The passing of the war tax bill was not altogether easy sailing; there was plenty of criticism from the press throughout the country. Republican editors and congressmen wondered why the bill did not contain a tax on cotton, and one Pennsylvania congressman thought that the tax levy should be at the rate of three dollars a bale. Senator Smoot of Utah attacked the bill as a bunglesome measure. The New York _Journal of Commerce_ called attention to the discrimination between those whose income is in the form of services or property and those who get it in cash: "Take the case, for instance, of the salaried employee of a bank or factory who receives $5,000 a year, out of which he pays his house rent and his usual costs of living; contrast him with the case of a farmer who owns his land and obtains the bulk of what he needs, both in food, fuel, and other essentials, for himself and family in produce or in goods obtained by trade at the neighboring village; the situation becomes clear and shows why it is that the farming class pays only a microscopic proportion of the income tax at the present time." And the Democratic New York _World_ agreed that the farmer "is not carrying his share of the load of war taxation," and observes: "An analysis of income tax returns for the fiscal year 1916, recently published, shows that, although farmers are the most numerous class of Americans engaged in gainful occupations, they were at the foot of the list proportionately among income tax payers. Outside of the notorious war profiteers, no element of our population has advantaged so greatly by war as agriculturists; yet in the year of which we speak only one farmer in four hundred paid a farthing's tax upon income. In this respect preachers and teachers showed a higher percentage." There was some demand for extending the income tax downwards to cover smaller incomes, for example, we find the Council Bluffs' _Nonpareil_ contending: "The men of more moderate income should be required to pay at least a nominal income tax. This is a common country. It belongs to common people. And common people will esteem it a privilege to contribute their mites. One dollar per hundred on a thousand-dollar income would be both reasonable and just." CRITICISM OF THE TAX