Ogden Standard-Examiner 2 OGDEN, UTAH, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 21, 1956 WHAT OTHERS SAY American Taxpayers Are Getting Bargain April 16, TD (Tax Day), has come and gone. Some millions of procrastinators (and who isn’t one, now and then?) have breathed sighs of relief as their 1040s disappeared down the letter drop. And for a few months, at least, American can forget one worrisome item. “Most people grumble a bit about the big tax bite,” said Russel C. Harrington, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a short time ago. But “they know deep down in their hearts they’re getting a bargain.” Mr. Harrington, hardly a “big-government” man, is a former treasurer of the United States Chamber of Commerce and partner in one of the country’s best-known accounting firms. Is he right? A strong case can be made for drastic revision of the federal income tax and an honest case for no income tax at all. Almost anyone knows that the government isn’t 100 per cent efficient. And it isn’t hard to find someone who objects to something his tax money goes for. And yet - a bargain is a bargain only in relation to something else. In terms of expenditures, 1800’s six million dollar government would be no bargain in 1956. Nor would it be safe to say that 1900’s 450 millions (a period to which some look back nostalgically) would today be any bargain against 1955’s 64 billion. The government in those years had neither the people to serve and protect nor the world shrunken in size, multiplied in population and power and deeply riven in which to serve and protect them. Contrast 1800’s five million Americans with today’s 167 million; consider the 1900 American army of 25,000 men against the world situation today. Americans live in a land reasonably safe from enemies without and within, the prosperity of its people reasonably bulwarked against economic catastrophe, its freedoms magnificent compared with some other countries and most previous times. Give or take a little - American taxpayers are “getting a bargain.” Christian Science Monitor.