Why B.T. Roberts Favored the
"Death Tax"
[This article appeared in the Summer/Fall 2002 issue of the Free Methodist Historical Society Newsletter.]

In 1886 Benjamin T. Roberts published a little book entitled First Lessons on Money. His advice and public policy recommendations are interesting to read today when the estate tax (the so-called "death tax") has become a much-debated political issue.

Roberts' book was partly a manual on stewardship, partly a call for economic reform. "The people should see to it that their representatives in Congress pass laws in their interest, and not in favor of the moneyed class and rich corporations to the injury of community generally," he wrote. Based on biblical principles, he argued that "vast accumulations of fortune in the hands of a few" were harmful and caused civil unrest.

To implement this view, Roberts proposed that inheritance taxes be increased. "Our laws should make provision for the breaking up of great estates upon the death of the owners." To provide adequate opportunity for all, "the whole bent of our laws must be unfavorable to the acquisition of a vast amount of property by any one person, and to the handing of it down unbroken from generation to generation."

First Lessons on Money was a fairly radical challenge to the dominant business practices of his day. Yet in time many of his proposals, including the nation's first anti-trust legislation, were championed by leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and others and became law.

Roberts' position on estate taxes, and the reasons he gave, are worth pondering today when political leaders of all shades debate the issue, but often without the depth of moral concern that Roberts showed.