ment maker, who having acquired a fortune of several millions through the assistance of his faithful employees, decided that he had enough money and he would like to offer his employees an opportunity to be equally fortunate in business. So with the co-operation of his son, he put his factory into the hands of his workers at a temporary and nominal royalty, and with his son served the new company for a year with no salary, so that the firm should have the benefit of experience in its inauguration. Within the past year at least a dozen manufacturing establishments have followed the example of Dix which plainly indicates that another feeling is arising in the world about the possession of money.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that in the future all economic conditions would be ameliorated, and the law of brotherhood would become the basis of life.
As an illustration of future possibilities he sketched the business methods of an agricultural village, saying he chose agriculture because its proper regulation is the basic factor in all economic life. He explained that the organization of the village would apply to any communty. According to this system each citizen of the town owns and tills his own fields without jurisdiction or limitation of acreage, but the village elects a committee of citizens to market the product of the entire community and when the harvest is sold the committee levies a tax on each producer according to the amount of surplus he has, beyond the amount necessary for the support of his family. Only the surplus is taxed, and each is allowed perfect freedom as to his expenses; but if his surplus is large it is quite heavily taxed on the principles of an ascending tax for individual wealth.
This last is easily comprehensible to us from the point of view of the income tax with which we are familiar, but the application of the tax and its existence as a fluid income in the village is not so easily appreciable. It is an expression of the new economic consciousness. There will be some producers, comments ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, whose return will not provide sufficient income for their needs. For instance if a farmer has expenses of five thousand dollars and an income of twenty thousand, he can pay a considerable tax on the fifteen thousand surplus which comes to him. But if a man has expenses of five thousand dollars and only returns of three thousand, then he must meet a deficit of two thousand.
In such a case, says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, he draws two thousand dollars from the exchequer of the community, and in this way taxation becomes a fluid source of wealth flowing back and forth among all citizens, banishing poverty and assuring comfort for everyone. Certainly in such a commonwealth there could exist no slums, there could exist no prejudice, nor suspicion, nor hatred. To image it gives one a sense of sympathetic brotherhood which is almost inconceivable at the present moment. But its reality lies in the new consciousness that is developing.
