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A fight about taxing the wealthy, a century before President Obama
The ultimately successful compromise was known as the Mellon tax reforms after Treasury Department Secretary Andrew W. Mellon. Murnane argues that it was the result of a public relations campaign that helped sell the public not just on how to tax capitalists but on industrial capitalism itself.
“The debate they initiated … explicitly pitted small-town small-producer hostility toward big corporate capital against an urban industrial capitalist economy that promised prosperity but not equality,” Murnane writes.
The Treasury Department’s PR campaign sold the taxation plan as “scientific taxation,” arguing that surtaxes in the existing system were pushing capitalists away from productive investments in railroads and other industries. They defended the focus on capitalist growth, saying it would ultimately mean cheaper goods and a higher standard of living for workers.
Businesses, including major magazines and newspapers, joined in the push to support the Mellon plan. When progressives pointed out the obvious campaign by moneyed interests, the plan’s supporters used a freelance lobbyist to create supposedly grassroots civic “tax clubs” around the South, the West and small towns.
Other historians have found that, between 1880 and 1940, farmers, labor union members and other middle-class property owners became more accepting of big business, and Murnane argues that the campaign for the Mellon plan was partly responsible, “providing forums like the tax clubs in small towns and rural communities that encouraged the reexamination of entrenched ideas.”
More: http://daily.jstor.org/fight-taxing-wealthy-century-president-obama
“The debate they initiated … explicitly pitted small-town small-producer hostility toward big corporate capital against an urban industrial capitalist economy that promised prosperity but not equality,” Murnane writes.
The Treasury Department’s PR campaign sold the taxation plan as “scientific taxation,” arguing that surtaxes in the existing system were pushing capitalists away from productive investments in railroads and other industries. They defended the focus on capitalist growth, saying it would ultimately mean cheaper goods and a higher standard of living for workers.
Businesses, including major magazines and newspapers, joined in the push to support the Mellon plan. When progressives pointed out the obvious campaign by moneyed interests, the plan’s supporters used a freelance lobbyist to create supposedly grassroots civic “tax clubs” around the South, the West and small towns.
Other historians have found that, between 1880 and 1940, farmers, labor union members and other middle-class property owners became more accepting of big business, and Murnane argues that the campaign for the Mellon plan was partly responsible, “providing forums like the tax clubs in small towns and rural communities that encouraged the reexamination of entrenched ideas.”
More: http://daily.jstor.org/fight-taxing-wealthy-century-president-obama
There was a left wing response to the Mellon plan. In particular I'm thinking of John Dewey and the People's Lobby, but it's not a topic I know a whole lot about, and I can't remember if that came about before or right after adoption of the Mellon plan. Somewhat surprisingly there are no good internet sources to link to either. Wiki doesn't even have an article about the People's Lobby, nor does it mention it on the John Dewey article.