing to take this when the time comes, and probably soon, very soon. That releases the capitalism of the corporations absolutely and settles it once and for all. The Government becomes the only stockholder and is in the same position as the individual stockholder to-day. There is no change. There is no disruption of the corporations at all.

The people, to get beyond the present situation, which I do not need to tell you gentlemen about, will be glad to pay a profit on corporation products, which will absolutely return to the Government 10 per cent upon this stock valuation of $75,000,000,000. You there have $7,500,000,000 coming as an absolute certainty, because this will represent a Government monopoly, limited, of course, which therefore can not be rapacious. But the Government will have $7,500,000,000 to pay 4 per cent, or $3,000,000, to the owners of the issued bonds, and $4,500,000,000 to turn into the Treasury for the people, and it answers the same as taxation. In other words, the individual, to hold a stock share of a corporation, would not be satisfied with less than 10 per cent, and the people would have to pay it anyway, under such a proposition, but if the people know that 6 per cent goes to relieve them of $4,500,000,000 of taxation to support the National Government, it is my impression and belief, and the belief of my organization, that the people will be well contented to pay that $4,500,000,000 into the Treasury of the United States.

The next proposition is the thought of Jefferson. Jefferson wrote a letter to the father of our fourth President in 1785 from France, in which he outlined the misery that existed in France six years before the revolution. It is an intense account of real misery. He advocated to the French, seeing so much vacant land owned by the wealthy, that that land should be given over to the landless, whereby through agriculture the people of France could live from the land. He advocated what he had done in the House of Burgesses on the 12th of October, 1776, when he introduced a bill in that house to repeal the law of primogeniture and entail, and destroyed aristocracy not only in Virginia, but in the entire Nation, and that date, the 12th of October, 1776, should never be forgotten by men who are to-day of equal sovereignty one day, at least, every four years. He advocated in France that the family fortune should be distributed to all of the heirs and not to the one heir alone; and then he advocated upon large fortunes that a geometric tax should be assessed in proportion as the fortune increased.

For the last 30 years or more it has been my lot to develop the mathematics of the thought of Jefferson, because we know but very

little about it. There are no books in existence except what Mr. Jefferson wrote, my own books, and the book Fate and Folly, by the Reverend Monseignor John S. Vaughn, bishop of London. You will find in the last pages of that I. W. W. book that he describes it very well in likening the distribution of wealth to all the people to the governor which James Watt invented almost 150 years ago to govern the steam entering a steam engine and which made steam possible for use as we know it to-day. I would like to have you read those three pages. I think you will enjoy it and understand the meaning of the geometric tax.

Now, the geometric tax, as I have developed it by mathematics, is simply the power of measurement of what each citizen owes to the Government because of the Government permitting each individual to go out into society to gather a profit and an income from society. That is all the geometric tax is. It is a yardstick, in a sense, and it affects every living citizen and person over 21 years of age.

I think you understand the history of the Federal Convention of 1787, when James Wilson added an amendment to the Madison draft that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. That represents the profit system in our Nation. You can not make profits unless you buy and sell, and there are no words except those in our laws, except they be inferior laws to the Constitution, which is a supreme law of the land.

If it is concluded by you gentlemen that the law of contracts absolutely forces every man to obey what those words mean, then every man must understand that the obligation of contracts in his affairs to gain an income or a profit becomes the center of gravity around which he must swing at least once a year. You people who have studied the tariff question will agree with me that we treat the public as average consumers, and if you do treat the public as average consumers, can you not see that to gain $1,000 a year in income or profit, that man must encircle that center of gravity, the obligation of contracts, and swing as the law of nature demands around it, the same as all bodies in space or the earth around the sun. Nature demands that everything shall swing in circles.

The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, you have already had one-half an hour. Mr. BATDORF. I ask the indulgence of the members of the committee to conclude. It will not take me very long.

The CHAIRMAN. All right; go ahead.

Mr. GARNER. Would you mind, Doctor, in the remaining part of your time, telling us just how we are to get this money?

Mr. BATDORF. I am trying to do it, but I am trying to reach your intelligence in an intelligent way.

Mr. GARNER. I realize it is pretty hard to do that with this committee.

Mr. BATDORF. It is the intelligence of your brain I am after and not your credulity.

Mr. GARNER. As I say, that is a pretty hard thing to do with this committee.

Mr. BATDORF. And I do not know of any other way, because there are no histories and no books upon this particular subject, and I am forced to educate you somewhat, if you will permit me, upon this subject. I hope I am not intrusive in the matter, but I feel it is

Mr. MOORE (interposing). I hope you will continue to address yourself to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BATDORF. General protectionists? Well, I could have something to say upon that, but really, Congressmen, I think this is not a tariff proposition. I do not believe the tariff will be but a negligible thought in the future, and I do not see how in the world it can raise more than $150,000,000 in the future, which is a negligible part of $8,000,000,000. What you want is the big thing, and you want it quick, just as quick as you can get it. That is the obligation, as I see it, upon the backs of this committee and upon the minds of this committee.

Now, I must describe this geometric tax proposition in just as few words as possible, because you can understand it so much better. Can you not see that if that $1,000 man has got to swing in a circle you have got to compare him with other men. I know you will permit me to mark on the blackboard a circle of 1-inch spread with the obligation of contracts in the center. The geometric tax has a tabulation in the arithmetical proposition as it rises, and we have thought for 30 years that that should go into the Constitution by amendment. But Congress, by virtue of clauses 1 and 18 of section 8, Article I, supported by the relative clauses 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, by the consent of the President can do exactly what Jefferson did in the purchase of the Louisiana territory and what Lincoln did in emancipating the slaves; and upon the conclusion of the Civil War, you will remember we added the Thirteenth Amendment, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should exist in the United States, so as to support what Lincoln did. If this man must swing on the outer rim of that representative circle in proportion to other circles, and he gains $1,000 and the tabulation is in the Constitution, then this Government can go to that man and say to him, "To keep the average consumers within the circle from whom you have gained $1,000, it having cost the Nation $1 to give you that privilege, we want that dollar back at the end of the year as a tax."

In the same proportion, if a person should gain an environment which would give him a $10,000 profit or income and in circling that obligation of contract as the center of gravity, he must go 10 times further out into society to collect the number of average consumers which will give him either for his work or by inheritance $10,000, therefore he must take the spread of a 10-inch circle, and by mathematics we can prove that that 10-inch circle will hold exactly one hundred 1-inch circles, because you have squared the circle, and as the Government has paid them $100 for the one hundred 1-inch circles to keep those people in harmony and free from anarchy, that $10.000 man should pay a $100 tax, if he is to be in the same proportion with another sovereign to make the law of the future who pays $1 for the 1-inch circle, and the same thing would apply to one making $100.000, the 100-inch circle having space within it to put ten thousand 1-inch circles, or 100 times the 100-inch circle of the $10,000 man, and the Government can say to that person, "You have caused us an expense of $10,000 and, therefore, your tax is $10,000; and the $500,000 man operating on the rim of a 500-inch spread circle having within it space to place two hundred and fifty thousand 1-inch circles will owe the Government $250,000 at the end of the year.

Now, this tax, I will say briefly, will give to the Nation $1,500,000,000, because all incomes above $500,000 would operate under the Jefferson thought of decentralization to the heirs at law for the public welfare or must be placed in the Federal Treasury to pay the taxation for those who have produced that value, because the man owning $10,000,000 or $20,000,000 and receiving a dividend of half a million dollars naturally owes something to the community that produced that wealth by toil, and it can only be done by releasing the tax to those who toil in this Nation.

Now, there is just one more proposition, and that is the suggestion which I state there at the end of my amendments; and that is, if we conscript our young men and send them to the battle field not only to defend the integrity of this Nation but also to defend the wealth of the rich, especially if we are invaded, then it is perfectly just to anyone who gains a personal income above $500,000 that the balance should go to the Federal Treasury for the defense of his property, the defense of his Nation, and for the support of the soldiers in the field.

That would give you two more billions of dollars, or $8,000,000,000. Now, Mr. Chairman, if you wish to limit me I will close and be ready to answer any questions you wish to put to me.

The CHAIRMAN. You have made a very interesting talk, and if you desire you can revise your remarks and elaborate your position; of course, as briefly as possible.

Mr. BATDORF. I thank you, sir, but I would rather give it in the concrete form I have.

Mr. MOORE. Mr. Batdorf, you do not agree with the gentleman who appeared here yesterday and to whom you listened very intently upon the proposition of destroying or confiscating all income beyond $50,000?

Mr. BATDORF. I am absolutely opposed to that and have been fighting the gentleman in New York for more than 20 years.

Mr. MOORE. I gather from your remarks that you are also in favor of retention of inheritances; that you are not in favor of the destruction of inheritances?

Mr. BATDORF. I do not touch the inheritance tax, because the geometric tax will decentralize

Mr. MOORE (interposing). I am not referring to the inheritance tax but to the general proposition of passing along estates from one generation to the other.

Mr. BATDORF. I believe this Nation was formed to give its citizens personal liberty to devise their property as they think wise and best. Although the law of primogeniture has been repealed, yet there is nothing in our laws that will not permit a parent to devise his whole wealth to the oldest son.

Mr. MOORE. Well, there is an agitation on now for the destruction of inheritances.

Mr. BATDORF. I am absolutely opposed to it.

Mr. MOORE. You are in. favor of the passing of property from the father to the son?

Mr. BATDORF. I am in favor of leaving this Nation as the people of the past have created it, just where it exists to-day, and to put something in congressional statutory law, and after the war into the Con

stitution, that will preserve the institutions of Americanism as they exist at this moment

Mr. MOORE. I thought I understood you when you were making your address along that line. Now, you and Henry George do not quite agree as to the single tax?

Mr. BATDORF. Absolutely opposed. I belonged to the single-tax party until 1892, when I told Mr. George to his face that he was advocating socialism and that I was going to leave him, and I proved my case, and for that reason the gentleman here yesterday morning and myself are not very good friends.

Mr. MOORE. Is it your belief that the ultimate tendency of the single tax as advocated by Henry George and his followers is socialism?

Mr. BATDORF. Having studied socialism for 40 years, I know it is; that is, if you wish my personal opinion. Of course, that is a little dogmatic, I will admit.

Mr. HAWLEY. How much would an individual with a yearly income of $1,500,000 pay yearly in taxes?

Mr. BATDORF. It would depend upon decentralization above $500,000 to his heirs at law, but they in turn would pay taxation under the geometric tax, you understand; in other words, this proposition gives the right to the individual of earning incomes and profits. In other words, we respect the man with vision to create a better civilization. We respect the man that writes, you understand, the blue prints whereby labor can work from day to day.

Mr. RAINEY. Is your geometric tax based upon the proposition that the larger the income the larger the tax ought to be?

Mr. BATDORF. It is based on the exact proportion he should pay. We do not want to be unjust to any person, but we are all of equal sovereignty in this Nation, and we should force everybody to support this Nation in the same proportion. In other words, the population increases geometrically, wealth increases geometrically, expenses increase geometrically-everything increases geometrically except taxation. You have left it out because the wiser brain desires to be arithmetical for his own support.

Mr. RAINEY. Your proposition is exactly the method which is now in force, except you propose what you consider a regular manner of measuring taxes?

Mr. BATDORF. I advocate a scientific yardstick to measure people for the causes they create that concerns the Government in its expenses. If the Government pays out the expenses for any man, surely, if we can prove he has cost the Government so much, he ought to pay it—that is, the individual himself-and not throw it upon the backs of other persons indirectly.

Mr. RAINEY. Yes; I agree with you, and that is what we are doing in this bill, except we are not doing it exactly, perhaps, according to your method of measuring it.

Mr. BATDORF. I do not desire to tell this committee what they must do. I only say this: I can not conceive of any proportionate taxation upon all of the citizens of this Nation except by the thought of Jefferson. To my mind it would be impossible in any other form of taxation. You are bound to depress one class of society and raise