" Made in Wisconsin "

James A. Frear, "La Follette Republican" and member of the Ways and Means Committee, made public a radical tax program for the progressive bloc of the House in the next Congress. The immediate effect was to draw from two "regular" Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee (Senators Smoot and Watson) statements that any general revision of the revenue laws would be opposed.

Representative Frear, who is one of the more or less radical delegation from Wisconsin, laid out a plan containing the following points:

1) A Constitutional Amendment to do away with tax free securities.

2) Taxation of stock dividends.

3) Increase of the federal inheritance tax.

4) A tax on gifts.

5) A retroactive excess profits tax.

6) An excess profits tax, a modified form of the previous tax, now repealed.

7) Publication of all tax records.

8) Defeat of a sales tax if it should be proposed.

The "regular" Republicans are vigorously opposed to these drastic measures. The restoration of an excess profits tax is considered particularly objectionable. Representative Green of Iowa, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has been considering a bill to improve the administrative provisions of the revenue law. Mr. Green is not a radical and will probably not be in favor of Representative Frear's proposals, but it is feared that if any revenue bill reaches the floor of the House, at least some of the radical proposals might be attached to it by amendment. The same might happen on the floor of the Senate. So it is possible that no revenue bills, no matter how generally desirable, will be reported out of the Senate Finance Committe, or even of the House Ways and Means Committee--the two committees which handle revenue laws.

Prominent in the opposition to radical tax changes will be Senator Reed Smoot of Utah (who according to seniority rules will in the ordinary course of events be Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee), Senator Watson of Indiana (another member of the Committee) and probably most of the "administration" Republicans. In favor of the tax changes will be Representative Frear and the progressive bloc, probably allied with the Democrats, and, most important of all, Senator La Follette, who next to Senator Smoot is senior member of the Finance Committee, and might possibly (by a coup of the progressives) become its chairman.