.

CHAPTER XV
RETROSPECT

THE excess of annual land value over the cost of government was early recognized by Single Taxers and caused a sharp division among them.

The original associates of Henry George succeeded to his leadership and contended that private property in land was unjust and insisted that justice demanded that the full annual value of land was public property and should be taken in taxation.

A numerous body of Mr. George's admirers did not agree with his startling declaration in Progress and Poverty that "private property in land is unjust" (which he, by the way, modified before his death) and have disassociated themselves from the old cult.

The error of Henry George was his failure to observe individual participation in the services of government by the taxpayers. They as individuals, and not as a population, pay their respective proportions of the general tax. Also, they as individuals, and not as a population, make their demands for land, and the sum of their demands makes the total land value of every community, which Mr. George loosely attributed to "population." The individual is not merged in the population. Each taxpayer earns the excess of land value that attaches to his lot which he is entitled to have and to hold as he is any form of personal property as the product of his personal labor.

The excess of annual value of land over the cost of government is thus distributed by the same rule that justifies the law of personal property right, viz.: That self-ownership, or personal liberty, can only be secured by recognizing the inalienable right of every person to the product of his own labor. His labor, that is the exercise of his mind and body, is his to enjoy; to sell; to hire; to keep or give away as he may freely choose.

Investment in land is a voluntary individual participation in the association of persons known as a state or city, and by a law that is as certain as the law of gravitation; association in state and municipal government is profitable to the members. The values made by the expenditure of taxes are greater than the cost. Government, economically administered, is found to be, not a necessary evil as some pessimists complain, but a necessary good. This is the law of human association and wherever formed the profit, material and real, is seen in the excess of the annual rental value of the land over the levy of taxation. And this profit is distributed justly and in perfect accord with the principle of equal rights to each landowner according to his participation in the general tax.

Instead of private property in land being found unjust, the application of a Single Tax on land values emphasizes the absolute right of private ownership in land and to the exclusive enjoyment of personal occupancy, with immunity from trespass by any other person, or, by all other persons.

The use, or non-use, he makes of it he alone determines. If he builds, it is his without the least diminution by interference or intrusion of government. For the government that is maintained by the Single Tax on land values will take no part of the values of his buildings or the personal property therein. The Single Tax on the annual rental of the land, amounting to less than one-half of this value, is all the government requires. And apart from enforcing order, sanitary use and conformity to building and zoning ordinances, enjoining nuisances and exercising eminent domain, the government has no business to enter upon or direct the owner in his use of his land. It is his against the world. No other system of taxation expresses this principle of indefeasible property right. The Single Tax is the scientific tax, satisfying justice, and in harmony with the democratic doctrine of equal rights to all men, which is the cornerstone of an ideal free state.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE ERROR OF HENRY GEORGE

IN Chapter I, of Book III in "Progress and Poverty," Henry George treats of the Laws of Distribution and Their Necessary Relations. And he says: "In all politico-economic works we are told that the three factors in production are land, labor and capital, and that the whole produce is primarily distributed into three corresponding parts: Rent to landowners -- wages to labor -- and interest to capital."

In adopting this statement Henry George, and all the politico-economists before and after him, make a fundamental error in omitting the largest and most important factor in production, viz.: Government, and its corresponding part, in the distribution of the whole produce, viz.: Taxation. This omission by Henry George was strangely deliberate. He considered the factor of taxation, and determined to leave it out. In the same chapter he says: "It is, further, a matter of fact that in every community which has passed the most primitive stage some portion of the produce is taken in taxation and consumed by government. But it is not necessary, in seeking the laws of distribution, to take this into consideration." And then he says: "After we have discovered the laws of distribution we can then see what bearing, if any, taxation has upon them."

This initial blunder led to its fatal reductio ad absurdum, "that private property in land is unjust." It is the way logic disproves a false proposition.

The error of Henry George is the more remarkable as he "discovered" in taxation the convenient and effective remedy for the alleged injustice of private ownership of land which he had inevitably demonstrated by his very logical deduction from an incomplete premise.

Although the absolute necessity and, therefore, the justice of private property in land is a self-evident truth, permit me to give a special reason for it:

Private property in land is essential to self-ownership or personal liberty. A man cannot own himself unless he has immunity from trespass in a place to live either as owner of the land or as owner of a lease to land. If as a tenant, it is necessary that he hold under the true holder of the title to the land.

For self-ownership there must be a place known as a lot or parcel of ground where a man can say: "Here I am free, this is my right." If a tenant, he is free from intrusion or trespass by the landlord himself, or even by government, which must proceed by due process of law to enter the sanctuary of his home. 'The king himself and all his men" cannot cross his threshold without his consent. The right of eminent domain, that is the sovereign right to take private property for a public necessity, can only be exercised by careful legal procedure and predicated upon an offer of full compensation to the owner.

No state could exist without recognizing this right in every one of its citizens.

It is primarily the prerequisite to the enjoyment of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Personal property depends upon it, for the owner must have a place to put it immune from trespass.

To say that titles to land are voidable because historically many of them were written in the blood of those dispossessed is really an acknowledgment that the one dispossessed by force was deprived of his right. To further question his right is to argue in a circle.

Human liberty was achieved by successful resistance to tyrants unto blood; shall we surrender our heritage of freedom because our fathers died, and dying killed to make us free? Communism and socialism may question personal freedom, but these noisy dreamers are only talking in their delirium!

Henry George was not one of these. He simply blundered in a splendid human effort to lead men to the truth.

He thought he saw a difference between the cause of land value and the value of commodities. Certainly Labor and Capital do not make the earth, the sea or air. But they do make all commodities out of the earth, and they do build roads that form the earth's surface into habitable blocks and sections of land which are as surely products of labor as are cut stones, pressed bricks, concrete and lumber.

Henry George erred in this and he also erred in attributing the origin of land value to such a general and indefinite thing as "population." All things may be loosely said to be made by population, that is people, but the making of them is by individuals. Henry George could logically trace the making of commodities to the personal demand of each individual, and so justify personal property in his commodities as the product of his labor, yet he failed to trace by the same line of reasoning the individuals demand as actually producing the blocks of ground, or the building lot on the block, that he buys with his wages and so holds as the product of his labor.

He erred in not seeing that the taxpayer is identified on the tax books as a participant in the fund from which those employed by the government were paid to extend the roads or streets that formed the block which he selects as the place on which he builds the inviolable sanctuary of his home. The land value that he holds was produced by him as truly as was the house and the personal property therein. So the radical difference in the origin of these respective values that Henry George thought he saw does not exist.

This very simple truth was overlooked by him, and his rather loose use of the word "population" unhappily satisfied a strong predilection for common ownership of land to which he was committed in his writings published prior to "Progress and Poverty."

The Great Importance of the Factor of Taxation

By leaving out taxation as a factor in the laws of distribution of the whole product of wealth, Henry George logically created the alleged evil of private ownership of land, and by then discovering taxation as a remedy for the alleged evil, he simply restored this factor to the place he had refused to give it in his premise. The harm he did was not corrected by his application of the adopted remedy.

Having demonstrated what he called the injustice of private ownership of land, he must forsooth maintain his thesis by insisting that it is not sufficient that enough of the annual value of land be taken to meet the requirements of good government, but more than enough, indeed all, or nearly all, so that the bare right of absolute possession, of which he recognized the necessity, be not disturbed. This was inconsistent in that it admitted the human necessity of a clear title to land and then deprived the owner of the right to enjoy it. And he justified the absurd policy of wasting the excess of rental value of land over the cost of government, rather than that the taxpayer should retain it. No wonder his scheme of accomplishing public ownership by exacting the full rental value of the land, miscalled the Single Tax, has been regarded as an inarticulate and hazy dream.

It is interesting to note that the adoption of the Single Tax in Western Canada was not promoted by Henry George or his successors, who, while they have assumed authoritative leadership of the so-called Single Tax movement, are simply impractical literary exponents of land communism. The great rise in the value of land in Vancouver and the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia that followed the adoption of the Single Tax, was a sore disappointment to Henry George, Jr., and his associates. They openly repudiated the wonderful experience of Western Canada as not being the kind of Single Tax they preached, which would not satisfy their theory until the rental value of land would all be taken from the individual taxpayers, and that without the least practical suggestion of what they would do with the excess of rental value over the cost of government! This manifest absurdity is demonstrated in the mere statement of it.

Wherever the Single Tax has been partially or wholly adopted this so-called authoritative leadership has been quietly ignored. Their extreme views so widely propagated have greatly frustrated the consideration of the Single Tax as a fiscal reform.

If ever "truth" was "crushed to earth," the great cardinal truth of the Single Tax has so suffered at the hands of its professed authoritative protagonists.

It is to rescue the truth from a jumble of truth and error, that this little book is written.

Right here I want to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Henry George. He, more than any other man, opened the way for the Single Tax on land values. The truth that his heart revealed is not destroyed by his manifest error. He will be remembered for his greatness of soul, his self-giving love for humanity and his powerful presentation of the vital importance of a just system of taxation. And if, like dear Oom Peter Grim, he should return, I believe he would gladly admit his error and approve the rude correction I am offering to his splendid contribution to mankind.