All Canada's public land with its timber, minerals and water, not only in Alberta but also in her sister province of Saskatchewan, in Manitoba and the unorganized Northwest Territory, is held by the Dominion Government as public property and is not for sale. "There isn't enough money in all England or the United States to buy a single acre," says Mr. Oliver, plainly. "The reason is that the Dominion wants citizens, not speculators." There are no land grants in Canada, either. Canada has seen "development by private enterprise" at work in the United States, and knows what it amounts to, and knows which side her bread is buttered on.

The moral influence of this policy is very striking. I had a particular interest in observing its educational effect on the thousands of our people who are moving over into Canada each year. It has given them a clear idea of that fundamental doctrine of democracy, the right of public property.

It is a brand-new experience for our emigrant settlers, for there is no such doctrine anywhere in the United States. The Constitution is iron-clad on the right of private property, but none of our constitution-builders except Franklin and Jefferson seemed to catch any glimmering of the correlated right of public property. It never got into our documents, never came to be part of our thought, and hence none of us ever considered it seriously or perhaps ever realized that such a right existed.

Possibly - such are the vices of our education - nine persons out of ten who read this article may have to make a conscious effort to realize that there is a natural difference between property in land, minerals, timber, water powers, etc., and property, say, in a house or a suit of clothes.

But in Canada, laid deep in the foundation of this new civilization and woven into the opinion of the people, is the doctrine that land and its resources, by whomsoever used or developed, is public property.

And now on top" of this comes the tax policy of the Province of Alberta, teaching the great truth that a community, like an individual, should live on what it earns.

Land is public property; therefore the use of land is a governmental privilege. Canada's general land policy teaches that. Well, then, Alberta simply chooses to live on the income of her privileges. She does not beg or filch from her citizens by taxing their property. She leads a self-respecting life. She had but one subject of taxation -- her land.

It seems reasonable. Governments all apparently expect their individual units to live on what they earn. Why shouldn't governments try the same thing themselves, by way of a good example? Alberta does.

When our citizens are asked to contribute under the general property tax, I often wonder that it does not occur to them to ask "Why should I pauperize the government? Why should I give part of my earnings to support a government that has resources enough of its own to take care of itself twice over?"

Some of our correspondents think we are very mawkish in our disinclination to curse the tax-dodgers. They think we should have pilloried the big corporations that do not pay their personalty tax, and that we ought to haul Mr. Carnegie over the coals. Still, it is rather a grave thing to run lightly amuck at a fundamental instinct of human nature. Each of us has the notion pretty well ingrained in him that he is entitled to keep all he earns. I have it; so have you. Probably Mr. Carnegie has it, and Altman's bondholders or Park & Tilford's, whoever they may be. And the instinct is right - that is the reason why no other theory of taxation except Alberta's will ever be found to work. Whether we fully realize it or not, every time the government bilks us of some share of our rightful earnings, whether by the property tax or the income tax or the excise or the tariff or by this new sweet scheme of taxing corporations, our plain, natural sense of justice is offended, and we will dodge if we can. There is no use trying to argue a legal right into a moral right ; human nature is too old for that. The fact is that we will get out of it whenever we can because we know we have a moral right to keep all we earn, and a very little thought will show us that the community also has an equally valid right to keep all it earns.

Alberta says to her citizens: "Here is land with its potential wealth. What gives value to it is the number of persons who want it. Help yourself. All you make out of it is yours -- no tax on property, industry, production or labor. Pay simply what the demand (the number of people who want it) determines the privilege is worth. If you can make ten million dollars we won't begrudge you a single dollar; and if you want to put up a house built of silver or gold, we won't tax it a cent. But whether you choose to work this privilege or leave it idle, you will pay in either case just what it is worth."

The policy of the United States, on the other hand, has always been, and still is, to alienate her resources into private hands, and deprive herself of their income. The laws embodying this policy are still in force. The United States invited speculators, got them, fixed up a comfortable tax policy to suit them (e.g., the Astor family and Trinity Church in New York City, the railroads and the Weyerhaeusers in the Pacific Northwest), and we, the rank and file of the disinherited, pay the bills. The United States is in the position of one who throws away his own resources and lives on his friends. This is sponging, and sponging is unpopular and degrading. How is it dignified by being transferred from men to governments?

The Province of Alberta invites citizens, gets them, and pays her own bills out of her own income without passing the hat for help. The Province of Alberta exemplifies collective self-respect in levying no tax except against the private use of public property.

Such, in briefest outline, is Alberta's tax policy. One would like to believe that she worked it out by careful economic study, but to tell the truth, she drifted into it by accident. Alberta was erected into a province only five years ago. Her first legislature knew no more about taxation than legislatures ever do, but in leafing over some old Territorial legislation they found these provisions, thought they were worth trying and took them over.

No one knows who put them into the Territorial statutes. Rumor and fable have been busy as they always are with the origins of any great success, but the fact undoubtedly is that land was taxed in Territorial days because there was nothing else to tax. There was nothing to the Northwest at that time but land and air, and since the air was not assessable, the land was the only thing that held any prospect of revenue.

In other words, by good luck and good management, Alberta shows the development of an almost purely natural system of taxation.

Admirable as Alberta's policy is, she does not insist upon her cities and towns adopting it. She gives them the largest liberty to work out their own experiments. Under the Village Act her smallest communities may raise their revenues to suit themselves. Most of them, however, have fallen in with her system; and foremost among these is the capital city of Edmonton.

Edmonton too, like the province, got her economic education largely by accident. She began with taxes on "improvements," on business and on incomes. She gave up the income tax because she could not get at the income of her richest citizens; the business tax passes out this year because the spirit of the place has been educated beyond it, and her improvement tax disappeared on account of a collision with the Hudson's Bay Company.

When the Company was incorporated in 1670, King Charles II granted them territorial rights that extended virtually over all outdoors - rights that have arisen to plague the Dominion Government time out of mind, until they were for the most part bought out. One block of the Company's remaining land, however, turned up in the very, center of Edmonton.

The Company played the old familiar game of forestalling. They did not use the land, would not sell it, would not do anything with it but patiently hold it until the influx of population into Edmonton had sufficiently enhanced its value.

There the land lay like an ounce of putty in a dyspeptic's stomach. As Edmonton grew, it had to grow around this unassimilated center. All the public utilities were intolerably strained. Sewers, water-pipes, gas-pipes, wires, street-car tracks, all had to stretch around the Company's reserve.

It was a fearfully expensive business, and Edmonton had the wit to see that while she was pa)ring all the bills, the Company was getting all the benefit. Edmonton shortly decided that if the Company wanted to play dog-in-the-manger with that land, they were welcome to the privilege, but they must pay for it. So she exempted her improvements and laid her whole realty assessment against the capital value of land. As population enhanced this value year by year, the Company's tax bill grew until last year, with great complaint and vexation, they sent the assessor a check for $74,445.10. Realizing that by another year the bill would come to $100,000 or more, the Company gave up and decided to put the land on the market.

Out of this simple and universal experience, Edmonton worked out for herself an incalculable economic benefit and a far more important and valuable economic education.

There is not a city in the United States that has not had Edmonton's initial misfortune, and not one but that under freedom of the taxing power could have coped with it as Edmonton did. But our constitutional restraint upon the taxing power operates wholly in favor of speculation, wholly against industry, and our cities are helpless.

Consider, for example, Detroit, Mich. The site of Detroit used to be farmed by a commonplace type of Canadian French who lived on peacefully in a humdrum way until the city came and gave their realty holdings a rousing value. Two farms called the Brush and Cass farms, lying on either side of Detroit's main thoroughfare, were held persistently out of use. The city's growth had to sidestep them or jump over them, thereby straining public utilities (and only those who have lived out Woodward Avenue know how they are strained) mightily increasing the burden of general taxation, inconveniencing everyone, causing the city to grow out of all symmetry -- a sheer case of private benefit at public cost. These pieces of land remained utterly useless until some one could be coaxed out of the right amount of premium required to use them.

If the unused land in Detroit's present area were put under intensive cultivation, it would more than support her population. Unlikely as it seems. New York's would very nearly support hers. Few realize that nearly fifty per cent of New York's area is unused land.

Well, the remedy appears simple -- why not tax it into use? Edmonton did.

First, because we have no constitutional freedom of the taxing power. The Supreme Court would like nothing better than to get a chance at a proposition like Edmonton's. Then, second, we have had no Secretary of the Interior like Mr. Oliver to teach us that land and its resources are public property. Again, we have no British Columbia to show us how to shift the burden of taxation from industry to idleness. Finally, we have no Alberta to give us an example of communal self-respect in living on its own earnings.

No, we have been "going by the Constitution," assuming that the only test of private property is the ability to get our hands on it; and meanwhile our federal, state and municipal governments are contentedly pauperized by a general-property tax.

It is a disgrace. Say what one likes about patriotism, one can feel no great pride in belonging to the only civilized country in the world that mulcts its citizens by a general-property tax. It is unreasonable to expect it.

If Canadian reciprocity would only enable us to trade off our practical politicians for public servants and legislators like Frank Oliver at a ratio of sixteen to one, we might look for a beginning of better things. It is a pleasure to believe that our new Secretary, Mr. Fisher, will find Mr. Oliver's statesmanship a most congenial study.

Alberta's tax system and Edmonton's, excellent as they are, are not yet perfect. There is one weak place in them which will shortly be remedied. This weakness may be perceived by means of the following anecdote:

The weakness of Edmonton's system (and the same is true of Alberta's provincial system) is shown in letting the market value of that lot, which is not centrally located, go up $20,000 in three months when there was nothing substantial to justify such an increase.

Edmonton, by maybe a little stretching, has 30,000 population. She covers seventeen sections of land, nearly half a township. The Hudson's Bay holding helps largely, of course. Now the point is that if Mr. O'Meara had bought this lot, there is not near population enough or business enough in Edmonton to justify his making any present use of it (say, in the way of putting up a building) that would be commensurate with the price of his land.

In other words, $35,000 for that lot is a valuation far and away ahead of the present time, and $55,000 looks ahead a great deal farther still.

These values are speculative, not actual. They do not represent the worth of the land's present use. They are a mortgage on the future, a discount on the prosperity of the whole community. In short, like Vancouver, Calgary and all these rapidly growing towns, Edmonton is overcapitalized. The capital value of her land is more than it is worth.

Hence Edmonton realizes that she needs one more feature in her tax system and she is on her way to get it. The Province of Alberta realizes the same need and she too will shortly have it.

Edmonton needs to change her basis of assessment, and assess against the rental value of her land instead of against its capital value. Alberta, which as yet needs little money and contents herself with levying merely an acreage tax, will shortly make the same readjustment.

The change is assured because this region is free -- and it is the only region I ever saw that was free - from the superstition that what is known as "the real-estate business" is the index of prosperity.

People believe this, I suppose, on somewhat the same theory that induces certain hungry savages to swallow earth. Speculative values are no real asset to a community because the only thing that land is good for is to use. If Mr. O'Meara had bought that lot for $3S,ooo and sold it three months later for $55,000, he would simply have capitalized future annual land rentals to the amount of $20,000; hence, he would have appropriated $20,000 from the general fund of Edmonton's land rent He would not have earned a penny of it -- as he himself so handsomely admitted - and the community which probably would earn it some time in the future would have lost the money.

It is worse policy to overcapitalize a town than a railroad -- and Heaven knows that is bad enough. You may catch up to your capitalization in time, and then again you may not. Plenty of land booms have "busted" and some are bursting now. And when you do catch up, the money is not there; some thrifty landowner has absorbed it. Meanwhile, you find that fictitious valuations are a fearfully troublesome asset to live up to. They increase your borrowing power, true, but this again is a snare, for if you were not overcapitalized you would not need to borrow. Figuratively, your city has to do a four-track business over a single-track road and scamp repairs and operating expenses in order to keep up to its capitalization.

But let us suppose, if we can, that Alberta's tax policy, even as it stands, had been in effect in Washington and Oregon. Would the Northern Pacific be holding for speculation three million acres of timber land worth between $100 and $200 per acre - land which it acquired mostly for nothing and now holds practically tax-free?

Would it be holding for speculation millions of acres of agricultural and mineral land on the same terms?

Would the Weyerhaeusers be holding for speculation 96,000,000,000 feet of standing timber in the Pacific Northwest; would the Southern Pacific be holding 106,000,000,000 feet, while their henchmen howl against the Government for "retarding development" and "tying up our natural resources" in the National Reserve?

Hardly.

If Detroit could have taxed the Brush and Cass farms into use, would she not be a better and richer city to-day? If Portland, Ore., could treat the holdings of her mayor and a few of his political cronies as Edmonton treated the holdings of the Hudson's Bay Company, would she not be indefinitely better off? If Seattle's land values -- but O my soul, let's draw the veil of merciful silence over those!

Our States and cities cannot save themselves from the sinister consequences of over-capitalization, on account of the constitutional restraint upon the taxing power. True, without it they might not save themselves for a long time to come on account of our protracted training in the idea that land is private property. But the abolition of constitutional restraint upon the taxing power is the first step in our education, and without it we can do nothing and learn nothing.

The Province of Alberta, the city of Edmonton, and a multitude of smaller places in Canada are merely examples of the course that all communities will take when they are free to follow their economic education.

The right of public property and the right of collective self-respect - these two principles distinguish the Province of Alberta. These conceptions are essential to democracy. There is no doing without them. Direct legislation, commission government and so forth, which are interesting us just now, are all very well in their way, but they are politics and politics is machinery. You cannot run democratic machinery with feudalistic steam. A people that will tolerate a feudalistic exercise of the taxing power cannot express itself in permanent or powerful democratic institutions. It has nothing to express. But where there is a correct theory of taxation, where there is a current doctrine of public property, as in the Province of Alberta, it is impossible for any but democratic institutions to flourish.

For instance, in Alberta and the other portions of Canada where these two ideas have taken root -- the right of public property and the right of corporate self-respect -- they run up logically into a very large practice of public ownership. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba swept out the Bell Monopoly and operate their own telephones over immense stretches of rural district. The service is excellent and very cheap. Grain elevators and certain slaughterhouses are operated as public utilities. The cities largely operate their own franchises, including trolley cars. The Saskatchewan Legislature is contemplating an ambitious measure of leasing back all its coal and water powers from the general government and using them in a comprehensive scheme for the ownership and distribution of heat, light and power throughout the province. The people are free-traders from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains. The Grain Growers, meeting recently at Regina, demanded straight free trade and a Dominion-wide policy of land-value taxation.

Yet the people do not call themselves Socialists or any such high-sounding name. I have not once heard the word Socialism. They seem to be unconscious that they are doing anything unusual. The officials of the Province of Alberta are astonished at the floods of inquiry that pour in on them from all parts of the United States. They conceive of themselves as doing only the natural thing, the simple and reasonable thing, and they are amazed that it could create so much interest and be thought so revolutionary.

Summing up our brief investigation, we find that the general government of Canada exhibits:

1. Constitutional freedom of the taxing power.
2. The right of public property, British Columbia exhibits.
3. The partial exemption of industry and production. Alberta exhibits
4. The entire exemption of industry.
5. The doctrine of communal solvency and self-respect, in levying no tax whatever except against the private use of public property - against the rent of a delegated monopoly.