.
| The Thirty
Years of Henry George |
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:
[1] 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).
[2] On Alberta, in addition to references previously given, see Single
Tax Review, September-October, 1911.
[3]See the "New Zealand number" of the Single Tax Review,
September-October, 1912, and Land Values, June, 1915.
[4] Papers Relative to the Taxation of the Unimproved Value of Land in
New Zealand, New South Wales, and South Australia, Cd. 3191 (1906).
[5] Land Values, p. 19 (June, 1915).
[6] See article by Dr. W. Schrameier in Single Tax Review, March-April,
1911.
Preface
[] Adam Smith []
John Stuart Mill []
Patrick Edward Dove []
Edwin Burgess []
John MacDonnell []
Henry George []
Rev. Edward McGlynn []
Thomas G. Shearman []
Thomas G. Shearman
(continued) [] Single Tax
[] Land Rent []
Taxation and Housing
[] Thirty Years
of Henry George []
Henry George and
the Economists []
The Professors
and the Single Tax []
Q&A
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