It is often assumed, by men who are thoroughly convinced of the justice and importance of the single tax on land values, that the establishment of even absolute free trade would do little toward bring about the success of the movement in favor of the single tax, and that reductions of the tariff on imported goods , or even the enactment of a purely revenue tariff, would do nothing whatever in that direction.

Let us consider whether this view is correct.

I.

Let the most radical advocates of the single tax - those who deny the right of private ownership of land - ask themselves why they do so. Is it not because they deny the right of the government to allow individuals to levy the tax called rent for their own private benefit, when it justly belongs to the people? Is not the very foundation of their whole political creed a denial of the justice of any system which allows a few persons to collect for their own use a tax from the whole people, which ought to go solely to the use of the government for the benefit of the whole people?

Why do the radical opponents of private property in land refuse to consent to the payment of compensation to landlords, as a condition of the nationalization of land? Is there any other reason than this, that if they agree to pay taxes for the purpose of compensating the landlords, they practically agree to submit to the same taxation for the benefit of individuals, under the name of taxation, against which they rebel, under the name of rent?

If it is just and right that the people at large should be taxed for any purpose, other than for the support of that government which is for the benefit of all, then it is just as well that this tax should be called rent, as that it should go by any other name.

Now all protective taxes are, in their very nature, taxes levied upon the people at large, for the benefit of the persons who own the land upon which the protected articles are produced, or the tools by which those articles are made. Into their pockets the whole benefit of any protective tariff must necessarily go.

If this is all right and proper, why is it not equally right and proper that another tax, called rent, should also be levied on the people, for the benefit of land owners? If the prosperity of America depends upon taxing us all for the support of manufacturers, why is it not likely to be still more promoted by taxing us for the benefit of land owners? The protected manufacturers number less than 100,000; the land owners number over 4,000,000. It is therefore forty times as beneficial to the nation to tax it heavily under the name of rent, as to tax it heavily under the name of protection.

But it will be said that the manufacturers distribute the benefits of protection in high wages. If this is true of them, it is equally true of the land owners. They pay just as good wages as the manufacturers do; and they do not combine to import foreign pauper laborers, as manufacturers and mine operators do. It is said that the manufacturers pay out 90 per cent of their income in wages. If that is true, then the land owners pay out 100 per cent of theirs in the same way; because they hire servants to make them comfortable, builders to build them houses, butchers to give them meat, bakers to give them bread and coachmen to drive them about. The land owners, therefore, are only misunderstood philanthropists, who worry themselves with the collection of the tax, called rent, solely for the purpose of providing poor landless men and women with work.

Every man who votes for a protective tariff ought, to be consistent, to vote for high rents, too; since the more the landlords collect in rent the more they will spend in wages.

II.

Leaving the question of consistency, let us inquire how the abolition of private property in land is to be brought about.

It is clear that it is a movement for the abolition of something. What do the land reformers want to abolish? All taxes except one.

It is an abolition movement, pure and simple. It proposes nothing but abolition. It does not propose to create any new taxes. Land is taxed already. The "new crusade" simply proposes to abolish every tax which does not fall upon the value of land. All the rest of the scheme will take care of itself.

Pray, how are all taxes, other than the land tax, to be abolished if we are not willing to abolish the tariff? How is the tariff to be abolished altogether, if we are not willing to abolish it in part? Are we to refuse to abolish any taxes, until the happy day arrives when we can abolish all at once? We should certainly have to wait a hundred years, probably five hundred years, before such a policy could succeed.

Those who are sincerely in favor of abolishing all taxes except one, will, if they have a grain of common sense, vote for the abolition of each tax, one by one, as fast as it can be reached. No man can ever get to the end of a road who will not take one step at a time. Every sincere and sensible believer in the single land tax, therefore, will vote for the abolition of every other tax - with one limitation.

That limitation is that some taxes have a tendency to draw to themselves the support of powerful interests, while others have not; and those who want to abolish all indirect taxes should be careful to strike first at those which have the support of these interests, so as to get them first out of the way. When those are got rid of the others will fall quickly enough. But, if the weakly supported taxes are abolished first, the others will be all the harder to get rid of. If you want to topple over a row of bricks, put the heaviest one at the end and knock that over; all the rest will fall without your touching them. But if you begin with a light thin brick you may have to pull down each, one by one.

The tariff is the heavy brick in taxation; and the protective part of the tariff is the solid strength of the whole. Strike out protection, and no one will care to maintain the tariff. Abolish the tariff, and all internal revenue taxes will be abolished on the same day, without a murmur from any quarter. But if you abolish the internal revenue taxes first, you give to the tariff enormous new strength and continue indefinitely its protective features, which are the greatest obstacle to the adoption of the single land tax that ever existed or ever can exist.

Quite apart from the abstract question of free trade, therefore, the total abolition of the tariff is indispensable to the establishment of the single tax. Those who insist upon maintaining any tariff insist upon maintaining rent and private property in land, for the two things are bound up together. Those who vote to repeal internal taxes upon liquors and tobacco help to keep the tariff in existence for the next fifty years, because the influence of capital, which is now divided between the two systems, will then be concentrated in support of the tariff, and the plea of necessity of revenue will be successfully used for fifty years to keep up a high tariff.

But the tariff cannot be abolished in a day. It must be taken down in pieces. It is as absurd to refuse to vote for reductions in the tariff, while favoring its total abolition, as it would be to insist that a wall should be taken down all in one instant or not at all. The wall must be taken down brick by brick; and so must the tariff. Every reduction makes the next step easier.

In short, the believers in the single tax doctrine, including those who support it as a means of nationalizing the land, as well as others, are simply tax abolishers. If they will not vote to abolish existing taxes, they do not really believe in the doctrine which they profess. If they will not vote to abolish any taxes, unless they can abolish all at once, they will have to wait until we are all dead, buried and forgotten. If they vote to abolish the taxes on whisky and tobacco, before the tariff taxes are repealed, they play into the hands of their enemies; they unite the influence of capital against themselves, which is now divided to some extent; and they postpone the possibility of their own success for half a century.

All that is necessary to be accomplished in order to secure the speedy triumph of the land tax is to abolish the tariff. When public sentiment is brought to that point, all indirect taxation will go with the tariff in a single day. When the nation comes down to direct taxation, the equity and accuracy of the single tax on the value of land alone will be so clear and unmistakable, its superiority over the income tax and all other direct taxes so palpable, that no further serious effort will be needed to insure its adoption.

Whoever votes to maintain any protective duties in the tariff votes to maintain the tariff itself.

Whoever votes for any tariff votes to defeat the single tax.

Whoever refuses to vote for "tariff reform," on the ground that it does not go far enough (as, of course, it does not), refuses to take the first step on the long road which leads to land reform, because he cannot leap over the whole length of the road at once.

Whoever does any of these things does all which at present lies in his power to perpetuate private property in land, the rent system and the system of indirect taxation, under which the poor always have paid, and always will pay, ten times as much as the rich.