TAXES: The Big Bite

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This week once again the great American taxpayer—that irascible and yet docile composite of the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Senator Taft, John L. Lewis and the fellow next door—was working over his income-tax return. He did not do the job happily, or—in a year when he couldn't quite decide whether his country was at peace or at war—even very patriotically. The feeling that an enormous eye in Washington watched him as he wrote down his deductions was often all that kept him from cheating—and sometimes that didn't quite keep him honest.*

He hated...