The champions of property against this proposal to tax incomes in order to relieve the burden upon consumption summoned every device of oratory and argument to their aid. They ridiculed and denounced, and endeavored to conjure up before Congress horrible visions of want, anarchy, socialism, ruin, and destruction. J. H. Walker, of Massachusetts, declared that, "The income tax takes from the wealth of the thrifty and the enterprising and gives to the shifty and the sluggard." Adams, of Pennsylvania, found the income tax "utterly distasteful in its moral and political aspects, a piece of class legislation, a tax upon the thrifty, and a reward to dishonesty." In the Senate, where there is supposed to be more sobriety, the execrations heaped upon the income tax proposal were marked by even more virulence. Senator Hill declared that, "The professors with their books, the socialists with their schemes, the anarchists with their bombs, are instructing the people of the United States in the organization of society, the doctrines of democracy, and the principles of taxation. No wonder if their preaching can find ears in the White House." In his opinion, also, the income tax was an "insidious and deadly assault upon state rights, state powers, and state independence." Senator Sherman particularly objected to the high exemption, declaring, "In a republic like ours, where all men are equal, this attempt to array the rich against the poor, or the poor against the rich, is socialism, communism, devilism." In spite of this vigorous opposition, the House passed the provision by a vote of 204 to 140 and the Senate by a vote of 39 to 34. In its final form the law imposed a tax of two per cent on all incomes above $4000--an exemption under which the farmer and the lower middle class escaped almost entirely. Cleveland did not like a general income tax, and he was dissatisfied with the Wilson tariff bill to which the tax measure was attached. He, therefore, allowed it to go into effect without his signature. _Labor Legislation_