PEASANTS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Although your editorial "Money and the Masses" was probably written in a less than candid spirit, we should like to take seriously your suggestion for improving America's cultural heritage through the passage of the proposed constitutional amendment placing a limit on the income tax.

One of America's real needs is a greater social stratification. A "rising middle class" seems to be absorbing all Americans and their values into its omnivorous Levittowns. Unfortunately, our soil has been tilled by the frontiersman or the commercial farmer--both of them interested in improving their position in society. Thus the middle class has been increased in numbers, while there has been no class lovingly devoted--like the Russian peasant--to the land. Although we realize that mere economic measures would not bring about the desired social structure, it is also true that the older European corporate and feudal system was partially broken down by just such a levelling process as that of the graduated income tax. By reversing that economic process, we might well bring about a situation in which a status society could be re-achieved. One of the most desirable features of such a society would be a peasantry, in addition to a sturdy yeomanry. On the other hand, those who would "amass fortunes" as a result of the proposed amendment might well be granted titles of nobility and could become rural squires, exercising a benevolent authority over their beloved peasantry. Add to this the "mythology of rustics, beggars, and the like," and the imagination traverses the years to a new America of which even Sir Walter Scott could be proud.

Clearly, the effects of the proposed amendment would be so beneficial to America that we do not hesitate to give it our unqualified support. The Harvard Conservative League   William A. Stearns '59, Pres.   Frank R. Rossiter '59, V-Pres.   Kenneth E. Thompson '57,   Pres. Emeritus