Taxing the Dowry.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 12, 21 March 1908, Page 67

Taxing the Dowry.

AN AMERICAN PROPOSAL. It is no new thing for the patriotic citizen of the United States to deplore the preference shown by his fair—and wealthy—countrywomen for foreign husbands. But it has remained to a Bohemian gentleman, naturalised as an American, of course, or he could not belong to the House of Representatives at Washington, to crystallise into one comprehensive bill a monetary' barrier to the tendency. Briefly, this Mr. Sabath takes the view that the American man is tne right husband for the American woman, and to emphasise the contention he proposes to lay a tax on “ all dowries, gifts, settlements, or advances of property made in consideration of, or in contemplation of, marriage between citizens of the United States and citizens or subjects of foreign countries. The bill provides for a tax of 25. per cent on all such transfers, and empowers the TreasuryDepartment to enforce the law." It is a curious little development of the idea of protective traiffs. for it virtually places the foreign suitor among dutiable, articles. To the thoroughly businesslike attitude of mind of the average American the idea that vast capital sums—estimated by Mr. Sabath at £ 180,000.000 —should have left the land of the Stars and Stripes is in itself deplorable. Deep down, however, there may be yet some masculine resentment that the mere foreigner, even if of great lineage and aristocratic birth, could be preferred before him. The American girl is brought up on terms of complete camaraderie with all the boys and men of her set, and her father and brothers, immersed in business, and living in a perpetual hustle of trusts and combines and corners and pits, she views as useful machines through whose exertions she can travel and see the society and the sights of the older world, where men can still observe some of the amenities which touch her upon her more emotional and romantic side, To be mistress of an English ancestral castle and estate, to enter an exclusive French family, through which she is admitted to salons otherwise, unapproachable, to own some wonderful historical gallery in Rome or Florence, have attractions in her eyes that the wildest extravagancies of “ freak ” eutermtainments cafinot possibly rival. Her American world she knows in its most intimate details, and it contains no mysteries as docs that which lies away from it. The American'iniiif takes’credit tb’hiniself that ho comparatively rarely seeks a bride from

abroad, but the other point of view is that ladies on this side of the Atlantic do not fall victims to his attractions in the same way that his sisters do to European manhood. Thp- American womgn has loyally accepted all the oredals. involved in the Customs examination of ’ her luggage, which a prohibitive tariff imposes upon her. She may not be quite so acquiescent when it comes to restricting her freedom to secure a husband where she will. At present, she has not shown herself in abounding sympathy with the Suffragists’ miltant policy, but she might possibly then take up the ery that “ taxation without representation is tyranny,” and her chosen delegates would certainly not favour it in this shape. “No protection ” might be somewhat ambiguous as an electioneering battle-cry when applied to the right of choice of a husband, but her native wit will doubtless be equal to expressing the idea in terse and telling form. © © ©