The Thirty Years of Henry George
Charles B. Fillebrown
[Reprinted from the book, Natural Taxation,
published 1917.
Part I / The Authorities / Chapter 12]
In 1879 Henry George in California wrote Progress and Poverty,
a book which met with a wide sale and general review, especially in
the Australasian and Canadian dominions, as well as in Scotland in
England, with early translation into German. The principles of the
single tax had been clearly stated as early as the latter part of
18th-century, but Mr. George was the man of all men up to his time to
expound, exploit, and advertise the doctrine in full and logical
sequence. Practical agitation of this reform dates from the appearance
of Progress and Poverty.
In 1882 Mr. George stumped Ireland, and again in 1884 made a three
months' tour throughout Great Britain, speaking in the principle
cities to large audiences, and making a strong impression. In 1890
there followed a nine months' trip to Australia and around the world.
Great reforms can usually be traced to their ultimate sources in the
thought and utterances of great men, and it appears that from the
seeds sewn during these tours their sprang the English movement for
land taxation. It is particularly interesting to note that it was less
than two years after Henry George's visit that New Zealand began to
enact tax laws looking to the concentration of local taxes upon the
land. In England, Germany, Australasia and, and Canada, the last 15 or
20 years have seen important changes in the methods of taxation, which
single taxers may justly consider advances in their direction.
I. BRITISH COLUMBIA[1]
Of the nine Canadian provinces three have taken importance steps
toward the single tax. In British Columbia provincial revenue is still
derived from poll, property, and income taxes; but since 1891
municipalities have been permitted to exempt improvements from
taxation in part or in whole. Since 1892, in fact, municipalities have
not been permitted to assess improvements at more than 50 per cent of
their actual value. Under the authority thus granted, all the
important urban and many world municipalities now exempt improvements,
thus raising practically all local revenue from land. The following
cases furnish the best examples of this tendency:
Burnaby. -- A municipality bordering on Vancouver, has from
its incorporation in 1892 totally exempted improvements from taxation.
The rate on a wild lands is practically double that upon improved
liens.
New Westminster. -- Adjoining Burnaby, oldest municipality in
the province, charted in 1860; improvements exempted from taxation in
1911 by a vote of 248, against 98. Ratification by a vote of the
Council unanimous. Population over 20,000; value of land, $16,600,000.
North Vancouver. -- Incorporated in 1906, when it was set off
from the district of North Vancouver, which during its existence of
over twenty years has never taxed improvements. The city of North
Vancouver in 1911 assessed land at $9,400,000 and improvements at
$1,420,000, or nearly double the valuation of the previous year.
Point Gray. -- A residential suburb of Vancouver, seat of the
University of British Columbia, population in 1911, 30,000;
incorporated as a municipality in 1908; improvements exempted from
taxation. Wild lands taxed at a rate nearly double that upon improved
liens.
South Vancouver. -- Population 30,000; incorporated as a
municipality in 1892; 50 per cent of improvements then exempted from
taxation. Improvements totally exempt since 1903.
Vancouver. -- Population in 1914 about 110,000; value of land
$150,000,000; improvements $76,000,000. Terminus of the Canadian
Pacific Railroad; has one of the finest natural harbors and the world,
and is the chief shipping port for Japan, China, Australia, etc.
Largest city of the province. In 1896 50 per cent of the value of
improvements was exempted from taxation. Ten years later in 1906 the
exemption was increased to 75 per cent. In 1910 the exemption was made
complete. L. D. Taylor, then Mayor of Vancouver, says of it:
From the beginning the cities of the Canadian West have
taken the initiative in promoting the single-tax policy by putting
it into actual operation, while other municipal governments have not
reached beyond the theoretical. Vancouver's policy of valuing land
at full capital value and improvements at only 50 per cent, thereby
taxing building only half as much as sites, was adopted long before
the single tax leaders had begun their campaign of education that
today reaches around world. And so satisfactory was this first
experiment that when the further reduction of 25 per cent was made,
so as to tax the capital value of improvements only one-quarter as
much as that of sites, the opposition was so small as to be scarcely
worth taking into account. The last step taken -- the adoption of
the single tax system in its entirety -- has placed Vancouver in the
unique position of being the only city of metropolitan size of the
continent to elect a municipal government on a single tax platform.
Victoria. -- The capital of the province; population over
30,000 in 1911. After exempting 25 per cent of the value of
improvements from 1894 to 1896, and 50 per cent from 1896 to 1911,
Victoria made the exemption complete in 1911. The assessed value of
land in 1913 was $89 million.
II. ALBERTA[2]
In this province the term "town" refers only to such places
as are incorporated as towns under a town act. It does not include
villages or rural municipalities. Rural municipalities were first
organized in 1912, and were required without exception to levy their
taxes on land values only. Fifty-two were established during the first
year. Ninety-seven of the ninety-eight villages and forty-five of the
forty-seven towns existing in 1914 were required to tax land values
only. This being a very new country, the number of rural
municipalities, villages, and towns is rapidly increasing.
Until 1913 to provincial taxes in Alberta were confined practically
to taxes on corporations, railways, and inheritances. In that year,
however, the province passed what is apparently the first unearned
increment tax law to be placed upon an American statute book. By this
law the provincial treasury at transfer takes one 20th of all
increases in urban land values. In 1914 the province decided to meet
its war quota by levying attacks on wild lands at the rate of 10 mills
on the dollar. In 1950 in the province received about $1,500,000 from
the proceeds of this tax.
Several cities and many villages, under authority granted them, have
for years exempted improvements or assessed them at part of their
value only. In 1912 the province enacted three laws, practically
without opposition, requiring the towns, with two exceptions, all
rural municipalities, and all villages, to raise their total revenues
exclusively from taxes assessed upon land according to its actual cash
value.
The six cities in the province have special charters which grant them
wide discretion taxation. Edmonton and Medicine Hat tax land only. The
other four are gradually changing their methods with a view to
abolishing taxes on improvements within a few years. The city of Red
Deer has a small-business tax only in addition to the tax on land.
Edmonton, which in 1914 at a population of about 75,000, has exempted
improvements since 1904. It also controls all public utilities, owning
and operating water works, electrical lighting and power plant, street
railways, and a telephone system.
III. SASKATCHEWAN
In all rural municipalities land values alone are taxed. In 1914
these municipalities began to levy an additional taxed about 6 1/4
cents per acre on uncultivated lands, with the object of discouraging
speculation.
Cities, towns, and villages formerly assessed improvements at 60 per
cent of their value. In 1908, however, villages were permitted to
confine taxation to lands, excluding improvements, and no less than
thirty have already availed themselves of this opportunity. In 1911 a
law was enacted fixing 60 per cent as the maximum per centage
permissible, and authorize cities and towns to reduce the assessment
of buildings below this figure, buying not more than 15 per cent per
annum. Regina, the capital city, at once took advantage of the act, so
that in 1915 buildings were entirely exempted from taxation.
Practically all the towns and cities are following the same policy.
The movement for the exemption of improvements has spread eastward
into Manitoba and Ontario. The rural districts of Manitoba confine
taxation largely to lands, and the capital, Winnipeg, since 1909, has
exempted one-third of the value of buildings. In Ontario three hundred
municipalities have petitioned for power to reduce taxes on
improvements. By 23 to 1, the Toronto City Council, in January, 1913,
submitted to the citizens the question of exempting buildings,
whereupon the citizens voted in the affirmative four to one.
IV. NEW ZEALAND[3]
Since 1891 New Zealand has levied a separate tax on land values which
in 1915 was at the rate of 1d in the pound of the unimproved value. In
addition to this ordinary tax on all land, from which only a state's
worth less than £500 are exempt, New Zealand also imposes a
graduated tax on large estates. The purpose of this graduated taxes to
break up the large estates which obstructed the growth of the country.
The tax begins with a rate at 1/32 of a penny in the pound for a
state's worth £5000, and increases to 5 5/8d per pound upon
estates valued at £200,000 or more. To a considerable extent this
graduated tax has accomplished its purpose.
Prior to 1896 local taxes had been levied upon either the capital
value or the income a real estate, as each locality might elect. The
law of 1891 imposing a state tax on land values, and exclusive of
improvements, called attention to the desirability of permitting local
governments to raise their taxes in a similar manner. Accordingly in
1896 local bodies were empowered to levy their rates on the unimproved
value of land, if they so desired. By 1915 not less than 132 districts
had adopted this method of taxing land values, and a British
Parliamentary Report of 1906 showed that the result had been
satisfactory at every point.[4]
Concerning the working of this method the Commissioner of Taxes of New
Zealand wrote in 1906: "The tendency of this system of taxation
is not to increase rent, but, on the contrary, as the tax becomes
heavier, it tends to bring into beneficial occupation land not put to
its best use, and so reduces rents, the improvements being free from
all rates and taxes."
V. NEW SOUTH WALES
New South Wales introduced a state tax on land values in 1895, and
subsequently extended this method of taxation into local finance. The
following statement recently signed by 90 mayors and aldermen shows
the success of the system:
It has reduced the rates of a very large proportion of the
ratepayers, although we are raising a larger revenue. It has
stimulated the building trade, employment is more consistent, and
business generally is on a much sounder footing. It is induced a
number of ratepayers to build, or dispose of land which they were not
able or willing to use themselves..... It's specially benefits those
ratepayers whose use of land is most effective and creditable to the
municipality, while it has put off effective pressure upon a number of
owners of idle or partially used land to change their tactics.[5]
It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1915, with a few trifling
exceptions, that 189 local authorities impose their local rates
exclusively upon land values.
VI. SOUTH AUSTRALIA
South Australia introduced a state tax on unimproved land values in
1884, at the uniform rate of 1/2d in the pound. Ten years later an
additional 1/2d was imposed on estates valued at more than £5000,
and upon estates owned by absentees an additional tax was levied at
the rate of one fifth of the tax otherwise payable. Though
intermediate changes have been made, the rates of 1884 and 1894 now
stand. One-fifth of the tax revenue of the state is obtained from this
source.
More recently South Australia has authorized local governments to
impose their taxes upon land values exclusively, exempting not only
buildings, fences and drains, but all forms of personal property.
Eight municipalities have adopted this system and it is hoped that
others will follow.
VII. OTHER AUSTRALIAN STATES
Every state in Australia except Queensland now has in some form tax
on land values. Queensland raises its local revenues wholly from taxes
on land values; while Western Australia and Victoria have made a
beginning in this direction.
VIII. THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
In 1910 the federal government of Australia adopted a federal tax
upon the land value of all estates having an unimproved value in
excess of £5000. The constitutionality of this act was assailed
before the high court of Australia, but without success.
In spite of the high exemption provided for by the law and the
difficulties of carrying out the valuation at assessment over the
whole extent of Australia, the tax has yielded more than £1,300,003.
Since the beginning of the war the land tax has been increased to
yield £1,000,000 additional revenue.
IX. KIAO-CHAU[6]
The first of recent German experiments in taxing the unearned
increment, and the one which pointed the way for others, was made in
the model German colony of Kiao-Chau which was established in 1897 in
China. The land and tax ordinance of 1898 imposed attacks of 33 1/3
per cent of any increment of value accruing thereafter to private
purchasers of lands acquired from the government. The purpose was to
check land speculation, insure to settlers a reasonable price for
land, and secure for the government part of any future increment due
to the large expenditures made in establishing and developing the new
colony. Provision was made for land tax of 6 per cent on the value of
land, exclusive of improvements, and a tax on land sales at auction.
This ordinance suddenly and unexpectedly realized the German land
reformers' program, in a German colony under the direct control the
Imperial government. It naturally aroused great interest in Germany,
and soon led to it tends to tax the honor increment in various German
cities.
X. GERMAN CITIES
The Prussian law of 1893, regulating local taxation, authorized local
governments to introduce an important change in their taxation of
land. Prior to that time land had been tax upon its estimated yield,
with a result that land held for speculative purposes was very lightly
taxed. The law of 1893 authorized localities to change the basis of
assessment to the capital value of the land, a change which has been
made by several hundred local governments in the face of hostility of
speculators and large landowners. The change has worked well in other
respects, and has materially increase the taxes paid by unimproved
land.
The second step in the direction of heavier taxation of land values
has been the introduction in many cities of special taxes on the
unearned increment, modeled after the ordinance of Kiao-Chau. Such
experiments were found to be authorized by the Prussia law of 1893
regulating local taxation, and since 1904 several other states have
taken action in this direction.
Among the cities Frankfurt and Cologne took the lead, introducing
increment taxes, respectively, in 1904 and 1905. Their example was
rapidly followed by scores of other places, including most of the
large cities, until by 1910 the increment tax was an operation in 457
cities and towns and was yielding a substantial revenue. The rate of
taxation ranged from 1 per cent to 25 per cent of the amount of the
increment.
XI. THE GERMAN EMPIRE
In 1911, after two years of discussion, the German empire introduced
in Imperial tax upon the unearned increment. This law imposed a
progressive tax, increasing according to the percentage with the
increment board to the original value of the land. Then it took 10 of
the increment land that amounted to 10 per cent of the original value,
and increased 1 per cent for each additional 20 per cent of the
increment until it reached 19 per cent on increment ranging from 170
per cent to 190 per cent. From that point it increased 1 per cent for
every additional 10 per cent of the increment, until it reached 30 per
cent of all increments of 290 per cent and over.
This imperial tax was intended to unify the taxation of the unearned
increment throughout the empire and replaced the local increment
taxes. To compensate the cities for the revenue thus lost, the law
provided that 40 per cent of the product of the imperial increment tax
should be apportioned to the local governments; while the states were
given 10 per cent and the empire retained 50 per cent. Authority was
granted, however, to impose additional rates for local purposes; so
that some measure of local option was retained.
In 1913, under pressure of added military burdens, a readjustment of
imperial and state revenues was brought about. The unearned increment
tax was given back to the state and local governments, and for the
benefit of the imperial treasury a new tax, imposing a moderate rate
on all increments, earned as well as unearned, was established.
XII. GREAT BRITAIN
The now famous Lloyd George budget of 1909, which finally became a
law in 1910, imposed for different taxes upon land, which marked the
long step forward in the taxation of land values. The first, and most
discussed, was the so-called increment value duty. This imposes a tax
of 20 per cent upon land increment arising after 1909; which shall be
payable by the owner when land is sold, leased for more than fourteen
years, or transferred death. Land held by corporate bodies and not
changing hands shall pay the tax every fifteen years. The tax amounts
to 20 per cent of the increment that shall have accrued since 1909, or
the last time the tax shall have been paid. To carry the law into
effect it was necessary, of course, to provide for a full valuation of
all the land in Great Britain, in order to determine its value,
exclusive improvements, in the year 1909. This work is now under way;
and will result in a monumental survey comparable to the Doomsday
Book.
The second tax is the reversion duty, which imposes a tax of 10 per
cent on increment or benefit accruing to any lessor at the expiration
of a lease. Agricultural land is exempt, and leases for twenty-one
years or less are also exempted from the operation of the reversion
duty. Reversions purchased before 1909 are exempt provided the lease
expires within forty years from the date of purchase. Finally
provision is made that reversion duty shall not be paid in respect to
increment or benefit upon which increment value duty may have been
paid.
The third tax is the undeveloped land duty which is payable annually
by the owner of undeveloped land. It's rate is half penny in each
pound of the site value of such land, the value to be ascertained in
1909 and each fifth year thereafter; and proper allowance will be made
for increments of value upon which increment duty may have been paid.
Land is to be considered undeveloped if not built on or used for some
business other than agriculture. Various exemptions are granted, for
instance, to land, the site value of which does not exceed £50
per acre, land kept free from buildings in pursuance of some definite
plan of development, and parks, gardens, or open spaces to which the
public has access.
The fourth tax is the mineral rights duty, which is levied annually
at the rate of 5 per cent on money received by owners for the right to
work minerals and for way-leaves. If the owner works the minerals
himself, he is required to pay upon what he might have received in
rents or royalties.
Since the land valuation has not yet been completed the financial
importance of these new taxes cannot be determined. They are very
important, however, in establishing a principle and in requiring a
valuation all land of Great Britain. When the valuation is completed
it is the intention of the tax reformers to move for a reform of local
taxation, by which local rates shall be levied exclusively upon land
values.
XIII. UNITED STATES
Much progress has been made along administrative lines toward the
exemption of improvements. Legislation, moreover, has been enacted in
Colorado and Pennsylvania. In 1913 the city of Pueblo, Colorado,
taking advantage of the whole rule amendment of 1912, amended its
charter so as to provide for the exemption of improvements to the
extent of 50 per cent of first-year and 99 per cent thereafter. In
1913 Pennsylvania pass a law, which applies to Pittsburgh and
Scranton, providing for the eventual reduction of the rate on
improvements by one-half.
While further advance of the movement in the United States is
handicapped in most states by legislative constitutional restrictions,
it is probably true that a larger percentage of ground rent is
reclaimed by the community through taxation in the states of
Massachusetts and New York than in any other territory in the world.
To get in contrast with these gradual British and colonial
attainments, the record of the United States for actual achievement is
a comparative blank. This condition in the birthplace and home of the
great expounder himself is not easy to account for, except insofar as
constitutional requirements of uniformity prevent experiment. In
England the fact that the land question has long been far more acute
that it is in the United States has had much to do with the more rapid
progress of the single tax. The concentration of land ownership in
England is unparalleled in the United States. The irritating attaining
spectacle of enormous entailed estates, with large areas held for game
preserves, and the practical exemption of land from all local
taxation, has fomented a state of public opinion favorable to single
tax ideas. In the British colonies, the movement for the single tax
may be explained in part by reference to the peculiar texture of the
colonial mind. The colonists are extremely hospitable to new
considerations in receptive to new conclusions, and if only they
appear to be sound. Charged with building new dominions, they
unconsciously join hands for the realization of what seemed to them
the best things in government and state.
More important, however, than any other factor in the practical
results of the two cases is the difference between the English and the
American methods of procedure. In the British Empire the voters begin
at once to discuss among themselves and within themselves the
advantages of the land tax, and straightaway, by the very cohesion of
a common thought, they set about to get it with, as it were, one heart
invoice, by enactment of land laws. In this country the voters are of
a different type; they are mostly too busy to concern themselves with
making even their own laws. Consequently the cause has been consigned
to scattered organizations, which have proceeded to discuss the
theoretical possibilities and impossibilities and probabilities of
every phase of the land tax question, combined with other questions
more or less related, to the end of the catalogue. To a world
hungering to know of the doctrine of Henry George a great and
efficient lecture bureau bearing his name offers, in a prospectus of
41 lecturers with eight topics that are pure single tax and ninety-two
that are not, a composite menu of such conflicting merit, taste, and
relevancy that most of the inquiring guests leave the table with small
desire to come again. Mr. Thomas G. Shearman lamented that "in
all times it has been the misfortune of reforms that some of their
advocates have made it impossible for others to do any effective work
for them, for considerable periods..... At this time the professed
friends of every reform in which I am much interested have insisted
upon mixing it with retrograde movements or have adopted a policy of
bitterness and vituperation or have thrown it entirely overboard."
This hectic discussion which, it must be admitted, does not enlist a
mind of the serious English type, has been perpetual in club, in
league, on lecture platform, by spokesman and organs, until the
conclusion seems unavoidable that in American centers the more
numerous the militant single taxes, the less progress toward the
single tax. The record to date in our own country, adjoining the very
domains of greatest advance, presents an unenviable contrast. Thus, at
the end of a quarter of a century succeeding the George revival that
followed his candidacy for mayor of New York in 1886, there is no
organized body of people in the United States pledged to the
propagation of his doctrine as he taught it. So far as these sporadic
methods have prevailed, some have been a positive hindrance and
detriment because they have accomplished nothing upon their own
desultory lines, but -- what is of infinitely greater import -- they
have, by keeping the cause in discredit with the mass of thoughtful
people, estopped anything akin to the English movement. Perhaps one of
the greatest impediments to the popular consideration of the single
tax is the misconception that it involves the abolition of the
institution of private property in land. In this connection is
significant to observe that in not of the "achievements"
noted above has the economic argument for the proposed tax reform been
tainted with any suggestion for the disruption of the private
ownership of land.
If any one thing is prominently in the evidence, it is that the
formal combination of the single tax with political action and methods
has been uniformly disastrous to the single tax. When Progress and
Poverty was scarcely three years old, its author, under the auspices
of Patrick Ford and the Irish World, was drafted into the service of
the Irish National Land League to share with Parnell and Davitt and
Dillon and O'Kelly their platform, arrest, and jail, in an Irish
maelstrom that ended in Fenian outrages, with later an inside view of
two Irish bastiles until Henry George wrote, "The whole situation
is very bad in perplexing. The Land League on both sides of the water
seems to me to be smashed." Meantime the "remedy" of
Henry George, as applied in book VIII of Progress in Poverty, had not
been at all in issue. Henry George was called to Ireland, not to
preach union upon his own peculiar doctrine, but to boom conflicting
views of nationalization by purchase, abolition without compensation,
etc. "With all leaders saved Davitt and Brennan hostile to him in
principle, Henry George felt increasingly lonely in the Irish
movement." Not a point was scored then or since for the single
tax, in respect to which the Irish movement to date has been a
retrogression rather than an advance.
In this case of Ireland, Mr. George and his Progress and Poverty
were widely advertised, but this advantage, such as it was, was far
more than offset by a lowered moral plane, especially when a fresh
single-tax "flag for all nations" was bedraggled in the
mire. It is difficult to see how this Irish experience could have
otherwise than marred the prestige of Progress in Poverty and
its author, who was at this time "next to Gladstone the most
talked of man in England," and at this sober distance we may be
excused for sympathizing with his venerable parents, whom he was
called to mourn at this time. "They had died when their son Henry
was getting, so far as they could see, as much blame as praise from
the world. The peril of the single tax in England today, as it was in
Ireland, lies in trying prematurely to make it a political issue,
instead of letting it win its own way.
The supreme political event in Mr. George's life was, of course, and
his first candidacy for mayor of New York. The labor unions united
upon him, not as a single-tax candidate on a single-tax platform, but
in the hope that his fame might win out for them. Roosevelt had 60,000
votes and George had 68,000, while Hewitt obtained 90,000 and was
elected. The failure to receive a majority of votes did not represent
all of Mr. George's loss. He lost infinitely more through campaign
misrepresentation, vituperation, and distortion of his doctrine by
ignorant but well-meaning friends as well as by foes. It must be a
bold historian who would venture to say that Henry George and his
cause stood any higher with a world after than before this bitter
campaign.
Again, the following year found him the hopeful candidate of the
United Labor Party for Secretary of State, in confusion in conflict,
especially with socialist persons and parties. The Republican and
Democratic candidates, without particular canvass, received 459,000
and 480,000 votes, respectively. Mr. George, with a thorough canvass,
received 72,000 for the state and 38,000 for the city of New York as
again 68,000 only a year before. This inflation and collapse, in one
short year, of a political party movement, did not look like victory
for a great economic truth, and yet the confident assertion was made
that the "hand of the Lord" was in it. No one recalled that
the lord was not in the whirlwind or in the earthquake or in the fire,
but in "a still small voice;" no one protested that in order
to usher in a heavily reform it was not necessary first to "raise
hell."
The Delaware campaign begun in 1895, in which Philadelphia, with the
cooperation Mr. George, Mr. Garrison, and the leading speakers of the
cause, aided by liberal contributions in money, essayed for more than
two years to carry that state by election, for the single tax proved a
disappointment and has had no effect upon subsequent legislation. The
year 1897 found Mr. George again a candidate for mayor of New York,
but upon a platform in which his own peculiar doctrine was not given
the recognition of even a single plank. Henry George's campaign was
ended by his death, to which his friends sought he was foredoomed,
while the most confident predictions of the great profit, as well as
of many a minor profit, still lacked fulfillment, and indeed remain
lamentable unrealized to this day.
Recently political methods have once more been invoked in connection
with the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of most generous money
and much vigorous and unselfish effort by speakers and organizers to
carry elections in Missouri, Washington, Oregon, and other parts of
the country. With what result? -- that today in those regions the
press is closed and the farmers' minds are closed, and that both will
be so much the harder to open in the future. Can any Englishman be
blamed for concluding that if Canada had been subjected for the last
twenty years to the mode or procedure which has prevailed in the
States, she would not now stand as she does at the head of the
single-tax column?
We have thus passed in brief review a series of vigorous American
political movements extending over thirty hopeful years, and yet
today, while gratifying economic harvests are being reaped upon
British soils that have been patiently and yet quietly tilled, not an
achievement is registered for the American method, which so far has
consisted mainly in lining men up on every other issue except the
specific teaching of Henry George.
In conclusion, it cannot be gainsaid that the political method as a
means of putting the single tax on the statute books has been
abundantly tried and found wanting, and the reasons for its failure
are not far to seek. Voters cannot be persuaded to decree an important
legislative innovation which they do not fully understand and
concerning which it is easy for the opposition, in the heat of the
campaign, to deceive or confuse the mind. Moreover, the inevitable
mingling of extraneous issues and personal interests with the economic
point which is sought to be enforced, is certain so to obscure the
single tax in any political contest that it must fail to obtain the
consideration necessary to a fair verdict at the polls.
So much for what ought not to have been done; and now what is it that
ought to be done? In answer, it may be said that the sum total of
experience in the thirty years under review enforces the conviction
that the persistent education of the masses and the classes -- by
word-of-mouth and still more effectively by the printing press -- upon
the pure issue of the single tax as the normal and just basis for
obtaining public revenue, is the true means and method of advancing
this or any other great reform. To sow the clean seed broadcast and to
give time an opportunity for its unforced growth in receptive minds,
this is the one irresistible, because unresisted, modus operandi
-- this is the surest as well as shortest path to the triumph of that
economic justice which will solve our economic problems.
FOOTNOTES
- The facts concerning Canada
have been taken largely from the "Vancouver number" of
the Single Tax Review, May-June, 1912 (150 Nassau St, New
York); and Provincial and Local Taxation in Canada, by S. Vineberg
(New York, 1912).
- On Alberta, in addition to
references previously given, see Single Tax Review,
September-October, 1911.
- See the "New Zealand
number" of the Single Tax Review, September-October,
1912, and Land Values, June, 1915.
- Papers Relative to the
Taxation of the Unimproved Value of Land in New Zealand, New South
Wales, and South Australia, Cd. 3191 (1906).
- Land Values, p. 19 (June,
1915).
- See article by Dr. W.
Schrameier in Single Tax Review, March-April, 1911.
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