They Who Control Land Control Capital

Selim N. Tideman

[An article that first appeared in the St. Louis Mirror.
Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, July-August 1915]

When, in the division of wealth, land monopoly takes all that labor produces, save the living, it takes the capital produced; thus the capital becomes monopolized too, and rent will naturally be charged for its use, the same as for land. When the use of a particular piece of land or capital is contracted for, the payment is generally called rent, but when the bargain is for a blank order on the market, that is to say * 'money,'* the charge is called interest. Both are essentially the same; it is a monopoly charge, and this in Political Economy is covered by the term "Rent." The root of the power thus to tax is the monopoly of the land. Without that monopoly the capital produced would all go to the producers, and as they are the users of it, the power to charge them interest on what they themselves produced, would be at an end. Capital they could then produce without limit; and it would be theirs. Whoever controls the land controls the capital, and herein is labor's only salvation.