TAXING BACHELORS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 26, 1 February 1915, Page 8

TAXING BACHELORS.

A FEDERAL POLITICIANS PRO' POSAL. Mr J. 15. Sharpe, Federal mom her lor Oxley (Q.j, intends, if possible, to submit a proposal to tax bachelors t.. the next session ol the House or Representatives. Already bis scheme, which has about it some element ot novelty, has attracted much attention, and Mr Sharpe is conlident that a majority of the Federal Lower House is on hik side.

Mr Sharpe said that ho approached the matter from a very serious standpoint, and that he had determined to put forth every effort to carry it through. He believes that by the imposition of a tax sufficiently weighty to make itself felt a great many of the social evils of the day will be mitigated, if not altogether removed. “During many conversations with different people on the subject,” said Mr Sharpe, “I have never met an opponent to the proposition, and though there are some who make the excuse that many men remain bachelors because of family responsibilities, it must be remembered that as many others who have not shirked matrimony have continued to support the poorer members of their families. The reason is valueless, again, when it is considered that thousands of girls, earning half or quarter the money paid the average man, carry heavy home responsibilities.

THE POSITION OF BANK CLERKS “Attention lias frequently been directed to the fact that bank clerks are prohibited from marrying until in receipt of £2OO per annum. It is my intention immediately the House reassembles to ask that a request bo made to those institutions that the abominable condition be a boll sued. “The bachelor, who represents only a unit in the community, has none of the responsibilities which often cripple the married man who presents the State with a quiver-full of boys and girls—the State’s best assets —who pays house-tax, baker, butcher, grocer, milkman, tailor, bootmaker, doctor, etc., etc. A married man, because he adds to the wealtli of the country, is penalised, while the celibate, who pays his board and buys a few suits of clothes per annum, goes scot free of any of these obligations.”

As a useful citizen, the bachelor, according to Mr Sharpe, is practically valueless when compared with the married man. He cannot take the same keen interest in public affairs, or if he does the people are not so ready to give him the confidence accorded a family man.

THE MORAL ASPECT. But it is from the moral point of view chiefly that Mr Sharpe proposes waging war against the man who will not marry. THE IRRESPONSIBLE MALE. “J: have paid special attention to the cases of girls employed in restaurants, hotels, and shops,” he said. These girls, pretty enough, most of them, to be attractive, and with inborn desire for the soft things of life natural to all women, overworked, underpaid, starved for affection and consideration, fall easy victims to the unscrupulous bachelor with a plentiful supply of money. The water trips and the champagne suppers are luxuriously furnished flats do not fail in undermining the moral strength of the e gills, the vast proportion of whom are material for ideal wifehood and motherhood. Cheated of their natural vocation, it is small wonder that they become victims of the shoals of spendthrifts and rouses who frequent the houses of female employment.

“It is here that the most serious aspect of the whole situation intervenes. One of the latest medical reports—l quote from Victoria—shows that GO per cent of the children horn in a certain specified time—the offspring of these destroyers of women’s lives and happiness—are suffering from an incurable ailment. It is my intention to add a clause to the hill I propose introducing at the first opportunity, to prevent men over a certain age from marrying without a doctor’s certificate.”