Do We Make Our Meaning Clear?

Hugo W. Noren

[Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, 1921]

Editor Single Tax Rbvibw: Part of a store window I use as a bulletin board. I paste thereon clippings from the Single Tax Review, Fairhope Courier, Johnstown Democrat, the Public, etc. I exclude everything except Single Tax stuff. I never use even Single Tax matter if it has the word socialism in it. So far as I know the word socialism has never appeared in the window. Thousands of people have read what I have posted. As a direct result of these bulletins people generally in this vicinity call me a socialist.

If I had displayed woman's suffrage matter they would have called me an advocate of women's suffrage. If I had posted prohibition literature they would have called me a prohibitionist; in neither of the latter two cases would they have called me a socialist; but when I post Single Tax literature they conclude that I am a socialist. Does not this fact prove that our literature gives an absolutely contrary impression to what we intend it to give?

Like the socialists, we emphasize our common or equal rights: True, we state what are our equal rights, while the socialists do not but rather confuse them with private rights.

The public, however, sees no distinction. If we would turn face about and emphasize that private property is sacred, we would say by that that public property is sacred and would at one stroke distinguish between Single Tax and socialism. My property, the product of my toil, a part of my life time, of my brains and hands, is to me more sacred than even our equal inheritance. To take part of my property and devote it to public uses is truly to take part of my very life. It is wrong, it is the very essence of injustice. If we would preach that life is sacred and that as a consequence private property is sacred, we would appeal to the inborn justice of every man whereas the socialistic doctrine, which is confused with ours, violates that principle. Ours is the only philosophy that makes a true distinction between public and private property, but we so over emphasize the former that we are classed with those who make no distinction at all.