A RIGHT ROYAL ROAST.
THE ICONOCLAST MADE HARD TO CATCH.
Galveston, Tex., August 12, 1897.
MR. W. C. BRANN:
In your editorial on the "Henry George Hoodoo,"
which appears in the August number of the ICONOCLAST,
the following passage occurs: "It seems to me that I have
treated the Single Taxers as fairly as they could ask,
and if I now proceed to state a few plain truths about
them and their faith they will have no just cause to complain."
From the tone and tenor of these words it is fair to
assume that in the editorial referred to you have
discharged against the Single Taxers and their faith the
heaviest broadsides of which your ordnance is capable.
If, notwithstanding all the time you have wasted "crucifying
the economic mooncalf" which has played such sad
havoc with the wits of Single Taxers, it should turn out
that the monstrous concept, far from being crucified,
annihilated, or even "dying of its own accord," only gathers
strength, energy, and renewed activity from the healthful
exercise with which you provide it, must it not seem the
part of prudence for you, even if occasion of regret for
us, that you should abandon the war and leave the calf
to his fate? Your belated and apparently desperate
resolve to "tell some plain truths" about us, Single Taxers,
justifies the inquiry, what were you telling before? The
fact that it seems to yourself that you have treated Single
Taxers fairly is not absolutely irrefragible proof that
they have been so treated at least it has not brought
conviction of the fact to them. That the offer of your
space to Mr. George was courteously declined affords no
just ground for refusing it to those "whose matin hymn
and vesper prayer reads, there is no God but George,"
etc. I'll warrant you that if you and the Single Taxers
had access on equal terms to a journal which neither
controlled, and whose space both were bound to respect, you
would not have to go outside the limits of your own state
to find a dozen foemen worthy of your steel, and I'd stake
my life on it that you'd find not a few to unhorse you.
This is not claiming that any one of them, or all of them
together, can come anywhere near you in the artistic
manipulation of words or the construction of ear-tickling
phrases; but it is claiming, and that without any false
pretense of modesty, that they have yet seen no reason
to fear you in rigidly logical argument when the Single
Tax is the question at issue. Their cause is so palpably
just, its underlying principle so transparently simple
and elementary, its practical application so direct, feasible
and efficient that no mere wizardry of words, no thimble-
riggery or language, can by any possibility obscure the
principle—or confuse the advocates. Of course there
are among Single Taxers, as among other enthusiasts,
men who indiscreetly use abuse for argument, and of these
you may have some reason to complain; but should not
your great talents and the immense advantages which the
undisputed control of your own journal give you, enable
you to rise above their abuse, to ignore it completely, and
to grapple with only those who present you with argument?
I have no right to expect from you more consideration
than has been meted out to better men; still, you can but
refuse this rejoinder to your August editorial, which is
respectfully offered for publication in your journal. If
you are quite sure of your ground, you can only gain
strength from exposing my weakness, but even if you
are not sure of it, both the requirements of simple justice
and the amende honorable to Single Taxers would still
plead for the publication of this article.
You say that Mr. George has obtained no standing of
consequence in either politics or economics "because his
teachings are violative of the public concept of truth."
Do you really believe that the fact that he has obtained
no standing of consequence in politics is in any way
derogatory to his character or his teaching? Do you not know
full well that a Bill Sykes, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, or a Mr.
Montague Tigg would have a hundred chances to attain
that distinction to-day to the one chance that Henry
George, Vincent de Paul or even Jesus Christ would have?
Don't you know this well, and if you do, why do you
use it as an argument against Henry George? As to his
standing in economics, that, I submit, is a matter of
opinion. You think he has no standing of consequence;
I think his teaching is the most active ferment in the
economic thought of to-day. We may be both mistaken,
but whether we are or not cuts no figure in the truth or
falsity of the Single Tax. But it is worth while to
point out that the reason you have given for his lack of
"standing" lends neither weight nor force to your
argument. "Because," you say, "his teachings are violative
of the public concept of truth." When did the public
concept of truth become the standard by which to test
it? The public concept of the best form of money is, and
has been for thousands of years, gold and silver coins.
I am much mistaken if that be your concept. By the
way, why did you not say "violative of truth," instead of
"violative of the public concept," etc.? I guess you had
an inward consciousness that a thing is not true or false
by public concept, but by being inherently so. What
Henry George taught was inherently true or false before
he ever taught it, and would be so still if he had been
never born. The only difference would be that so many
of us who now bask in the blessed light of inward, if not
of outward, freedom would, in that event, be still barking
with the great blind multitude over every false trail along
which blinder teachers might be leading them and us.
You admit that Mr. George is a polemic without a
peer, and you say that "no other living man could have
made so absurd a theory appear so plausible, deceived
hundreds of abler men than himself." Surely there is
something very faulty in the position you assume here. If
what you say be so, how do you know that you are not
yourself the victim of deception at the hands of some
inferior? Or is it only men who have "gone daft on
Single Tax" that possess the extraordinary power of
leading abler men than themselves by the nose? Surely
that were too much honor for an antagonist to concede to
them. More surely still, if a man's intelligence is not
proof against deception by inferiors in argument, he can
never reach finality in a process of reasoning, and logical
proof for him there is none.
"He mistakes the plausible for the actual and by his
sophistry deceives himself." O pshaw! We all say things
sometimes that just do for talk, but this hasn't even that
poor excuse. I might just as well say, "He takes the
conceivable for the supposable and by his logic enlightens
himself. One statement would be as valuable as the
other and neither would be worth a pinch of snuff. Come,
let us argue with dignity and composure, like honest men
sincerely searching after truth, and eager to lend a hand
in abolishing this social Inferno of legalized robbery which
fairly threatens to consume us all.
There is, you'll admit, such a thing as land value, i. e.
value attaching to land irrespective of improvements made
in or on it by private industry. This value arises from
the presence of a community and can never actually exist
without it. If the exclusive creator or producer of a
thing is its rightful owner, land belongs to the community
that creates or produces it, and can never, in the first
instance, rightly belong to any other owner. The Single
Tax is the taking of this value for this community. Is
it just? The highest homage, the highest act of faith
which the human mind and heart can offer to God is to
say that He could not be God and pronounce the Single
Tax unjust! Here now is a gage of battle cast at the
feet of whoever wishes to take it up, be the same logician,
metaphysician or theologian. (Pardon me, Mr. Brann,
for momentarily turning aside from you.)
The justice of the Single Tax is beyond all question of
refutation. What about its efficiency for the cure of social
ills? Here, I think, is where we are widest apart. You
say, "the unearned increment is already taken for public
use under our present system of taxation." If by "unearned
increment" you mean what I have defined as land
value (and I think you do) your statement is the wildest
and most astounding I ever heard or read from a sane man
making an argument. Is it possible you have not learned
that where all the land value is taken in taxation there can
be no selling value? And where is the land to-day with a
community settled upon it that has not selling value? If
land value is already absorbed by taxation, what is it that
goes to maintain landlordism? Perhaps you'll contend
that landlordism doesn't exist. What value is it that a
man pays for when he buys an unimproved lot in the
heart of a city? What is it that the boomer booms and
the land speculator gambles on when he adds acre to
acre and lot to lot without any intention of productive
use? What, if not the community value which he expects
to attach to his land as a result of increase of population?
And what advantage to him as a speculator would this
community value be if, as you claim, it is now being
absorbed in taxation and should continue to be so absorbed
as fast as it arises? Do landlords in cities and towns
retain for themselves only the rent of buildings and hand
over to the government the full amount of their ground
rents as tax? I know an old eye-sore of a building in this
city not worth $150, whose occupant pays $100 a month
rent. Do you seriously believe that all of this $1,200 a
year which does not go to the city and state in taxes is
rent on the old $150 rat-warren? Why, the thing is too
childish for serious discussion; and to have discussed it
with you without having been driven to it by yourself, I
should have regarded as in the nature of a slight on your
intelligence. If what you claim as a fact were true, we
would have the Single Tax in full swing now and would be
fretting ourselves to fiddle-strings, not to bring it about,
but to get rid of it for its evil fruit.
As to whether the Single Tax, in full force, would
provide enough revenue for municipal, county, state and
federal governments, we, Single Taxers, are not greatly
concerned. We have our own opinions on that question
and can give better reasons for them than our opponents
can give for theirs. But the question is not essential to
our argument. What we hold to is that until land values
fully taxed prove inadequate for the expenses of government
economically administered, not one cent should be
levied on labor products, no matter in whose possession
found. This, however, belongs to the fiscal side of our
reform. Of infinitely more importance is the social side.
Here our end and aim is to secure to all the sons of Adam
an equal right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by
securing to them an equal right in the bounties of nature
—and passing strange it certainly is that men who would
not dream of denying this right in the abstract are ever
ready to anathematize it in the concrete.
With the Single Tax in force, that is, with the plain
behest of nature observed and respected, no man will hold
land out of use when, whether he uses it or not, he must
pay to the community its annual value for the privilege
of monopolizing it. No man will hold land for a rise in
community value when that value is taken from him for
the use of the community as fast as it arises. No man
will need to mortageg his home and the earnings of his
most vigorous years to a boomer or speculator for the
privilege of living on the earth for there will be no
boomer or speculator to sell him the privilege, and the
privilege itself will have ceased to be such and become an
indefeasible right.
"He (Mr. George) is a well-intentioned man who
confidently believes he can make the poverty-stricken millions
prosperous by revoking the taxes of the rich and increasing
the burthens of the poor." Fie, fie! What is to
be gained by such transparent, palpable misrepresentation
as this? Do you verily believe that land values, which
Mr. George proposes to tax, are mainly in possession of
the poor? Did you not see—of course you did—a
diagrammatic exhibit made not long ago by the New York
Herald of the holdings of twenty New York real estate
owners? Let me quote a passage from an article in the
New York
Journal on this exhibit:
"The reason 170 families own half of Manhattan
Island, as stated in the Herald, and that 1,800,000 out
of the two million residents of Manhattan Island, until
very recently, had no interest whatever, except as renters,
in this superb property, is because, until the last few
years, it required a fortune to own the smallest separate
parcel of this great estate. Only the rich could participate
in its ownership, its income, its profits."
Now is it your view that all this is but clumsy lying, and
that in reality it is the poor people of New York as of
other large cities that own the bulk of its land values?
Again you say, "He would equalize the conditions of
Dives and Lazarus by removing the tax from the palace
of the one and laying it upon the potato patch of the
other." This statement is much more artistic than the
preceding one. It wears a jaunty semblance of truth.
Indeed it is true in a sense as far as it goes. But it is
vague and incomplete, and for that reason as deceptive
and misleading as half truths always are. With your
permission I will fill it out in parenthesis and convert it
into an honest whole truth: "He would equalize the
conditions of (both freedom and justice for) Dives and
Lazarus by removing the tax from the palace of the one
(and from the labor products of the other) and laying it
upon (the community value of the land occupied by the
palace and) the potato patch of the other." Now, if the
potato patches of the poor occupy, as a rule, more valuable
land than the palaces of the rich, there might be some
apparent ground for your contention. It would be only
apparent, however, for in such a case the potato patch
would be as much out of place as a public school on a
wharf front. To devote highly valuable land to ordinary
potato culture would be about as sensible as to print the
Sunday edition of the Galveston
News on costly linen
paper. One of the virtues of the Single Tax is its potency
to prevent such stupid waste of opportunity. Your way
of stating the case, however, has this virtue that it is a
welcome variation of the old wearisome chestnut about
the poor widow owning a valuable lot, etc.
You believe Progress and Poverty inspired by the
plutocracy, "250,000 of whom own 80 per cent. of the
taxable wealth of the country, while the land is largely in
possession of the great middle class." Passing over the
source of the inspiration, you have come pretty close
to the truth here! Unfortunately for you, however, the
statement has no value in the argument. Single Taxers
do not need to deny that the great middle class largely
own the land, but they do claim, and you won't have the
hardihood to deny it, that the plutocracy own the vast
bulk of the land values. You will perceive the distinction
when you reflect that the land is nearly all out in the
country, while the land values are nearly all in the cities
and towns. To tax land according to area is the bug-a-boo
you are putting up your guards to; to tax it according
to community value is what we invite you to smash if you
can. You "cannot understand how a man possessed of
common sense could fail to see that removing taxation
from the class of property chiefly in the hands of the rich
and placing it altogether on property chiefly in the hands
of the comparatively poor, could fail to benefit the
millionaire at the expense of the working man." Neither
can I, if you tax it according to quantity, but that is not
the Single Tax and it is time you knew it. Let me tell you
now something that I can't understand—why a man who
has the means and the ability to strike giant blows for
the cause of the blind, stupid, plundered humanity prefers
to waste his time, his talents, his opportunities making
himself a straw man and, with that silly-looking thing for
antagonist, belaboring all about him like a bull in a china
shop. You sincerest well-wishers, of whom I claim to be
one, earnestly hope you will soon change your tactics.
You ask some practical questions which it may be well
to answer: "How will you prevent the Standard Oil Company
forcing weaker concerns to the wall by the simple expedient
of selling below cost of production?" The Standard
Oil trust is maintained (1) by monopoly of oil lands;
(2) by monopoly of pipe lines; (3) by collusion with
railroads. The Single Tax and its corollaries would
absolutely destroy each of these advantages; (1) by throwing
unused oil lands open to all on equal terms; (2) by government
ownership or complete control of pipe lines to all
distributing points, such lines being open for use to all
oil producers on equal terms; (3) by exactly analogous
treatment of railroads. With the three-fold monopoly of
oil lands, pipe line, and railroad abolished, the Standard
Oil trust would find no wall against which to crush weaker
concerns. As to the trust, we hope that the abolishment
of the thieves' compact, i.e. the protective tariff, will make
the trusts sick unto death. Absolute free trade, a necessary
concomitant of the Single Tax, will leave 99 per cent.
of the trusts stranded. If any survive it will not be the
fault of the Single Tax. Be it remembered that the evils
which the Single Tax is guaranteed to cure are, primarily,
land monopoly, and, secondarily, all the other monopolies
based upon it; as those of the coal, iron and lumber trust,
the Standard Oil trust, etc.
"With coal fields leased to the operators by Uncle Sam,
how would you prevent Hanna organizing a pool, limiting
production, raising prices and reducing wages?" Coal
fields are included in the economic term, land. When
unused land is free for occupancy, unused coal fields will
also be free. If Mark sought to limit production by
shutting down his mines, one of two things would happen.
Either somebody else would start in to mine coal, or
Mark's tax would be raised till the wisdom of either letting
go or resuming would dawn on his fat wits. Unless he
owned or controlled the coal fields he could not limit
production, raise prices, or cut down wages. "How will you
prevent the Standard Oil company forcing weaker concerns
to the wall by the simple expedient of selling below cost
of production?" We wouldn't prevent them. But if
they afterwards tried to recoup their losses by raising
prices as they do now, we might get after them with a
tax commensurate with their asinine generosity, and
keep after them till other concerns got well on their feet.
If they became too refractory, what's to prevent the
government from taking hold itself and working the oil wells
for the benefit of the whole people? Remember the government
is theoretically the people's servant, and it could
be actually so if the people only had a little intelligence
and moral courage.
You very needlessly tell your Ft. Hamilton friend that
land is the primal source of all wealth; that it does not
produce wealth, but simply affords man an opportunity
to produce it; you forgot to add—provided the landlord
doesn't prevent him. You say in another place, "Figure
it as you will, adjust it as you may, a tax is a fine on
industry and will so remain until you get blood from
turnips," etc. This very objection in protean form is
continually being raised by a class of shallow-thinking men
with whom the editor of the ICONOCLAST should not be
proud to herd. "What difference docs it make," they say,
"whether I pay rent to the government or to a landlord
when I've got to pay it anyhow? And what difference does
it make whether taxes are levied on my land or my
improvements, or both, so long as I've got to pay them
with the products of my labor?"
Now, it is quite true that all taxes of whatever nature
are paid out of the products of labor. But must they be
for that reason a tax on labor products. Let us see. I
suppose you won't deny that a unit of labor applies to
different kinds of land will give very different results.
Suppose that a unit of labor produces on A's land 4, on
B's 3, on C's 2 and on D's 1. A's land is the most, and
D's is the least, productive land in use in the community
to which they belong. B's and C's represent intermediate
grades. Suppose each occupies the best land that was
open to him when he entered into possession. Now, B,
and C, and D have just as good a right to the use of the
best land as A had. Manifestly then, if this be the whole
story, there cannot be equality of opportunity where a
unit of labor produces such different results, all other
things being equal except the land. How is this equality
to be secured? There is but one possible way. Each must
surrender for the common use of all, himself included,
whatever advantages accrues to him from the possession
of land superior to that which falls to the lot of him who
occupies the poorest. In the case stated, what the unit
of labor produces for D, is what it should produce for A,
B and C, if these are not to have an advantage of natural
opportunity over D. Hence equity is secured when A
pays 3, D, 2 and C, 1 into a common fund for the common
use of all—to be expended, say in digging a well, making
a road or bridge, building a school, or other public utility.
Is it not manifest that here the tax which A, B and C pay
into a common fund, and from which D is exempt, is not
a tax on their labor products (though paid out of them)
but a tax on the superior advantage which they enjoy over
D, and to which D has just as good a right as any of them.
The result of this arrangement is that each takes up as
much of the best land open to him as he can put to
gainful use, and what he cannot so use he leaves open for
the next. Moreover, he is at no disadvantage with the
rest who have come in ahead of him, for they provide for
him, in proportion to their respective advantages, those
public utilities which invariably arise wherever men live in
communities. Of course he will in turn hold to those who
come later the same relation that those who came earlier
held to him. Suppose now that taxes had been levied on
labor products instead of land; all that any land-holder
would have to do to avoid the tax is to produce little
or nothing. He could just squat on his land, neither using
it himself nor letting others use it, but he would not stop
at this, for he would grab to the last acre all that he
could possibly get hold of. Each of the others would do
the same in turn, with the sure result that by and by, E,
F and G would find no land left for them on which they
might make a living. So they would have to hire their
labor to those who had already monopolized the land, or
else buy or rent a piece of land from them. Behold now
the devil of landlordism getting his hoof on God's
handiwork! Exit justice, freedom, social peace and plenty.
Enter robbery, slavery, social discontent, consuming grief,
riotous but unearned wealth, degrading pauperism, crime
breeding, want, the beggar's whine, and the tyrant's iron
heel. And how did it all come about? By the simple
expedient of taxing labor products in order that precious
landlordism might laugh and grow fat on the bovine
stupidity of the community that contributes its own land
values toward its own enslavement! And yet men vacuously
ask, "What difference does it make?" O tempora!
O mores! To be as plain as is necessary, it makes this
four-fold difference. First, it robs the community of its
land values; second, it robs labor of its wages in the name
of taxation; third, it sustains and fosters landlordism, a
most conspicuously damnable difference; fourth, it exhibits
willing workers in enforced idleness; beholding their
families in want on the one hand, and unused land that would
yield them abundance on the other. This last is a
difference that cries to heaven for vengeance, and if it does
not always cry in vain, will W. C. Brann be able to draw
his robe close around him and with a good conscience
exclaim, "It's none of my fault; I am not my brother's
keeper."
It will not do, my dear friend; you must think again
on the Single Tax, even though, in doing so, you might
make men suspect that you are not infallible. The
sublimest act it will ever be given you to perform is to
candidly confess to your grand and ever-growing
constituency that you were mistaken in your estimate of the
Single Taxers and their faith. "Government must compel
each to pay toll in proportion the amount of wealth
it has produced—and this is the only equitable law of
taxation." Just reflect for a moment what a monstrous
conclusion flows from these premises. Labor applied to
land produces all wealth. Landlordism as such produces
nothing. Therefore labor should bear the whole burden
of taxation, while landlordism and all other forms of
monopoly should go scot free. The iniquity of our present
system of taxation is that a portion of it is levied on land
instead of being all levied on labor products, like the tariff!
To be strictly just, we must quit taxing land and exact
no royalty from owners of coal mines and oil wells! That
your view?
"There is every indication that his cult has had its day
and is rapidly going to join the many other isms, political
and religious, that have been swallowed up like cast off
clothes and other exuviæ by the great mother of dead
dogs." This is fine, incontestably fine! Also forcible,
impressibly forcible—with the force of a squirt of tobacco
juice. If "the Single Tax party will not long survive
its creator," perhaps it is because it has not as much
attraction for the great sovereign voter as the blessed
protective tariff, which, to use your own fantastic
expression, you should "cosset on your heaving brisket"
for its splendid success as a survivor of its primogenitors.
Look at the pinnacle of political success to which the
McKinley bill has brought Bill McKinley (excuse the
paltry little pun) and sound money (saving your presence)
brought Grover Cleveland, and then contemplate the
ignominy and obscurity has brought George and free silver
has brought Bryan. Evidently George isn't a mouse to
McKinley, while Bryan is but a brindle pup compared to
the great and only Grover. Yes, the "public concept of
truth" makes it plain that protection is all right and
Single Tax all wrong. "George is a reformer who can't
reform because he took issue with the wisdom of the
world," just like the man who said that the earth was
round and that the sun didn't go round it every twenty-four hours, contrary to what the wisdom of the world
had long ago decided.
You are not mistaken in saying that "Mr. George was
unable to keep one of these expounders of his doctrine
(a S.T. paper) from running on the financial rocks."
It is a very logical deduction to draw from this fact that
the teachings of the paper were worthless. Why should
anybody teach what does not, in the teaching, promote
his financial prosperity? See what fools Professors Bemis
and Andrews have made of themselves. Because they did
not have due regard for the "public concept of the truth"
they are cashiered; and it serves them right, for the truth
must be vindicated—if it pays. On the other hand, see
what splendid financial successes the ICONOCLAST, the
Galveston
News and the so-called yellow journalism of New
York all are. "Deserve, in order to command success,"
the old copy-book headline used to say, from which it
follows as mud does rain, that whatever succeeds deserves
it, and whatever doesn't, doesn't. It doesn't take much
besides capital to succeed, however, "where the conditions
for the propagation of empiricism are more favorable than
ever before." All you have to do is to propagate and
expound the "public concept of truth" and let the truth
itself alone. The Single Taxers respectfully solicit some
more plain truths on the "Mumbojumboism of George."
THOMAS FLAVIN.
...
Ever since the appearance of my first courteous critique
of the Single Tax theory the followers of that faith have
been pouring in vigorous "replies"; but as my articles
were directed to Mr. George and not to his disciples, I
saw no occasion for the latter to intermeddle in the matter,
and the tide of economic wisdom went to waste. Although
a publisher is supposed to be privileged to select his own
contributors, and Mr. George had been requested to make
reply at my expense, the Single Taxers raised a terrible
hue and cry that the ICONOCLAST was unfair in that it
"permitted one side to be presented." In order to cast
a little kerosene upon the troubled waters I decided that
they should be heard, and selected Dr. Flavin as their
spokesman, believing him to be the ablest of those who have
followed this particular economic rainbow into the bogs.
So much by way of prolegomenon; now for the doctor.
My very dear sir, I shall heed your advice to "rise
above" the abuse of those who mistake impudence for
argument, and ignore the discourteous remarks with which
you have so liberally interlarded your discourse. Doubtless
you include yourself among that numerous tribe of
Texas titans who can "unhorse" me as easily as turning
a hen over; and having accorded you unlimited space in
which to acquire momentum, I would certainly dread the
shock were I cursed with an atom of polemical pride.
Frankly, I wish you success—trust that you can demonstrate
beyond a peradventure of a doubt that all my objections
to the Single Tax are fallacious, that it is indeed the
correct solution of that sphinx riddle which we must soon
answer or be destroyed. At a time when the industrial
problem is pressing upon us with ever increasing power,
it is discouraging to hear grown Americans prattling of
"unhorsing" economic adversaries—priding themselves on
polemical fence, like shyster lawyers, and seeking victory
through sophistry rather than truth by honest inquiry.
That is not patriotism, but a picayune partisanship which
I profoundly pity.
Regarding "the public concept of truth" which seems
to irritate you sorely, I will simply say that the people are
slow to accept new and startling truths like those promulgated
by Gallileo, Newton and Harvey; but a truth, howsoever
strange, grows year by year and age by age, while
a falsehood creates more or less flurry at its birth,
then fades into the everlasting night of utter nothingness.
That Mr. Goerge's theory, after several years of discussion,
is declining in popular favor, and has never made a
convert among the careful students of political economy,
is strong presumptive evidence that it is not founded on
fact. The more you hammer truth the brighter it glows;
the more you hammer Georgeism the paler it gets. It is
not for me to prove the fallacy of the Single Tax theory
—the
onus probandi rests with its apostles, and they but
saltate from mistaken premises to ridiculous conclusions.
Like the German metaphysicians, they are abstract
reasoners who do not trouble themselves about conditions.
It is not well to sneer at "the great blind multitude"
because it fails to see the beauty or wisdom in the Single
Tax, for many a great man before Lincoln's time had
profound respect for the judgment of the common people.
"Truth," say the Italians, "is lost by too much
controversy;" and while the Georges and Flavins split hairs
and spute and spout themselves into error, the hard-headed farmer and mechanic, exercising their practical
common-sense, arrive at correct conclusions. In saying
that Mr. George has, by his sophistry, "deceived hundreds
of abler men than himself," I simply accredited him with
a feat that has been a thousand times performed.
Carliostro was an ignoramus and possessed very ordinary
intellect, yet for several years he succeeded in deceiving
some of the wisest men of his day with his Egyptian
Masonry idiocy. Thousands of fairly intelligent people
believed poor looney Francis Schlatter a kind of second
Messiah, some of the ablest men of Europe were misled by
half-crazy Martin Luther—and Dr. Flavin regards Henry
George's economic absurdities as omniscience. The latter
has "mistaken the plausible for the actual," has deceived
himself with his own sophistry, else he and his few score
noisy followers are wiser than all the rest of the world,
or, for the sake of gain or cheap notoriety, he's peddling
what he knows to be arrant nonsense. You may take as
many "pinches of snuff" on that proposition as you
please.
All your remarks about land values, their origin and
rightful ownership—the tiresome old piece de resistance
of every Single Tax discourse—I answered fully in my
two former articles on this subject, wherein I also
explained how the "unearned increment" is at present
appropriated by the public, and I cannot afford to rethresh
old straw for the benefit of Single Taxers who will write
and won't read. I will remark en passant, however,
that
by "unearned increment" I mean exactly what I suppose
Mr. George to mean—increase in the market value of land
for which the proprietor is not responsible. This, I have
explained, is already appropriated by the public, because
the total annual increase in land values in this country—
barring betterments of course—does not exceed the total
annual tax levied upon the land. There's always a boom
in land values here and there; but hundreds of millions of
acres, urban and suburban, have not increased a penny in
selling price during the past decade. The owners are
reaping no unearned increment, but they are paying taxes
regularly into the public till. "The exclusive creator or
producer of a thing is the rightful owner," says Dr.
Flavin. Quite true; and as the only thing the community
creates for the land owner is the unearned increment, it
has no moral right to take anything more. The Single
Taxers persist in ignoring the fact that there is an
earned as well as an unearned
increment, and that the
former is as much the property of the individual as the
barn he builds or the calf he breeds. Of this earned
increment more anon.
"The highest homage, the highest act of faith which
the human mind and heart can offer to God is to say
he could not be God and pronounce the Single Tax to be
unjust!" O hell! That's not argument, but simply
empty declamation intended to tickle the ears of the
groundlings—to raise a whoop among the gallery gods.
As you have suggested, "Come, let us argue with dignity
and composure," instead of emitting fanatical screeches
like fresh converts at a Methodist campmeeting, let's see
about this God of Justice business: About 200 years
ago a party whom we will call Brann, as that happened
to be his name "cleared" a farm in the wilds of Virginia,
enduring all the hardships and dangers of the frontier.
He built roads and bridges, drained swamps, exterminated
Indians and wild animals. His descendants helped drive
out the British butchers, some of them being scalped
alive by John Bull's red allies, while their wives and
children were tomahawked. They contributed in their
humble way to secure the blessings of free government
which the present inhabitants of Virginia enjoyed. They
helped support schools, churches and charities and otherwise
make the district desirable as a place of residence.
Finally railways were built and stores opened, not to
enrich these people, but to be enriched by them. These
conveniences added to the value of the land, but were paid
for at a good round price, as such things ever are by
the users. The land is now worth about $30.00 an acre,
and while this value is unquestionably due to the presence
of populatoin, it is fair to assume that in two centuries
the estate has yielded that much in the shape of taxes.
As the present owner, I ask, has the Old Dominion against
that property for unearned increment? I say it has not;
that the $30.00 an acre represents the savings of seven
generations of my ancestors; that while the community
created the land value, said value has been duly purchased
and paid for—that it represents
earned increment.
Unearned increment is not what Dr. Elavin is after; he
would confiscate the
rent of my patrimony; he would
deprive me of the
values created by my people—would
allow me no larger share therein than he accords to
the newly arrived immigrant from that damned island we
call England. If our God says
that is just, then I want
no angelic wings—prefer to associate with Satan. Has
the son a just right to wealth created and solemnly
bequeathed him by his sire? That land is as much mine
as the gold would be mine, had my people their savings
in that shape, and the rent is mine as justly as the
interest on the gold would be. It is quite true that none
of my clan
created that land; it is true that I cannot
show a title to it signed by God Almighty and counter-signed by the Savior, any more than I can show a title
from the same high source to the watch I hold in my
hand; but I have a title to all the rights, conveniences
and profits appertaining to control of the land, issued by
their creator, the community, for value received. I have
the same title to the land that I have to the watch; not
to the material made by the Almighty, but to whatsoever
has been added of desirability thereto by the action of
man. The community has been settled with up-to-date
for both the land and the watch, but has a continuing
claim against them so long as it enables me to employ them
advantageously than I could without its assistance. If
I sell my land the purchaser receives in return for his
money all those advantages which it required so many
years of toil and danger to win—he pays for the sacrifices
made by others in preference to going into the
wilderness and making them himself. The market value
of my land is a "labor product," just as my watch is a
labor product, hence all this prattle about relieving industry
of governmental burdens by any economic thaumaturgy
whatsoever is the merest moonshine.
It is quite true that "the great middle class" does
not own the most valuable lots in New York and London;
but I have the "chilled steel" hardihood to affirm that
not only the bulk of the land but of the land values are
in the possession of people who are poor as compared
with the occupants of those sumptuous palaces which the
George conspiracy for the further enrichment if Dives
and the starvation of Lazaras would exempt from taxation.
The total wealth of this nation is not far from
75 billions, while all the land, exclusive of improvements,
would not sell for more than 20 billion. The naked land
of our 5 million farms is estimated at about 10 billion, so
that leaves but about 10 billion for urban lands—less
than one-seventh of the total value. I have no reliable
statistics at hand showing what proportion of urban
inhabitants own their homes; but we may safely assume
that one-half do so. Now, if this be true, we may also
assume that the land values held by the very wealthy—
the people whom the Single Taxers profess to be after,—
do not exceed one-fourth of all land values, or one-fifteenth
of total property values. Hence you see it is quite
possible for 250,000 to own 80 per cent of all values,
while the bulk of the land values remain with the common
people. And it is these common people that the Single
Tax will crush for the benefit of these 250,000
plutocrats, the bulk of whose wealth is in personal
property.
Sit down and think it over, doctor; you are really too
bright a man to be led astray by the razzle-dazzle of
Single Tax sophistry. You do your enviable reputation
for intelligence a rank injustice by mistaking poor old
George for an economic Messiah, and if you are not careful
somebody will try to sell you a gold-brick or stock
in a Klondike company. Suppose that you and Hon.
Walter Gresham occupy residence lots worth $1,000 each,
but that you inhabit a $1,500 cottage and he a $150,000
mansion; and suppose that your income is $2,000 a year
while his is $20,000: Do you think there is any necessity
for tearing your balbriggan undershirt because not
compelled to put up as much for the maintenance of government
as your wealthy neighbor? Is it at all probable that
Gresham will become discouraged, refuse to longer serve
the corporations and sit in the woodshed and sulk, even
jump off the bridge, because taxed in proportion to the
property in his possession rather than according to the
land he occupies? If Col. Moody builds a million dollar
cotton mill on suburban land worth but $500 why should
you refuse to sleep o' nights because not required to pay
double the taxes of that old duffer? As a worthy disciple
of Aesculapius you should know that too heavy a burden
on your own back is liable to make you bow-legged.
I suspected all along that the Single Tax would require
several able-bodied "corollaries" to enable it to effect
much of a reformation, to usher in the Golden Age. It
were very nice to throw unused coal and oil lands "open
to all on equal terms," have the government pipe off all
their products for equal pay, then compel operators by
piling on taxes to maintain high prices to consumers "till
other companies got well on their feet"—and a combination
was effected. If Rockefeller, Hanna, Carnegie, et
id genes omnes tried any of their old tricks "we might
get after them"—just as we have long been doing. These
plutocrats are so afraid of our politicians that there is
danger of their dying of neuropathy. If the coal, iron
and oil operators advance prices we'll advance their taxes
—for the people to pay. And I suppose that when the
whiskey trust get gay, the doctor will raise the rent of
corn land, when the cotton-seed oil trust becomes too
smooth, he'll knock it on the head by adding a dollar
an acre to cotton land, and so on until we get the
cormorant fairly by the goozle. It's all dead easy when
you understand it—works as smoothly as an "iridescent
dream" on a toboggan slide! We are continually
discovering new coal, iron and oil districts, and these are
"open to all on equal terms"—I can acquire them just
as cheaply as can Rockefeller or Carnegie. Then what's
the matter? I lack the capital to properly develop them,
to produce so cheaply as my wealthy competitors. Or if
able to become a thorn in the side of the great corporations
they either lower prices and freeze me out or make
it to my advantage to enter the syndicate. When Rockefeller
lowers the price of oil he lowers his rent; when I am
either crushed by competition or taken in out of the cold,
he advances the price of oil. His rent is regulated by
competition for the use of oil lands—you cannot make
him pay more than the market price. When you raise
his rent you raise that of all the other operators in
proportion, and the same is the same as an increase of the
excise on whisky—the people get a meaner grade of goods
at a higher price. If an ordinary man cooked up such a
scheme as that for the benefit of the people, I'd feel justified
in calling him a "crank," and I cannot conceive how
a man like Dr. Slavin can tack his signature to such
tommy-rot. Before we can make the Single Tax "a go"
we've got to have government ownership of telegraphs,
railways, pipe-lines, etc., etc., and use the taxing power
to regulate prices just as the Republicans do the tariff—
and for what? To humble the haughty landlord? Oh
no; to knock the stuffing out of capital—so long wept
over by Single Taxers as a fellow sufferer with toil. Why
not call the George system Communism?—"a rose by any
other name," etc.
When the doctor get matters arranged it will really
make no difference whether a farmer is located in the
black-waxy district, or on the arid cactus-cursed lands of
the trans-Pecos country, as he will have to surrender to
the public all he produces in excess of what the poorest
land in use will yield. He will have no incentive to study
the capabilities of his land and bring to bear upon it
exceptional industry, for he will be deprived of all the
increase he can make it yield by such methods. A will
be placed on a parity with D because he took the best
land he could get instead of the poorest he could find.
Intelligence and enterprise are to have no reward under
the new regime. You can squat on a sand-bank or pile
of rocks in any community and be on a financial parity
with the man whose black soil reaches to the axis of the
earth—no need to bundle the old woman into a covered
wagon, tie the brindled cow to the feed-box and head for
a country where better land is to be had. There will be
no temptation to carve out a home in the wilderness, for
later immigrants will set at naught your toil and sacrifices
and deprive your children of their patrimony—the best
situated merchant in Waco will have no advantage of the
keeper of a tent store on a side street of Yuba Dam or
Tombstone. A tax will not longer be "a fine on
industry"—it will be a fine on fools.
My Galveston friend should not work himself into a
fit of hysteria because I declared that the George doctrine
has had its day, it being sheer folly to quarrel with a
self-evident fact. When Henry George first flamed forth
he made a great deal of money out of his writings, and
has thus far shown no more aversion to the silver than
has your humble servant. His paper was doubtless
launched with a view of promoting his financial and
political fortunes, for he did not go broke publishing it
"for the good of the cause," but promptly rung off when
he found that it did not
pay, hence I fail to see that he
is entitled to any more credit than Col. Belo or myself.
I called attention to the failure of his paper, not in a
spirit of rejoicing over its downfall, but simply to
accenuate the fact, after giving some years to consideration of
his rather pretty platitudes, that people condemned them
—that his heroic attempt to reclothe with living flesh
the bones of the
impot unique had proven a dismal failure.
Now, my dear doctor, I have not undertaken in this
hasty article to fully expose this Single Tax fallacy,
having attended to that heretofore, but simply to answer a
few of your arguments which I had not hitherto heard.
Let's drop the subject—let the dead go bury its dead,
while we devote our energies to
living issues.