The Final Tax

Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
What can we tax that is not paying?
Were taxing every blessed thing
Heres what our people are defraying:

Tariff tax, income tax,
Tax on retail sales,
Club tax, school tax,
Tax on beers and ales,

City tax, county tax,
Tax on obligations,
War tax. wine tax,
Tax on corporations,

Brewer tax, sewer tax,
Tax on motor cars,
Bond tax, stock tax,
Tax on liquor bars,

Bridge tax, check tax,
Tax on drugs and pills,
Gas tax, ticket tax,
Tax on gifts in wills,

Poll tax, dog tax,
Tax on money loaned,
State tax, road tax,
Tax on all things owned,

Stamp tax, land tax,
Tax on wedding ring,
High tax, low tax,
Tax on everything!

Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
That is the list, a pretty bevy;
No thing or act that is untaxed;
Theres nothing more on which to levy.

Said Statesman Z to Statesman A:
The deficit each moment waxes;
This is no time for us to fail
We will decree a tax on taxes.

Ellis Parker Butler

Ellis Parker Butler was an American author, humorist, and poet, best known for his short story 'Pigs Is Pigs.' Born on December 5, 1869, in Muscatine, Iowa, Butler became a prolific writer, contributing to numerous magazines and books over his career. He is remembered for his wit and humor, which marked his work. Butler passed away on September 13, 1937.

Ellis Parker Butler

A Parisian Episode

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

A Minute

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

Ridden Down

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

Says Mister Doojabs

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

English

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To The Chancellor Of The Exchequer

    (Before his Retirement)

    My dear Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, -
    The devotion of one's life
    To the service of the Muses
    And the neglect of golden opportunities,
    Is not without its compensations,
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The Tariff On Tin

Monarch of Hannah's rocking-chair,
With unclipped beard and unkempt hair,
Sitting at ease by the kitchen fire,
Nor heeding the wind and the driving sleet,
Jo Lumpkin perused the Daily Liar
A leading and stanch Democratic sheet,
While Hannah, his wife, in her calico,
Sat knitting a pair of mittens for Jo.

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"How's thet?" said Hannah, and turned her eyes
With a look of wonder and vague surprise.

"Why them confoundered Congriss chaps
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Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Statesmen

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage, see them jump,
And come down hard!

"Walk up, walk up!" each cries aloud,
"And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

"Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I, I alone can show that black
Is white as grass."

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They'd make, I wish they'd go and make,
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothe...

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Song Of The Departing Spirit Of Tithe.

        "The parting Genius is with sighing sent."
        MILTON.


It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er;
I hear a Voice, from shore to shore,
From Dunfanaghy to Baltimore,
And it saith, in sad, parsonic tone,
"Great Tithe and Small are dead and gone!"

Even now I behold your vanishing wings,
Ye Tenths of all conceivable things,
Which Adam first, as Doctors deem,
Saw, in a sort of night-mare dream,^[1]
After the feast of fruit abhorred--
First indigestion on record!--
Ye decimate ducks, ye chosen chicks,
Ye pigs which, tho' ye be Catholics,
Or of Calvin's most select depraved,
In the Church must have your bacon saved;--
Ye fields, where Labor counts his sheaves,
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The Sinking Fund Cried.

        "Now what, we ask, is become of this Sinking Fund--these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund itself?"
        --The Times.


        Take your bell, take your bell,
        Good Crier, and tell
To the Bulls and the Bears, till their ears are stunned,
        That, lost or stolen,
        Or fallen thro' a hole in
The Treasury floor, is the Sinking Fund!

        O yes! O yes!
        Can anybody guess
What the deuce has become of this Treasury wonder?
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        All brass, in the front,
And Robinson's scrawled with a goose-quill under.

        Folks wel...

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Cities Of The Plain

Where are the cabalists, the insidious committees,
The panders who betray the idiot cities
For miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,
Ignorant, soul-less, rich,
Smothered in fumes of pitch?

        *        *        *        *        *

Rooms of mahogany in tall sky scrapers
See the unfolding and the folding up
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The walls hear whispers and the semi-tones
Of voices in the corner, over telephones
Muffled by Persian padding, gemmed with brass spittoons.
Butts of cigars are on the glass topped table,
And through the smoke, gracing the furtive Babel,
The bishop's picture blesses the picaroons,
Who start or stop the life of millions moving
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Edgar Lee Masters