It is true enough that wherever it is proposed to draw more fully by taxation upon the annual rental of lands farmers should be informed how changes may affect their interests, but they are entitled to more sensible, sound and practicable suggestions than those contained in the article "Let the Farmers Themselves Answer," printed in your May-June issue.

It is to me shocking that such an article was written by Professor Harry Gunnison Brown, a teacher of "economic.*" at a state university, who has compiled significant paragraphs from Progress and Poverty and in other ways showed evidence of being both informed upon and sympathetic with the Henry George philosophy. The publication of this article in LAND AND FREEDOM without editorial reservation or cautionary comment is to me not explicable.

There is nothing novel in the italicized phrases in the article, regarding fertilization and taxable land values. More than thirty years ago Thomas G. Shearman, in " Natural Taxation, " wrote that, as a matter of course, no assessments should be made upon such transient cause of value. In that book, it may be noted, the author concludes that bare land selling values of cultivated farms would, under a Single Tax system, be assessable at or nearly at 40 per cent, of the total valuation of such farm properties. Since that book was written there has been an enormous increase in the building and maintaining of the county and state highways, surely increasing farm land values, very probably out of proportion to increase in value of farm land improvements.

Professor Brown does our programme of taking all or an increasingly large part of land rental value for public purposes no service by explaining that the bare land value of a farm should be arrived at, not by estimating market value regardless of improvements, but by first valuing improvements and then subtracting this value from the total value of the property. This method is no more applicable to country than to city land.

The Professor is even less to be commended upon his attempt to show farmers how to calculate or estimate economic rent. In fact his endeavor to point out a relation between economic rent and income is ludicrous. A farmer's income is not dependent upon or necessarily related to economic rent. Economic rent is often a potentiality rather than a reality, and it can be estimated in the simplest and most practical way by market value regardless of profitable or unprofitable use or any use at all. If farmers are to pay in taxation "only their economic rent if and when they receive any." to use the Professor's own language, regardless of the value of their land holding privilege, a most fantastic and unworkable programme is before us.

A word must be said here about Professor Brown's contention that "the economic rent of valuable city land, which is due largely to the development and trade of the surrounding country, should be taken in taxation and used for the benefit of all." 'This is not so, and there is no agency except the United States government itself which could undertake such a work. Some states have more valuable city lands than others, and some states contain cities bordering upon other states where land values may be affected by the development and trade of the country over the border line. Courts, schools and jails, and, to some extent, roads, may well be financed or partly financed out of the funds of central authorities, gathered more from city than country districts. Nothing further can be expected. Cities need great revenues, and there is no reason why we should talk of taking the rental of city lands and spending them "for the benefit of all."