Is it legitimate and feasible to reduce great fortunes indirectly, through taxation? There is certainly no objection to the method on moral or social principles. As we have seen in chapter viii, taxes are not levied exclusively for the purpose of raising revenue. Some kinds of them are designed to promote social rather than fiscal ends. Now, to prevent and diminish dangerous accumulations of wealth is a social end which is at least as important as most of the objects sought in license taxes. The propriety of attempting to attain this end by taxation is, therefore, to be determined entirely by reference to its probable effectiveness. The precise method of taxation available here is a progressive tax on incomes and inheritances. By a progressive tax is meant one whose rate advances in some definite proportion to the increases in the amount taxed. For example, a bequest of 100,000 dollars might pay one per cent.; 200,000 dollars, two per cent.; 300,000 dollars, three per cent., and so forth. The reasonableness of the principle of progression in taxation has been well stated by Professor Seligman: "All individual wants vary in intensity, from the absolutely necessary wants of mere subsistence to the less pressing wants which can be satisfied by pure luxuries. Taxes, in so far as they rob us of the means of satisfying our wants, impose a sacrifice upon us. But the sacrifice involved in giving up a portion of what enables us to satisfy our necessary wants is very different from the sacrifice involved in giving up what is necessary to satisfy our less urgent wants. If two men have incomes of one thousand dollars and one hundred thousand dollars respectively, we impose upon them not equal but very unequal sacrifices if we take away from each the same proportion, say ten per cent. For the one thousand dollar individual now has only nine hundred dollars, and must deprive himself and his family of necessaries of life; the one hundred thousand dollar individual has ninety thousand dollars, and if he retrenches at all, which is very doubtful, he will give up only great luxuries, which do not satisfy any pressing wants. The sacrifice imposed on the two individuals is not equal. We are laying on the one thousand dollar man a far heavier sacrifice than on the one hundred thousand dollar man. In order to impose equal sacrifices we must tax the richer man not only absolutely, but relatively, more than the poor man. The taxes must be not proportional, but progressive; the rate must be lower in the one case than in the other."[198]