The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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HYDE PARK, Thursday—I have been taken to task for saying that the individual income-tax reduction bill of 1947 would have been of benefit to corporations, and I realize that I should have been more careful, for I know quite well that this particular bill dealt only with reduction of individual income taxes. In thinking of the whole question of taxes, however, I have always felt that there ought to be a way, when large corporations were doing as well as many of them seem to be doing at present, to keep their taxes up. The tendency, at the present time, is to give them relief as well as to relieve people in the higher-income brackets who are often associated with corporations or big business of some kind.

I feel that it would be of value if there were a way to do away with taxes on new small business enterprises until they showed a certain margin of profit, and perhaps on all such investments which are experimental but which, if successful, would create more jobs.

The income tax has always seemed to me a very fair way to tax people and I have no objection to the theory that every citizen should contribute something, but it seems to me it should be a very small percentage indeed for incomes in the lower brackets.

If Congress presents a new tax bill to the President to take effect in January instead of in July, I hope that it will be a bill which corrects some of the inequities in the first one. It should be a bill on which both the executive and the legislative branches of our Government have been able to cooperate before its provisions are finally settled upon.

* * *

In the course of the last few days I have received letters about babies and children for whom foster homes or parents have to be found. There are, of course, many worthwhile agencies that are handling this same problem. Many of these organizations find now that they have to enlarge their facilities in an effort to find foster homes, so that children who have lived in hospital wards and in temporary shelters for some time can really obtain proper care.

With additional trained workers, many of these agencies feel they could place more babies, since many childless couples are anxious to adopt them. In doing so, these reputable organizations could wipe out the scandalous, recently publicized "baby-selling racket."

To find good foster parents and to get a child settled in a new home is well worthwhile, for that child's whole future depends on the proper decisions being taken. One can only hope that these services will receive the encouragement of the public since today's children mean so much to our country's future.

E.R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR PART PROHIBITED.)


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  • Hyde Park (Dutchess County, N.Y., United States) [ index ]
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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 27, 1947

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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