The American Farmer and the Single Tax

J. Whidden Graham

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1927]

Perhaps the chief reason why, after nearly 50 years of agitation on behalf of the principles laid down in Progress and Poverty, there has been so little accomplished toward securing the adoption of the Single Tax, is the utter failure of its advocates to adjust their propaganda so as to insure its acceptance by the American farmer. While the application of the essential doctrines linked up by Henry George would unquestionably benefit the farmers more than any other class, the melancholy fact remains that only an infinitesimal fraction of the millions living and working on the land have been enlightened as to the nature of the changes that would be brought about in the economic structure of society by the shifting of taxation from productive industry. So far as practical results are concerned, it appears to one who is familiar with farmer sentiment in various regions of the country that the farmers know nothing, and care nothing, about the one effective remedy for all the evils of which they so loudly complain.

Looking back over the records of the past movements to convert the noble ideals of Henry George into reality, the impartial historian will be struck by the fact that these have all been practically city efforts, addressed to the factory and other workers of the cities and industrial centers. I am familiar with all of the various agitations promoted by zealous Single Taxers since 1889. With the single exception of the circulation of "Protection or Free Trade" by its publication as part of the Congressional Record, we have been about as far removed from the actualities of conditions to which they referred, as though they were addressed to the people of Mars.

Through a deep-rooted misunderstanding of the practical operations of the Single Tax, most of its advocates came to regard it as a solution of what was termed the "Labor Problem," which was generally narrowed down to the problem of the city workers. Of course there was no justification for this view of the relation of wise taxation to social and economic justice, but as nearly all the Single Taxers were city dwellers, their outlook was colored by their surroundings. Even to this day we hear the old story of the immense benefits to labor that would result from freeing vacant land for use, ignoring the very evident fact that the farmers, owning their land, are in a far more deplorable condition than most of the industrial workers. The one fact, that farm tenantry is increasing, either in the shape of rented farms, or of farms so heavily mortgaged that they are practically owned by the mortgagee, proves that access to land under present conditions does not mean prosperity.

I have never believed that there was the slightest chance of bringing about the adoption of the Single Tax by appeals to that imaginary creation "Labor." What labor? The members of trade unions are concerned only with their own selfish affairs, trying to shut out immigration, cut down the number of apprentices in their trade, and by strikes getting the highest possible wages. They care nothing about the farmers who feed and clothe them, nor would they be willing to give up a cent of the higher wages that have been made possible through oppressively high tariff taxes on what the farmer buys. As the boys used to say 40 years ago, it is time for the Single Taxers to "quit kidding" themselves into the belief that labor, organized or otherwise, will ever do anything to aid in abolishing special privileges that seem to help the industrial worker.

And here I wish to repeat that, despite the drooling of little mutual admiration societies the Single Tax has not in the United States exercised any perceptible effect on legislation relating to economic conditions. Here and there in some communities there may be trifling steps toward the concentration of taxation on land values, but as a practical proposition it does not exist. That in Denmark there has been some real progress is due almost entirely to the fact that the reform has been brought about by the small farmers, and not by the city workers.

Single Taxers might as well wake up to the fact that they have been working on wrong lines. Their patter about freeing labor by freeing vacant land doesn't touch the argicultural situation; which is; that in the past five years nearly 2,000,000 American farmers and farm workers have left the farms to get a living in the towns and cities. When workers in the building trades are getting from $12 to $15 per day, the average return to the farmers of the country is less than $3.00 per day. Of what use is it to try to convince labor that trade unions cannot permanently raise wages, when the facts of wage advances, beyond the increase in cost of living, are so apparent? I know all about the bunk of "prosperity" that is being so widely preached by a press that supports every form of privilege and extortion. There is mighty little real prosperity, even for the favorite ones of labor who are getting nominally high wages. But whatever of prosperity there may be for the urban dwellers, there is none for agriculture.

Here, then, is the real issue for those who have seen the vision of a social order based on justice and human brotherhood : How can we so present the case for the abolition of each and every form of monopoly and special privilege so that the farmers will understand and accept it? Any one who thinks that labor will give up its advocacy of tariff protection that seems to give it higher wages, is a deluded dreamer. Not thus are the workers of this country constituted. I am convinced that so far as getting anyways toward the Single Tax the industrial workers are as hopeless as are the direct beneficaries of protection and other forms of privilege. As well expect Judge Gary to give up extorting exorbitant prices for steel from the farmers!

Knowing the active Single Tax workers as I do, I say frankly that I do not expect that they will agree with me as to this diagnosis of the situation confronting those who hope for an early realization of their dreams of justice and fraternity. The futility of all the past organized efforts to promote a better knowledge of elementary economics should show the folly of continuing to work along the same lines. Possibly the case is one where dreamers of wonderful things to do, "all to be done by wishing we could", will prefer to hug the delusion that they are really doing something to promote the cause in which they profess to believe.