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Your story on income tax was excellent. But I thought your concluding reference to the striptease artist was a cheap, spicy element, laboriously dragged in by the G-string. On second thought, however, maybe you were using the stripteaser as a subtle means of suggesting an obvious idea: that we shall all be doing a national striptease soon if we don't put a stop to high taxes, government graft, and international giveaway programs . . .
LAWRENCE E. BOWLING Bristol, Tenn.
Sir:
. . . I liked that phrase, "But every dime the American taxpayer gives up has been voted out of him by his duly elected representatives." I might say the same thing about the duly elected representatives spending the tax money collected.
HUGH ELLISON Berkeley, Calif.
Sir:
It's the same old story: "Them's what has it hates to part with it." Unfortunately in the U.S. today, those who have the most hate the most to part with it . . . If it is a privilege to live in a country such as ours, then it should be a privilege to pay taxes to support it . . .
ELMER M. SHARE Long Beach, Calif.
Sir:
Your parody on Lincoln's great Gettysburg Address represents bad taste in the extreme! Years ago they were desecrating the 23rd Psalm in the same childish manner, and it wasn't especially young even then . . .
RICHARD H. WADDELL Los Angeles
Sir:
On Friday, March 18, 1949, the Editor of "A Line O' Type Or Two" (a column in the Chicago Daily Tribune) was kind enough to publish a parody that I had written on the Gettysburg Address . . . In their issue of March 10, the Editors of TIME were kind enough to reprint my three-year-old parody on the Gettysburg Address . . . I doubt that it "has been going the rounds" for a very long time ; there haven't been enough changes made in it. By my count, four single words and one phrase of ten words were changed. I would say it was only two typewriters and a bureau drawer removed from its original printing.
EVANS JONES Chicago
¶ TIME congratulates Author Jones, whose parody has indeed been going the rounds in Washington, attributed to that eminent writer, Anon.—ED.
Sir:
You dwell lovingly on the subject of the income tax—it's big, it hits everybody, and "you gotta." But for the main point—why the money is needed—you give no word. But back under Foreign Affairs, buried in a section on France, and captioned "Face of Disaster," you carry part of the answer:
"The French tax structure discriminates unfairly against the wage earner by levying 80% of all taxes indirectly—i.e., on food and consumer goods. Landowners and businessmen benefit from light and easily evaded personal income taxes."
The rest of it is illustrated in two pages of maps showing the ominous encroachment of Russia on Western Europe and the Far East.
NEIL STAEBLER Ann Arbor, Mich.
Word Thou Never Wert
Sir: