Back of such neighbourhood ideas on taxation there are at least two lines of defence. One is that our present tax system is highly illogical, bothersome, and burdensome. To a considerable extent, unfortunately, this is the case, but it does not justify illegal methods of seeking redress. Not much argument is required to convince the ordinary property owner that all the inequities of the existing system fall with cumulative weight upon his devoted head. His pocketbook affirms this view more strongly perhaps than he would care to admit, but anyhow the net result is that he feels himself more or less pardonable for evading the burden as far as he can. The other common excuse for tax dodging is supplied by the conviction that much of the money raised by government is wasted or stolen. The logic based upon this premise is most curiously inverted, but none the less it sways the action of great multitudes. Politicians are a set of grafters, says our taxpayer. The more money they get the more they will waste and steal. I will punish the rascals as they deserve by dodging my taxes, that is _by becoming a grafter myself_. Seldom, however, is the latter clause clearly expressed. Yet the existence of corruption on one side of the state’s activities is thus made the excuse for corruption on another side whereby the state is mulcted of much revenue which it might receive. Of course evasion results in higher tax rates, which, by the way, fall crushingly upon the citizen who makes full and honest returns, and thus part of the loss in income to the government is made up. It seems clear, however, that in the long run government income is materially reduced by the feeling prevalent among taxpayers which has just been described and the procedure based upon it. On the whole this is by far the most serious single economic consequence of political corruption. It is bad enough that public money should be stolen, that public work should be badly done, and that politicians and contractors should grow rich in consequence, but it is far worse that the state should be starved of the funds necessary to perform its existing functions properly and to extend its activities into new fields. In the regulation of industry, in education, philanthropy, sanitation, and art, American government is very far from achieving what it should do in the public interest and what it could do more efficiently and cheaply than any other agency. Yet our progress toward this goal is perpetually hindered by the existence of waste and corruption on the one hand, and the consequent peremptory shutting of the taxpayers’ pocketbooks on the other hand.