Rockefeller, from the oil trade alone, is more
than twenty million dollars a year. The
Standard earns from fifty to one hundred
million dollars per annum. Just how much
of this comes from each state, we do not
know, —but the greater part of it comes from
the forty-seven states. It is a conservative
estimate to say that the privilege of doing
business in Georgia is worth at least a mil
lion dollars a year to John D. and his law
breaking associates. Where, then, would be
the hardship of making the Oil Trust pay a
tax of SI,OOO for the privilege of fleecing us
of $1,000,000?
The Jeffersonian can’t see any. But Mr.
Hoke Smith’s paper went into spasms of in
dignation against that bill. Mr. Smith’s pa
per denounced the proposed corporation tax
as violently as it could have done had it been
a bill to legalize Standard Oil rebates, bri
beries, perjuries, and arson-plots.
Mr. Smith’s newspaper argued that we
would drive capital away, and devastate, di
lapidate, jugulate and otherwise mistreat the
poor, oppressed Northern corporations.
How could any law imposing a pitiful lit
tle one-thousand-dollar tax on the Standard,
drive it out of Georgia? As long as a mil
lion dollars is a bigger sum than a thousand,
the Standard would stay. If other states
would adopt a tax-act of like character, it
would be well for the country. The Stand
ard can’t pull out of all the states, can it? It
can’t do business up in the air, can it? And
there isn’t any foreign country that would
give it the enormous advantages it enjoys in
this land of the lobby, the subsidized news
paper, and the supple-kneed politician.
