Excerpt from Boston City Club Bulletin for the Information of Members of the Club, 1915, Vol. 10

Gentlemen of the Boston City Club. We are here to-night to consider one of the most important and fundamental of the questions that come into an ordinary society; that is, how to get money to carry on the functions of government. The question is getting to be more and more acute every year for many reasons. We have new ideals as to the obligations of the State in looking after its citizens. We have devel Oped the thought that the State is largely responsible, not merely for the education of children, but the health and well-being of the community, and every one of those operations involves the expenditure of large sums of money. Honorable as are our aspirations in that direction, I think we are bound to recognize that we should not carry out our ideals to extravagance, but, in addition to this source of expenditure, for which so much good can be said, there is no doubt whatever that we are in the era of great extravagance, national, State, municipal, and individual. The atmosphere reeks with the spendthrift idea, and side by side with this matter of taxation, I think we, and those representing as in the government, should be giving great thought to the question how we can save money, how we can get the better of the extravagant ideas of our time. It makes the situation a very complicated and difficult one.

Oi course an ideal system of taxation has never been attained in the history of the world. I doubt if anything like an ideal system will ever be attained as long as man exists on the earth, and certainly no taxation system will ever be perfect; but there is no doubt in my mind, however, but our tax system might have been adequate in the earlier and simpler conditions of a hundred years ago, yet now it is entirely inadequate, and there must be some radical change in the fundamental point of approach ing this great question.

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