only to a certain amount above a certain maximum.  The tax should if possible be made to bear more heavily upon those residing without the country than within it.  A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune.  No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood.  We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands.  Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country—­a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves.  But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories.  Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out:  The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows.

A few years ago there was loud complaint that the law could not be invoked against wealthy offenders.  There is no such complaint now.  The course of the Department of Justice during the last few years has been such as to make it evident that no man stands above the law, that no corporation is so wealthy that it can not be held to account.  The Department of Justice has been as prompt to proceed against the wealthiest malefactor whose crime was one of greed and cunning as to proceed against the agitator who incites to brutal violence.  Everything that can be done under the existing law, and with the existing state of public opinion, which so profoundly influences both the courts and juries, has been done.  But the laws themselves need strengthening in more than one important point; they should be made more definite, so that no honest man can be led unwittingly to break them, and so that the real wrongdoer can be readily punished.