Tax Bachelors & Spinsters?

     Among some old clippings I found this letter to the editor of The Spokesman-Review from 18 February 1911:

     I have noticed some discussion in regard to taxing bachelors and spinsters.  I consider this not a fair proposition in any sense, inasmuch as it is like extracting one tooth of a dangerous beast in order to rid society of danger.  The average bachelor of sound body and fair intellect is a menace to society and our nation.
     Disenfranchise him!
     That is a more just punishment for his single state.  So often do we read the heading, "The Home the Bulwark of the Nation."  It greets us in all modern literature, it is hurled at us from pulpit and platform.
     Why then are so many men of marriageable age so shy about farming one of these bulwarks?
     Why laud the home, but refuse to be one of the principal factors in home making?  The selfish, ease-loving, responsibility-shirking old bachelor.
     Disenfranchise him!
     And do I hear "What of the Spinster?"  All healthful, moral women long for a home in which to be queen.  While not exactly a case of "Barkus is willin'," still we may safely say that the average woman will smile favorably upon the average man who is willing to rise from his condition of sloth and sue for her hand.
     If men would stand for the highest ideals of the home and become active home builders there would be no more need of woman suffrage than the need of woman to chop the family wood.  Both are unnatural phases of life.

Alice Kayser Brett
Kellogg, Idaho

     Then there was this from a Mallard Fillmore cartoon of 14 September 1999:  "Liberals say across-the-board tax cuts 'only benefit the rich.' Therefore, their definition of 'the rich' is, quite obviously, anyone who pays taxes."

     In an editorial cartoon from 1999: "Those who ignore history... are the voters of tomorrow."  Remember, yesterday, today was tomorrow.