Civilizations, all down the ages, have slowly and painfully "carried on" a few hundred or a few thousand years and then passed into oblivion. Early historians record symptoms of their nation's decay; current writers declare we are traveling the same road ourselves. But what is fundamentally wrong they do not indicate.

We often hear the trite statement that ours is a "transition state." Ancient writers likewise made the same declaration as to their own times. Change is our normal condition whether we advance or recede.

But as a whole nations can advance in only two ways: individually and collectively: individually through thought and material inventions, collectively through mass movements led by chieftains, kings and other dictators.

Thus we have two kinds of conduct: individual conduct towards our fellow men and collective conduct which in primitive times is assumed by whatever headman there is. He casts the vote for all. But people grew restive and wanted to have a voice in their own collective conduct.

The Town Meeting was born and with it politics: the only method by which people can determine what their collective conduct shall be toward home and foreign states, corporations and individuals.

Now all down the ages individual progress is comparatively free. One man invents a crooked stick plow or a stone axe ; a woman discovers wool and invents the spindle and crude loom; other men and women copy and improve upon them. Thus the two wheel cart and chariot, the canoe and sail-boat started on their long journey to automobile and airplane of today. So with agriculture and building arts, every betterment could be copied and improved. Individual initiative was free. And the last 150 years have seen these magic mechanical inventions multiply with increasing speed.

But when we consider our collective conduct and activities, obstacles arise at every step. And when we come to the making of laws, constitutions, the setting up of courts of justice in whose power lies the happiness or misery of the whole people, the machinery or methods of determining what our collective conduct shall be are governed by past ages.

Centuries roll by. Astrology merges into Astronomy, alchemy grows into chemistry, chirurgery changes into surgery by individual action. But virtually the same principle of taxation we used today was used by Herod when he farmed out his taxing job.

Cuneform inscriptions on brick changed to writing on papyrus, on parchment to printing on paper; thought and then speech flew on wire till finally the magic wireless and radio! But landlords are still recording their titles and mortgages as safely as those on Assyrian tablets 430 B. C. now in the Pennsylvanian University.

\Ye have improved a thousand fold every individual invention of our ancient forbears; their collective ideals and actions, essentially unchanged, govern us to this day. With the antiquated traditions of the glory of war still permeating the public mind we have invented such perfect and deadly killing tools and chemical agencies as the ancients never dreamed of.

We are fighting the air too, before we have legally established our rightful relation to the earth. Advancement in the art of ascertaining what we would have our collective conduct be is infinitesimal and moves at the rate of a glacier.

We speak of "the march of civilization." Civilization to be able to walk, not to say march, should be fairly balanced with both feet on the ground. But alas! the leg of statecraft, or the art of collective action, stopped growth ages ago and hangs a helpless superfluity, while the leg of man-craft ingenuity and skill keeps right on growing. So civilization has to hop on one leg, making almost no progress at all.

We are suffering the horrible result of this static condition of state-craft, merely muddling through antiquated formula.

While in the feudal ages minstrels might sing the glory of battles and women celebrate the victories on tapestry, they were comparative innocent; they knew no better. We know better. On us be the guilt if we ever have another war. All thinking people know the ethics of tariffs. This summer for the first time the mask was removed from that piratical game. But solemnly Congress debated all summer the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill as if it were some scientific proposition. Before this country should again propose war we should demand from Congress a plebicite on the question.

Representative government as now manifest has proved a gigantic failure. We never know who any new candidate will be or do when he is elected. In these great cities it is purely a gamble to vote for representatives. But there is a fairly good chance that we can have some opinion on measures.

Now we Henry Georgists, many of us, would like to put his scientific plan into operation. This state (California) has a fairly good Initiative law. Oregon has another; Colorado has such a law, Missouri has one. Ohio has one, but not to be used on matters of taxation. South Dakota has an Initiative law but they never use it. On the whole California has one of the best of them all. Since and beginning in 1912 it has been used on a number of occasions. Ten years later it was invoked to slay itself.

Now I take it we all desire the best propaganda of our fundamental proposition.

Did any of you ever do Henry George propaganda work under the Initiative law? The first thing is to get your amendment ready that bone of contention. It should be short and clearly explanatory of the Single Tax in its simplest form. When this bill is legally drawn up and accepted by the authorities, you distribute your solicitors over various parts of the city. Already you have a line of publicity lasting some three months or till the first official filing in August. Then you speed up your work till the day of limitation. Meanwhile you have five hundred words of argument on your bill, printed in the voter's pamphlet, say two million copies sent free to every voter in the state. There is no cheaper propaganda in the world! What if your opponents have the same privilege? What do you care? They may say as the anti-Single Tax League did in 1922: "Under Single Tax we would have nothing to base our bonds on. Under Single Tax nobody would want land except to use it!" Meantime early in the season there is obvious work for all hands. You arm yourself with a sheaf of copies of your Amendment, on the reverse side of which is printed something explanatory. Now sit quietly and unobtrusively among the sitters in waiting rooms. Turn to one and say in a low voice, "Beg pardon, but are you a registered voter?" "Yes? Well, do you know about amendment 19? No? Well, would you like me to give you a copy of this bill we are expected to vote on?" A few explanations if you wish and you turn to the other side. You have asked permission to bestow a gift. They thank you. They want to know about this thing that has a direct bearing on their political conduct. You can at the same time distribute small explanatory folders which the family will discuss for days. In the campaign of 1916 we had 35,000 signatures for the first filing.

In 30 days one person can gather a thousand. For the cheapness and wide scope of this method cannot be surpassed. Does any other method stir up the predatory animals to such a point of ferocity, and to such well organized attack?

In 1916 only the banks showed a united front. "If this bill becomes a law what can we hitch our mortgages to? What can we rest our bonds on so they will float? By 1918 under "persuasion" of the banks the merchants and manufacturers joined the Anti-Single Tax League under the President, E. P. Clark, of Clarke Hotel. Their unity and efficiency were unquestioned.

Unfortunately, in the campaign of 1918 as well as the previous one, which polled 260,332 votes, there were four separate cliques nominally from the Georgian ranks, en- forcing the Anti-Single Tax League to defeat the bill: One in New York, one in Chicago, one in San Francisco, and one in San Diego. Is it not amazing that with all this opposition we polled over 260,332 votes? And 180,000 and over in 1918? After we got into the world war.

We had to meet the powers of darkness clamoring that this was not the time for so radical a bill; that this was not radical enough; that the manager had no respectable following; that he was not responsible, that Single Taxers in California were hopelessly divided. A San Francisco correspondent in Christian Science Monitor said so; that if we could get Luke North out of the way, J. S. W. and W. T. M. would go through California and make a whirl- wind campaign. Single Tax bill? no, but a good bill, quite a good bill; everybody would vote for it."

But Luke North did not "get out of the way" till five months after election.

These Henry George campaigns were national in their scope, though their field of action was California. I might have said international; because the first thousand dollars was sent from Henry Boole, of England. Canadian Single Taxers contributed liberally; from almost every state in the union came money; often in small dribs regularly gathered by one man from many and mailed to us. Philadelphia had such and Missouri. E. H. Boeck of St. Louis, times without number sent such a bunch. A teacher in Brooklyn got up a rummage sale and sent the proceeds $78.00. One contributor from "Brick House," East Alstead, N. H., sent over $200.00 in various payments. Dr. Macklin, missionary from China, sent a contribution. A Mr. Armistead Rust contributed regularly.

That is the way the funds should come, not all from one benefactor. In the gloomy days of 1917 when Luke North was crushed with despair that the campaign of 1916 was a failure, a wire message came from the eastern coast followed by a letter enclosing his expenses, inviting him to attend a convention to be held in his honor in At- lantic City, and asking him to tell them how in the world he rolled up 260,332 votes for Single Tax in 1916.