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THE STANDARD — page 1
[Masthead, across the full width of the page:]
THE STANDARD
NO. 79—VOL. IV, N[O. 1.] [mailing label pasted over the masthead obscures part of the issue number]
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888.
PRICE FIVE CENTS
[Mailing label, pasted at an angle across the masthead (not part of the printed text): “104 Dr Walter Mendelson 16[illegible] / 179 W 74th st”; a further line above is too faint to read.]
p. 1, col. 1 [The left edge of column 1 is darkened and partly lost on the scan. Letters in square brackets, e.g. [h]is, are supplied where only the first letter or two of a line is lost and the word is certain from what remains; longer losses are marked [illegible].]
THE STANDARD FOR THE CAMPAIGN.
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CONTENTS.
[Mc]Glynn’s “Plan of Campaign.” [illegible] and Things in Washington. [Wh]y He Has Changed His Mind. [El]ectricity as a Mode of Motion. Vision. The Future of Dogs and Horses. Petitions in Favor of Protection. Public Ownership of Gas Works. One of the Countries We Fence Out. That Protection Platform. Tinkering With the Irish Problem. Taxation in Italy. Straws Which Show the Wind. The Ratification Meetings. Jimmy O’Brien Alarmed. The Court of Appeals Decision. The Tariff Debate. Men and Things. Campaign “Standard” Fund. Society Notes. [T]he Single Tax Doctrine. [M]y Faith (poem). [Q]ueries and Answers. [T]he Beating of the Drums. [C]urrent Thought.
Dr. McGlynn seems to have utterly lost [h]is grasp upon principle, and is proposing [a] crazy demagogic scheme for getting city [t]enants to band together, refuse to pay for [th]eir houses and rooms any more than a [fa]ir building rent, and by their numbers [m]ake evictions difficult if not impossible. [T]o say nothing of objections which would make the scheme dangerous if it were not ridiculous, what right have tenants more than landlords to the free use of land made valuable by the whole community? It is a pity to see Dr. McGlynn thus wreck what is left of his influence for good.
I spent the latter part of last week in Washington. The national capital is indeed a beautiful city when the trees are in full leaf, and the American who has never seen Paris or London gets here at least some idea of what the pavements of a city ought to be. The covering of Pennsylvania avenue needs renewal, being full of swells and depressions. Blanton Duncan of Kentucky says it is because they do not use the right material. There is plenty of it in California, he says, but the government-built Pacific roads put a prohibitory tariff on its transportation. But along the less used streets the two storied omnibusses which have recently been introduced roll as easily as though upon steel rails, and bicycles and tricycles of all sorts skim along with a motion that seems to the onlooker the nearest approach to flying that man has yet attained. Ladies in tricycles and ladies riding with men on double-barreled bicycles are common, and despite the disadvantage of their long skirts quite a number may be seen mounted on single bicycles, skimming along, when there is not too strong a head wind, as lightly and easily as men. “I should think there would be even more bicycles in use here, since the pavements are so good,” I said to a department clerk. “So there would,” he replied, “if it were not [f]or the tariff. These bicycle makers have [a] combine, and they keep up prices to a point about five dollars less than it costs to import an English bicycle, and pay freight and duty. If it were not for the tariff you could get a machine for $95 that you must now pay $145 for, and lots more of us could afford to have them.” That is the way in Washington now. Even if you try to talk to a man about pavements he is likely to land you in the tariff question.
The capitol is indeed a noble building, and appears to special advantage amid the foliage that now surrounds it. The extensive reconstruction that is intended to make the side that was originally designed for the rear appear more like a [f]ront is now going on. There is a good [o]bject lesson to be had from the capitol. [illegible]as originally intended that the city [illegible] Washington should be built on the [illegible] firm ground that stretches out [illegible]re the east or main front of [illegible] capitol, and the building was con[illegible]cted with this view. But speculation, [illegible]unting the future, carried up and [illegible] the price of land where the city ought [illegible], and was intended to be, to such ex[illegible]ant rates that improvement was driven into the low land and swamp back of the capitol. Thus it is that the noble building presents its rear, not its front, to the city. The east frontage of the building has been much improved by the plantation of trees made in late years, but the colossal statue of Washington preparing for a bath has, either by the painting or chiseling of pupils to the eyes become badly afflicted with
p. 1, col. 2 strabismus, and there is besides a deep hole in its throat. I asked a colored boy with a basket on his arm, who seemed engaged in silent art criticism, the reason of this. He said he supposed the man was cross eyed when he was alive. I asked him who the man was. He said he did not know his name, but (reading the inscription on the side of the pedestal fronting him, “First in war”) he added, “He was the first man in the war.” “And that hole in his throat?” I continued. “That,” said the boy, “is the place where he got shot.”
Though congress is still in session, Washington contains now but few strangers, and the hotels are comparatively deserted. All interest centers in the Mills bill; but there is little interest of curiosity. It is certain to pass the house, and as certain to be beaten in the senate. The republicans are doggedly fighting it line by line in the five minutes’ debate, and the majority are as doggedly voting down all amendments save those agreed to in caucus. One of these amendments adopted while I was there was that striking works of art off the free list. This was agreed to in caucus because of the representation of western members that the farmers regard works of art as matters of luxury, and would deem it a discrimination in favor of the rich if paintings and statuary should come in free while blankets and trace chains were taxed. I am inclined to think the farmers are right. Our discrimination against the work of foreign painters and sculptors is a shameful and barbarous thing, but it is merely a consistent part of a barbarous and shameful system.
Looking down from the galleries while this debate is dragging along soon becomes tiresome, for it is difficult to hear what is being said. The floor is covered with littered desks and vacant seats. The majority of the small number of representatives present are writing, reading or chatting with each other. One man is speaking, frequently with much animation, but there are ordinarily but two or three who seem to pay any attention, while the chatter around one and the hum from other parts of the house make much of what is said indistinguishable. For purposes of debate the English plan of a small hall and no desks [is with?] such a large body much preferable to the American plan; but there are times of course when the house of representatives fills up, and the hush of attention enables even the galleries to catch every word. In the absence of Mr. Mills, C. R. Breckinridge of Arkansas, son of John C. Breckinridge, and cousin one degree removed of the other Breckinridge in the house—W. C. P., of Kentucky, had charge of the bill. Quick, forcible, and well informed, he seemed an efficient substitute for Mr. Mills. Thomas B. Reed of Maine led the republican opposition. A southerner incidentally gave me some idea of what manner of man he considered Mr. Reed to be. “Most cf our colored sic in the south are good: but there are some mean ones, just as there are some mean whites. But those mean colored people, when they are mean, are as mean as they can be. They just take after Mr. Tom Reed of Maine.”
The protracted debate over the Mills bill, which is likely to carry the session into September, while useless as far as immediate effect on legislation is concerned—for it is as certain that the senate will reject as that the house will pass the bill—is in reality of much importance. The congressmen are really speaking to their constituents rather than to each other, and their discussion is at once an indication and a stimulant of that far wider controversy that is going on all over the country, and that will go on with increasing intensity until the popular vote is taken in November—to recommence again immediately afterward.
The feeling at Washington, as I was able to gauge it, is exceedingly good. The election of Barnum as chairman of the national committee is, it is said, no indication of a weakening or apologetic attitude. The response that has come from the country has inspired the democratic leaders with confidence, while republicans privately admit that the opposition to the protective system that is awakening is much stronger than they looked for. Among all the leading democratic congressmen I talked with 1 did not sic with one who was not in favor of an aggressive campaign. And this, it is said, is the determination of the president. Mr. Cleveland has the reputation of being even a stronger free trader than his message would indicate—and that is strong enough for all practical purposes. The message, as originally written, is said to have been more radical even than as finally sent in, being modified somewhat at the suggestion of free trade democrats, who feared it might be too strong for the party in its
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demoralized condition on the tariff question.
The reputation Mr. Cleveland has made in Washington is a very high one. There are plenty who do not like him, but there seem to be none who do not credit him with conscientiousness and determination. I was talking with Charles Nordhoff of the strange obscurity into which the only living ex-president, Mr. Hayes, has fallen—an obscurity so great that although he was a member of the Chicago convention no one out of Chicago seemed to know it, and of the contrast between his character and that of Mr. Cleveland. when Mr. sic, as illustrative of the president’s character, told me a good story. “I was always curious,” said Mr. Nordhoff, “as to the sources of General Jackson’s wonderful popular strength, and I once asked an old[,?] Tennessean what was its reason. ‘Our people believed in General Jackson,’ said he, ‘because they were convinced that he was honest and conscientious, and that when he once made up his mind that a thing was right nothing could swerve him from it.’” As indicative of this feeling the Tennessean went on to recall a sermon delivered by a popular Tennessee preacher, describing the condemnation of Christ at at the sic of Pontius Pilate. “Now, brethren,” said the preacher, “don’t put Pontius Pilate down for a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man; he was only a weak one. He himself would much rather have released our Savior, but he couldn’t resist the pressure of the scribes and pharisees and the howlings of the rabble. He didn’t have any backbone. He wasn’t bad[,?] but he was a poor, weak creature—in fact there was nothing to him. Brethren, if General Jackson had been in Pontius Pilate’s place that trial would have had a different ending!”
The appearance, manner and talk of Mills of Texas confirm the reputation he has made. He is a strong man, and a free trader from base. He has fought this battle in his own state as it ought to be fought in every state. When, after his first term, he announced himself as opposed to the duty on wool, a howl went up in his district that he was opposing the interests of his own state; that the duty on wool was all that Texas got out of the tariff; [and that while?] it might be right enough for him to try and get duties abolished on things which Texas did not produce, he ought to stand up for a duty on wool until all the others were abolished. Mr. Mills accepted the challenge and met the issue before his constituents on the abolition of the wool duty. He asked them how a Texan representative could go into the house and work for the reduction or abolition of duties while insisting that the duty that was supposed to be his state’s share in the general steal should be kept up. He pointed out to them that nobody except Judge Kelley was in favor of all duties, but that our monstrous tariff had been built up and was maintained by the combinations that those in favor of some duties were forced to make with those in favor of other duties, and that for the people of Texas to demand the retention of one duty was to necessarily consent to the retention of all. And then, denouncing the whole protective system as a robbery of the masses, he addressed himself particularly to the assumption that because the duty on wool might put some money in the pockets of Texas wool growers it was therefore a benefit to the whole people of Texas. Who are these Texan wool growers, he asked, that all the other people of Texas should be taxed by the tariff for their benefit? They are mostly absentees, and few or none of them do any real work, while their immense flocks are tended by two or three Mexicans and a lot of hairless Mexican dogs. Who are they that you men who earn your living by hard work should be compelled by law to pay higher prices for every stitch of woolen clothing you or your families wear to give them a bonus? If you want to continue that, vote against me, for I am as much opposed to protecting Texas wool as I am opposed to protecting anything else. Mr. Mills’s continued presence in the house shows the answer of his constituents, and the fact that the putting of wool on the free list is the keystone of the Mills bill shows his adherence to the principle he then declared. Like the other members of the ways and means committee Mr. Mills evidently only regards the Mills bill as a mere entering wedge. What he really aims at was well set forth in the peroration of his speech in support of the Morrison bill four years ago:
God grant that the day may soon come when American ships shall again sail the seas under the shield and protection of our own flag. If that day is to come, it must be preceded by a reversal of the policy of commercial restriction. We must remove, both by legislation and diplomacy, every hindering cause that prevents the free exchange of the
p. 1, col. 4 > products of our labor in all the markets of the world. We must unfetter every arm and let every muscle strike for the highest remuneration for its toil. We must let wealth, the creation of labor, grow up in all the homes of our people. Then every industry will spring forward at a bound, and wealth, prosperity and power will bless the land that is dedicated to FREE MEN, FREE LABOR and FREE TRADE!
Representative William L. Scott of Pennsylvania is a man of the same clear-cut kind. Like Mr. Mills, Mr. Scott has made the fight in his own state and has broken the superstition that no one not pledged to protection to Pennsylvania industries can have any political influence in that state. A favorite notion of protectionists is that free traders are all theorists. Scott of Erie has proved himself practical enough as a politician to break Randall’s political power in Pennsylvania as by one blow, and he is a practical enough business man to have made a fortune popularly estimated at $15,000,000. Yet this is the man—a Pennsylvanian, a business man, a millionaire, who has most firmly struck the true democratic keynote in the tariff debate, and declared against all protection, not merely as economically injurious, but as morally wrong—as violative of the spirit and letter of the constitution, of the fundamental principles of the democratic party and of the natural and inalienable rights of man. Nor is it strange that such an outspoken free trader should spring up from the very hot bed of American protectionism. On the contrary, it is natural. Logical and thorough going protectionism begets, when thought is once aroused, logical and thorough going free traders. This is why I am so glad to see the republican platform boldly take such ultra ground. With Scott in the lead, there will be no “Polk, Dallas and the tariff of ’42” campaign in Pennsylvania this year. Against the principle of protection will be pitted the principle of freedom, and however the electoral vote may go, the discussion will make free traders.
One of the representative men whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Washington was Congressman Nichols of North Carolina, master workman of the Knights of Labor of that state. Mr. Nichols is a North Carolinan by birth, and at the age of twelve was apprenticed to the printing trade in the office of a weekly paper in [line obscured: faint band across the page; only “… by himself in the office,” can be made out] and after awhile got to reading the New York Weekly Tribune, which came as an exchange, but was regularly thrown aside. Thus he became an abolitionist. Though he had to keep his opinions quiet, yet in the office at night time he taught some slave boys and men to read—then a penal offense. When he became of age he agreed to work as foreman of the office, before school, after school and on Saturdays, for his board and the payment of his tuition in a neighboring academy. Then he got married, and then, utterly unexpected, came the war, a local politician, one A. M. Lewis, who is still living, guaranteeing in a speech, when volunteers were first called for, to wipe up with his pocket handkerchief all the blood that should be spilt. Then came the conscription, for things did not go quite as the fire eaters, who had hurried the south into secession, expected. But the state issue of paper money had commenced, and Mr. Nichols was engaged in printing it. Though conscripted, he was too good a printer to be spared from the manufacture of money, and so was detailed for that purpose. He worked away while the war was raging, turning white paper into money so long as white paper could be had, and then when the protection to southern industry afforded by the federal fleets and armies became so thoroughly effective that no white paper was to be had, using up whatever paper could be got hold of, even though it had been printed on one side. Of this money he got at first $50 a month, and then by successive increases $400 a month. But the currency depreciated faster than his pay went up, and toward the close his $400 a month was really worth no more than $10 a month would have been before the war began. Then came Sherman and his army. The soldiers had lots of coffee, tea, sugar, and all sorts of things which the protective blockade had made unattainable luxuries. They were ready to swap them for garden stuff; and from a patch which he had planted Mr. Nichols got a good stock of such things. They were constantly wanting songs printed, and kept Mr. Nichols busy at it, paying high prices in good money. And they bought up North Carolina currency at $1 per $100, to be used as stakes at cards. Thus well started, Mr. Nichols worked away in his book and job office until with the incoming of Garfield’s administration he was astonished by his appointment as postmaster. The way of it was that there were three well matched applicants; Mr.
p. 1, col. 5 Garfield, unwilling to decide between them, called on them to name a fourth, and they finally agreed on Nichols. His election to congress came in pretty much the same way. General Cox, who had represented the Raleigh district, was defeated for renomination because of his devotion to civil service reform. There was much dissatisfaction, and Mr. Nichols, who had in the meantime become master workman of the Knights of Labor, was asked to run as an independent candidate, and was elected by a majority of over four thousand, receiving many democratic votes.
Very interesting to me was the long talk I had, both of the past and of the present, with this representative of what were the “poor whites” of North Carolina. In his district there are to-day thirty-eight cotton factories, employing from one hundred to five hundred hands each—nineteen of them being in Alamance county. It contains also the largest smoking tobacco factory in the world, which makes the Durham smoking tobacco, flavored with rum and the tonka bean. This factory owes its rise to the fancy which many of the federal soldiers when encamped about Raleigh took for this tobacco, then made on a very small scale by a man named Durham. It now employs from 800 to 1,000 hands, nearly all black. In his district is also one of the largest cigarette factories in the world, that of W. Duke, Sons & Co., which employs 600 hands, nearly all white. The cotton factories employ both blacks and whites—but generally in different departments. There were strong prejudices between the poor whites and the blacks before the war, owing, as Mr. Nichols puts it, to the fact that the blacks being the property of rich men, generally got the better of it in any controversy or collision. These prejudices remained after the war, but the spread of the Knights cf sic is breaking them down. In that order the colors are generally organized in separate assemblies. When organizing in any place they find it best to organize a white assembly first, the blacks being ready to follow the initiative of the whites, but the whites objecting to follow the initiative of the blacks. When white workmen are organized they at once see the advantage cf sic colored workmen to organize, as it makes them stronger. The white knights visit the colored assemblies very largely; the colored knights return these visits, though not so largely; and a sense of common interest soon grows up. As yet the growth of the Knights of Labor has been among the mechanics and factory hands, but few field hands having come in. But it is likely in time to embrace these also. They have a need for intelligent lecturers, but the discussion of economic subjects goes on in some fashion in all the assemblies, white and colored.
Master Workman Nichols has always used all his influence against strikes, but the order has won some important advantages without striking, notably the reduction of hours in the cotton factories from twelve to ten.
Protective notions have taken little or no hold among the factory hands; but there is a leaning to them among the proprietors. The internal revenue taxes are favored by the large factory owners and distillers, but are very unpopular among the small farmers, being made the occasion of much extortion and oppression.
The whole atmosphere of Washington confirms the opinion that a new political era has indeed come; that the movement for a reduction of protection must pass into an avowed free trade movement, and that into a single tax movement—that in short what is now beginning in the attack upon the tariff-fostered monopolies is a great struggle against all monopolies. Protection has nailed the black flag to the mast head in the Chicago convention, and the Mills bill, which is being fought line by line in the house, will be killed in the senate. So much the worse for protection. The next bill which will be introduced will be one that will make the Mills bill seem a high protective measure.
The indications are many and are strengthening that a great revolt of free trade republicans, especially in the west, is going to give to the democratic national ticket many states hitherto counted as republican, and elect Mr. Cleveland by a political tidal wave. In so declaring that he shall vote for Mr. Cleveland, while supporting the republican state ticket, ex-Mayor Low of Brooklyn speaks for many thousands of republicans in this and other eastern states. In Indiana, the Indianapolis News, the most influential republican paper in Indiana, takes firm ground against the republican platform, and says:
We believe in a reformation of the tariff which shall not merely reduce the revenues from it, but reduce the rates by which they are derived, and, by supplying to our manu
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facturers free raw material give them a chance at the markets of the world where American energy, enterprise and ability fear no competitor. As we began this fight we continue it. We have urged the people of the Seventh congressional district to return Mr. Bynum not because he is a democrat—in spite of it, for that matter—but because he is a tariff reformer. This battle we should like to see carried into every congressional district of Indiana. We shall aid in carrying it there, and we would that next November would record thirteen tariff reform congressmen from Indiana—no matter what their politics.
The News does not formally oppose General Harrison, but what effect such support of anti-protection congressmen will have upon a protectionist candidate for president can be seen.
The feeling which this indicates is extending through all the west, and as the discussion goes on, must become stronger and stronger.
In the meantime our local friends in sic are numerous and active. They have held a number of useful meetings, and will recommence them in the fall. They held what they call a socratic debate, at which Senator Palmer of Michigan presided, and Mr. Croffutt, late editor of the Washington Post, opposed the single tax and stood up to answer questions. They had fun. Then Mr. Croffutt and his friends wanting more, they had a debate between Mr. Croffutt and Charles F. Adams, at which Senator Kenner of West sic presided; an illustrated lecture by Mr. Charles Newburgh of the pension bureau, at which District Attorney Hoge presided; a debate with the Young men’s Christian association, and a lecture from Miss Hulda Loud, who is said to be a wonderfully efficient speaker. Nine out of ten of the Knights of Labor in the district are single tax men. The departments are becoming saturated with it; investigation shows that a majority of the new clerks entering through the civil service examinations are for the single tax; and I heard directly and indirectly of many prominent men, in congress and out of it, who have accepted the idea. Our Washington friends are full of the belief that the federal district offers a magnificent opportunity to bring the single tax proposition in practical form before the whole country. Mr. C. B. Hemingway has already got the signatures of many of the most prominent business men in Washington to a petition to congress [asking?] for the abolition of taxes on improvements and the raising of district revenues from a tax upon the rental values of land. Our friends are confident that before another session they can with proper effort get the signatures of three-fourths, some say nine-tenths, of the voters of the district to some such petition. The proposition thus sanctioned by the highest democratic authority, the will of the people, will not lack friends in both houses of congress to advocate and push it, even though they might as yet shrink from advocating such a measure in their own states. The manner in which the federal expenditures in the District of Columbia have redounded to the advantage of the land owners, and the growth of the city has been retarded by land speculation, give the most striking illustrations of the justice and expediency of the measure. A great debate in congress on the proposition would have an immense educational influence on the whole country.
I walked down a pleasant Washington street on Sunday afternoon with a friend of mine, now growing gray, who for years has worked hard and well for free trade, and other true reforms—a man to whom it has been given at critical times to have much influence for good. We talked of the long years during which the effort to make any headway against the protectionist superstition seemed like pouring water upon sand, and with joy and congratulation of the new era that with President Cleveland’s message seems to have at last opened. He said to me: “I remember when my first child was born, sitting by her bedside and saying to his mother, ‘We must teach this child to hate slavery. It won’t be abolished in his lifetime, but in his lifetime he will be able to help towar[d] it.’ How little I foresaw what was eve[n] then at hand. Before that child had muc[h] more than learned to prattle slavery wa[s] dead.”
To me this Fourth of July comes wi[th] more of hope for the republic than any [I?] have known. Again, in every town a[nd] hamlet the majestic words of Jefferson r[ing?] out:
We hold these truths to be self evide[nt:] That all men are created equal and are [en]dowed by their Creator with certain [in]alienable rights.
We have not fully understood the[m?] any more than our fathers did. But [we?] are beginning to learn. Freedom is [not?] yet here, but she is coming. It is our[s to?] clear her way.
HENRY GEORG[E].
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2 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888.
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HUGH O. PENTECOST.
Why He Has Changed His Mind—He Cannot See the Struggle for Free Trade Go On, and Have No Hand in It.
I have changed my mind. Immediately after the crushing defeat of the united labor party last year, I expressed my opinion that single tax people should put a presidential candidate in the field and conduct a single tax campaign, without reference to whether many or few should vote the ticket—not as a political, but a moral movement. If a single tax candidate were now in the field on a single tax platform, including a square free trade plank, I should vote for him. I am not so sure as I once was that to run such a candidate on such a platform would be the best thing to do, but if such a candidate were in the field I should vote for him. It is not especially upon this point that I have changed my mind. It is upon another.
Some time ago I made a speech in Masonic temple in which I declared that if the united labor party nominated a presidential candidate upon a single tax platform which ignored the tariff question and I, therefore, had to choose between voting for him or Mr. Cleveland (in case he should be nominated by the democrats), I should do neither, but would write and vote a single ballot representing the whole single tax doctrine. Mr. George, in the subsequent issue of THE STANDARD, suggesting the names of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson as suitable names to write upon the ballot.
It is upon this point that I have changed my mind. I have come to the conclusion that it is better to follow Mr. George’s advice and vote for Mr. Cleveland than to vote for Mr. Cowdrey, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson; and for the following reasons, which have assumed clearness and force through conversations, by reading THE STANDARD and upon such independent reflection as I am capable of:
- To vote for Mr. Cowdrey is not to vote for the single tax principle, which includes the idea of free trade; and it is to vote for a platform which intentionally evades the tariff question, and, in that particular, is disingenuous—an inexcusable fault in a new party, whose hopelessness of success makes a political device ridiculous and which thereby, to a greater or less extent, demoralizes itself.
This is not meant as a reflection upon the motives or judgment of those who composed the Cincinnati convention. It is simply an expression of personal opinion. I can understand how earnest single tax men can vote for Mr. Cowdrey and sincerely feel that they will thus do the cause good service. I thought at one time (for a brief time) that if I could be satisfied of one thing (nameless here) I should vote for him. I now think differently, and feel that if I should vote for Mr. Cowdrey I should be doing no service to our cause.
To vote for General Washington or Thomas Jefferson would be practically to vote not at all. To vote not at all where there is a possibility of one vote being needed to prevent the continuance of the “protectionist” policy, with all that it involves, I am unwilling. I simply cannot see this great struggle for freer trade go on and have no hand in it, when it means so much to every wage worker in the land.
To vote for Mr. Cleveland is to take the only road at present open which leads toward the single tax. I need not repeat here the arguments which readers of THE STANDARD get each week, and which have had weight with me in convincing me that the only way by which we can ever get our much is to take the little that is available. It has seemed to me, and still seems, very little that the democratic party offers, but I think Mr. George is right in saying the democrats will be forced by their opponents into a more radical free trade position than that of the Mills bill.
Illustrations of this appeared at the recent great ratification meeting of the county democracy in the Academy of Music, New York. sic Mr. Speaker Carlisle declared emphatically against the idea that the democracy is for free trade, but soon after said:
Whatever may be said to the contrary, we know that all labor is paid for in the market where its products are sold, and that the more these markets are restricted the less demand there will be for labor and the less wages it will receive. What would become, for instance, of the laboring men and women of New York if the laws were so arranged as to prevent the products of their labor from being sold outside of the city, or outside of the state, even? How long, under such circumstances, would they continue to receive their present wages?
The illustration which these questions suggest applies with as much force to the whole United States as to a single city or state. If the sale of your products is confined to the United States on account of the greater cost of production here than elsewhere, or for any other reason, there is necessarily less demand for your labor, and consequently lower wages, than there would be under other circumstances.
Governor Hill as sic declaimed against the efforts of the republicans to falsify the position of the democratic party by accusing it of teaching free trade doctrines, and he said afterward:
Our opponents boast that their high tariff [scheme?], which they propose so stoutly to [maintain?], is the “American system.” I deny [the?] proposition. It is un-American in its [whole?] scope and in all its details. Any system [which?] proposes to build a wall around this [country?], and shut us out from the commercial [world?], and hedge us in with innumerable [restrictions?] and exactions, is the Chinese [system?]; nothing more or less.
. . . . . .
[An?] intelligent workingman well stated the [exact?] situation when he said the other day: “[Wages?] depend upon supply and demand, [and?] not on taxes. When you see two men [after?] one boss, wages are low; when you see [two?] bosses after one man, wages are high. [That?] is the whole of it, theory, principle and [practice?].” No political party can properly [claim?] exclusive credit because of the wages [which?] American workingmen enjoy to-day. [Tariffs?] have not done it. The tariff has not [been?] an important factor. Political platforms [have?] not accomplished it. But the system of [illegible] organizations which the American [workingmen?] themselves have organized and [maintained?] have produced the result, and [illegible] and they alone, are entitled to the
p. 2, col. 2
credit. This is a fact clearly established by statistics, and it should also not be forgotten that these trade organizations have been instituted against the violent, persistent and united opposition of that class of employers who are now most loudly shouting for a high tariff to “protect,” not themselves, but the “poor workingman.”
I do not wish to elaborate the argument by which my way has been made clear to walk with those single tax men who believe they shall do wisely to vote the democratic ticket this year. I merely wish to announce, and to let the announcement go for what it is worth, that after much mental disturbance and considerable cloudiness of vision I have come to believe that I shall do the single tax cause most service by voting for Mr. Cleveland for president. Having thus changed my mind it seems wise for several reasons to say so.
HUGH O. PENTECOST.
Newark, July 2, sic.
Preaching the Word in Australia.
A recent issue of an Australian paper contains a notice of the first public dinner and entertainment of the Auckland anti-poverty society. Many ladies were in attendance. After the repast was served the tables were removed and the remainder of the evening spent in listening to speeches, songs and recitations. A chorus had been specially organized for the occasion also. The society was conceived some months ago by a few earnest men who had become imbued with the anti-poverty doctrines. The officers are J. Balty, president; A. Cowley, vice-president; W. F. Judson, treasurer, and W. S. Ransom, secretary. The members of the society have hitherto worked quietly, but now propose to “spread the light” openly. The membership roll is rapidly growing.
The Australian Economist contains a paper read in Sydney, May 1, before the Australian economic association by E. W. Foxall, advocating the single tax on land values as the best method of taxation.
A Hot Meeting of the Progress and Poverty Class.
There was a lively time at the meeting of the Progress and Poverty class at its rooms at 392 Bowery on Monday evening. A number of visitors attended specially to take a hand in the debate. William J. Gorsuch opened the discussion by eloquently stating the question: “Is the tariff a side issue?” After he sat down things got hot. One thing was plainly evident; namely, that the idea of “protection” had lost its charm; had ceased to be believed in as beneficial to wage earners. While there was much difference of opinion as to the policy to be pursued, the sentiment against protection was unanimous.
Dr. J. P. Stanley will address the next meeting, which will be held on Monday, August 6, at the same place. His subject will be “Protection.” All are invited to attend and take part in the debate.
Just so; and by Taking off All Tariff Restrictions Wouldn’t All Industry be sic.
PORTLAND, Me., June 30.—In reference to the point which the “man in the audience” brings up in connection with the George-Jarrett debate a few days ago, I submit that the right conclusion has not been arrived at. It is plain that in relation to the drawback on the tin cans used in exporting goods that it is not the tariff that “fostered monopoly” but the taking off of the tariff that did it. The effect of a drawback is to destroy a tariff to the extent of the drawback. The drawback legislation is democratic legislation, so that in this case it was the free traders who did the “fostering.” I advise the “man in the audience” to take a lesson in logic.
S. T. TAYLOR, Box 1,980.
The Chicago Times Sees the Cat’s Claws.
Chicago Times.
Mr. Blaine during his travels in various European countries has discovered that the condition of the working class is not as good as in the land he left behind him. He hastily draws the conclusion that the superiority of their condition here is due to the system of protection which he advocates. He does not take into consideration the fact that the wants of life here have been largely supplied by the bounties of nature. Until quite recently most of the people of this country have obtained their fuel “without money and without price.” In all the heavily timbered regions wood was obtained for the trouble of chopping it. It can still be obtained on these easy terms in many states and territories. In a large part of the prairie region soft coal of fair quality can be dug from the side of nearly every ravine. If the land belongs to the government or to speculators, nothing is paid for the privilege of digging it. In several states a royalty of only one cent per bushel is asked for soft coal taken from a deposit that is near the surface of the ground. In Italy and France, where Mr. Blaine has been sojourning, the cost of fuel to cook a meal is almost as much as the articles that are to be prepared for the table. Fuel of any kind is so expensive that the rich as well as the poor generally pass the winters in unwarmed rooms. A fire is a luxury that very few can afford. People who obtain their fuel for nothing or at a nominal price are not subjected to one of the burdens that bear so heavily on the people of continental Europe.
Since we “struck ile” in Pennsylvania, nearly thirty years ago, oil for illuminating and lubricating purposes has been so cheap that the cost of lighting a house has hardly been felt. The cheapness of building materials has rendered it easy to construct dwellings. Outside the prairie regions of the west logs for a building could be obtained for nothing, and neighbors would form a “bee” for the purpose of hauling and putting them together. In all European countries, except Russia, building materials are very scarce and high.
Game supplied the first settlers of every portion of this country with meat. The lakes, rivers and smaller streams afforded them all the fish they wanted. Feathers for pillows and beds could be obtained from wild birds, whose flesh furnished excellent food. Hunting game and trapping fur-bearing animals are still profitable pursuits in half the states and all the territories. Nearly every poor family outside a large town can keep a cow, pig and several kinds of fowls at a nominal cost. Land enough to make a large farm in France or Italy is still given away to every citizen, and every one who has declared his intention of becoming one, who applies for it.
Add to these advantages schools supported largely by grants of public land, free libraries, roads, and bridges, and we have reasons enough to account for the favorable condition of the laboring classes in this country without citing the protective tariff. The wonder is not that their condition is so good, but that it is not better in all respects.
General Grant, after traveling through the same countries that Mr. Blaine has visited, contrasted the condition of the working classes with that observed at home, and at the same time remarked: “The problems in relation to affording employment to laborers that have long engaged the attention of the best minds in the old world will soon become the great problems in the new world.” He knew that the time was fast approaching when human beings would crowd each other here as they do now in the densely populated countries of Europe, when the natural fertility of the soil would be exhausted, when there would be no national domain, when every mine, forest, peat bog, and fish pond would have an owner, and when all the bounties of nature would become private property.
p. 2, col. 3
ELECTRICITY AS A MODE OF MOTION.
A writer in the Scientific American says:
The last twenty years have seen more advance in the science of electricity than all the 6,000 historic years preceding. More is discovered in one day now than in a thousand years of the middle ages, so that, literally, “a day is a thousand years.” We put it to all sorts of uses. We make it carry our messages, drive our engine, ring our door bell, and scare the burglar. We take it as a medicine, light our gas, see by it, hear from it, talk with it, and now we are beginning to teach it to write. The question naturally arises in contemplating this subject, “What is it?” I can imagine the last man on the last day asking this same question, “What is it?” At one time, not long ago, it was supposed to be a fluid; by some two fluids, a positive and a negative. But in this day there are few who do not believe it to be simply a mode of motion; not matter, but a condition of matter; and not a mechanical, but a molecular, motion. By mechanical motion is meant a motion of the mass, and by molecular motion is meant a motion of the ultimate particles of which the mass is made up.
That is, we don’t know any more of it than Aladdin knew of his lamp. Here it is; if you do this or that to it, it will do most anything you wish.
Considering the recent applications of electricity to transportation the definition “a mode of motion” seems to have a certain fitness. Already vessels of nearly forty feet in length, and propelled by electricity, have been put to practical use. There is one in New York harbor at present, twenty-eight feet long, used however only as a pleasure boat. The speed as yet attained by electric boats is inferior to that of steamboats, and the expense of generating sufficient power would, it is claimed, be too great at present to permit of ocean vessels being propelled this way. But that the question of cheapness and speed will soon be solved is as certain as it is that the ordinary foot and steam power devices are now being displaced by electric motors in our shops and homes.
Electric propulsion being an accomplished fact on land and water, it remains but to propel ourselves through the air. Mr. Edison is working at this problem. He is said to be experimenting upon a new electric flying machine which he has been commissioned by the Spanish government to make for war purposes. The system will be one of revolving fans, to which power is supplied by means of a wire connecting with an electric dynamo on the earth. The fans are not only to propel but to lift the air ship. Then with a properly equipped car an officer can ascend and take photographs and sketches of the enemy’s position. Mr. Edison is confident of success.
River and harbor navigation will be made easier and safer by the use of electric lights on the various buoys, if the lighthouse board finds it practicable. The present system of lighting is with oil, which is troublesome and expensive. Lighted by electricity the buoys will show more brilliantly and be at all times under control.
The new law of the state of New York substituting execution by electricity for hanging was drawn in conformity with the report of a commission, consisting of Elbridge T. Gerry, Alfred P. Southwick and Matthew Hale, which was appointed by the legislature to investigate the most humane method of inflicting the death penalty. From the opinions of experts and the results of experiments on dogs, the commission concluded that “death produced by a sufficiently powerful electric current is the most rapid and humane produced by any agent at our command,” and that “the apparatus to be used should be arranged to permit the current to pass through the centers of function and intelligence in the brain,” resuscitation under such conditions being impossible. As to the appliances, the commission said: “All that would be essential would be a chair with a head and foot rest, in which the condemned could be seated in a semi-reclining position; one electrode would be connected with the head rest, and the other with the foot rest, which would consist of a metal plate.” The current of electricity might be supplied from the wires used for street lighting, or from an independent plant at the place of execution.
A western company advertises an electric sewing machine motor. It is compact, and of course costs but little to run. Small motors of this kind if they run smoothly will no doubt displace the steam power employed in shirt factories and like establishments. The trouble with the steam power is that the machines are rattled and shaken so as to require constant repairing.
The works of the best watches are now made non-magnetic, and without any apparent change in construction. They may be left for hours in the field of a powerful electro magnet without the slightest effect. There is a process, too, invented by a Frenchman, of taking an ordinary watch and insulating the works. It is cheap, and is said to be effective.
A New Orleans dentist, by apparatus of his own invention, uses the electric current of a central station to run his dental tools, cool the office by means of a fan, and to heat the water required for the operator’s use.
A VISION.
U. S. SIGNAL SERVICE OFFICE, SUMMIT PIKE’S PEAK, Col., June 23.
THE STANDARD on the summit of Pike’s peak!—fourteen thousand four hundred feet above sea level. Below is a deep and picturesque canyon through which Ruxton creek, over numerous cascades, hurries to the sea. Along this creek is a serpentine trail over which we have just passed. Far in the hazy distance are the Sangre de Christo mountains. To the west and north are snow capped peaks innumerable. The sources of a dozen streams are clearly discernible. Yonder is a black spot; it is Denver, eighty miles away. To the east, as far as eye can see, meeting the skies, slumbers a waterless ocean. Through this for a hundred miles I trace the Arkansas river. Eight thousand two hundred feet below, near the town of Manitou, the Saratoga of the west, stand weird and fantastic forms in the garden of the gods.
Here, in days long past, the Indian worshiped, and from here many a solemn prayer went up to the Great Spirit. Now the waving pine trees sigh the requiem of a conquered race. Winding around huge mountains, through dark tunnels and over giddy chasms leads the Colorado Midland railway on its way to even grander sights. What an inspiring spectacle! Here nature rules supreme. In this wild solitude she proclaims her glory. Ten thousand centuries gaze down upon these mighty rocks, unconquered and unconquerable. Countless ages have come and gone, but their majesty stands unmoved. How fitting that here the oriflamme of a grand and noble principle should be unfurled—a principle which, too, stands unconquered and unconquerable.
And as I gaze around me a fantasy—a dream of years long past—floats before my vision. Once before, in my old Wisconsin home, I stood upon a rocky peak; a peak like this, save that below lay a fertile plain—a paradise clothed in velvety verdure, dotted with peaceful towns and filled with happy homes. Peace and joy and plenty reigned; no hate, no jealousy, no strife. Soft and gentle music filled the balmy air—“a symphony in yellow and red.” Thus the kingdom of heaven on earth must be. But, alas, my poor soul was rudely awakened. Then came a sudden p. 2, col. 4 gust from off the icy peaks, and I heard the pine trees solemnly moaning, “The poor ye have always with you.” Drums and fifes and the bugle’s bloody call to strife sang in my ears. Must I close my eyes upon this hated scene? Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? God forbid!
Never will I rest until the curse of poverty is banished from the land. A thousand times I have heard the doleful cry “impossible!” and a thousand times I have trampled it in the dust, until now it lies writhing at my feet.
A. G. GROH.
THE FUTURE OF DOGS AND HORSES.
Will They Ever Learn to Compete for the Privilege of sic.
New York Mail and Express.
“I do not go to the extent of some scientists,” said a distinguished student of the animal kingdom recently, “in the opinion that a time will ever come when the lower animals will possess the power of speech, but I firmly believe that in a few generations certain of these animals will advance to a wonderful degree in the matter of intelligence. Experiments have been already made in England which demonstrate that some of them are capable of almost everything except the power to speak. Shepherd dogs have been taught to count, and, at the order of their master, will bring back a certain number of sheep from the pasture, if credence is to be placed in the reports which have been made from time to time within the last few years, and which bear the stamp of authenticity.
“In order that the education of animals, like cats, dogs and horses, which have already shown a certain degree of mentality, may be brought to the highest state of perfection it is necessary that the more intelligent of those brutes should be kept apart from others of their kind and should be interbred while their offspring should be treated in the same way. A horse trainer of national renown told me not long ago that he had been working on that theory for many years, and that he found the offspring of trick horses were much more easily taught than those which came from animals never trained in the ring.
“The associations with which an animal is surrounded have a wonderful effect upon its mental development, even though no special pains have been taken to educate it, as is the case with our common household pets which have for generations been subjected to gentle influences. Yet the progenitors of these domestic animals once roamed the forests as wild and untamed as the panther in the Indian jungles, and even now are found wild and ferocious in certain parts of the world. How, then, can we forecast the extent to which they can be educated during the myriads of ages of the future?”
Fingers Made Before Forks.
London Echo.
The table fork has only been domiciled in England some two centuries and a half, if as long. Up to the beginning of the seventeenth century our ancestors, it is to be feared, fed themselves with their hands. Monarchs and nobles and dames of high degree all ate in the simple fashion first set in the garden of Eden. But in the year 1611 one Thomas Coryale, a traveled gentleman, first brought a very curious invention to the notice of the British public of the day. Thomas had journeyed in foreign parts, and like the modern globe-trotters, conceived the idea of writing a history of his experiences and adventures. This book was quaintly entitled, “Coryale’s crudities, hastily gobbled up in a five months’ travels in France, Savoy, Italy, sic (commonly called the Grisons’ country), Helvetia, some parts of High Germany, and the Netherlands.”
It was in Italy that our observant Thomas first made the acquaintance of the table fork, which he thus describes: “The Italians, and also most strangers that are cormorant (sic) in Italy, do alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meate. For while with the knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meate out of the dishe, they fasten their forke, which they hold in their other hand, upon the same dishe.” The Italians of that period were seemingly a fastidious race, for, according to the author of the “Crudities,” “the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dishe touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike clean.” Thomas Coryale was so struck with the happy invention that he had a “forke” made for his own use, and was laughed at by those of his contemporaries who did not object to have their dishes “touched with fingers.” He was called sic or the fork bearer, and had to endure as much raillery and obloquy, perhaps, as had the Bristol gentleman later on who first introduced umbrellas into England.
The “forke” had a severe struggle for existence. The wits and satirists of the day made merry at the expense of the effeminate folk who preferred forks to fingers. John Fletcher, in his “Queen of Corinth,” speaks of the “fork carving traveler,” and Jonson says in his sic:”
Then must you learn The use and handling of your silver fork.
Even so late as 1652 the use of the fork can have made but little progress. Heylin, in his “Cosmography” says, apropos of the Chinese: “They are much given to their bellies, and eat thrice a day, but then not immoderately, not touching their meat with their hands at all, and, therefore, no great soilers of linen. The use of silver forks with us, by some of our spruce gallants taken up of late, came from China into Italy and France, and thence into England.”
The half-sneering reference to the “spruce gallants” shows that forks were hardly in common vogue even forty years after Thomas Coryale’s endeavor on their behalf. And, again, the statement that the Chinese were no great soilers of table linen pretty conclusively suggests that the English of the day differed from the Chinese in that particular. It is nothing short of marvelous that the handy and cleanly fork should have met with such opposition at its introduction in England; but the fact remains that more than a hundred years had elapsed before the instrument became accepted by our ancestors.
What Comes of Fencing Out Our Next Door Neighbor.
Pall Mall Gazette.
Englishmen are determined to have their share in the opening up of Mexico. A recent dispatch from Sir Spencer St. John, her majesty’s minister at Mexico, gives some particulars of the schemes in which our countrymen are concerned. First of all there is the inter-oceanic railway between the Atlantic and Pacific, across the isthmus of Tehuantepec, an issue in connection with which has been expected by the London market for a week or two past. The concession has been granted to Lord Gosford, as the representative of certain engineers and contractors, who are prepared to undertake the work immediately. By the contract four years are allowed for the construction of the line, and the price fixed is £2,000,000, in five per cent bonds. If the work is done in three years, £2,250,000 will be paid; if in two years and a half, £2,500,000; in two years, £2,600,000; and in eighteen months, £2,700,000. The interest on the bonds only commences on the first of July, 1890. A second important work is a railway which is to begin from some station connected with the Mexican railway near Puebla, and run from thence to the capital of the State of Oajaca and on to Salina Cruz, on the Tehuantepec isthmus. This concession has been secured by Messrs. Bower, Scott, Read, and Campbell, engineers, of London and Mexico. The capital required is about four millions sterling, and the time allowed to build the line fifteen years, with substantial advantages if completed in a shorter period. The government and the state of Oajaca guarantee eight per cent on the expenditure. A third public work secured by an English syndicate is the construction of a tunnel about six miles in length to enable the valley of Mexico to be drained. The cost of the work is to be £400,000, and principal and interest are guaranteed by the municipality of Mexico. A London syndicate has secured from the government the right to work the silver district of Corona, in the state of Mexico, and a considerable amount of capital is also being invested in the purchase of large estates and other mines.
p. 2, col. 5
PETITIONS IN FAVOR OF PROTECTION.
How People Are Induced to Sign Them—The Story of a Petition From Employes in a Paterson Mill.
The New York Herald is doing a good work in investigating the methods adopted by some employers in protected industries to obtain the signatures of their employes to petitions against any reduction of the tariff. The latest example is that of the Dolphin manufacturing company of Paterson, New Jersey, which has just secured, from the workers in its factory, nearly seven hundred signatures to the following petition:
We, the undersigned, employes of the Dolphin mills of the city of Paterson, do hereby ask you to use your best efforts to get those parts of the Mills bill relating to jute yarns and jute carpets amended. We believe that the reductions proposed would either throw us out of work or else reduce our wages to those of Scotland, which are less than half of what we are getting. We believe that a duty of thirty per cent upon yarns with jute free would be as small as should be permitted, for now under the present duty of thirty-five per cent almost none of the finer grades can be manufactured in this country. We would also ask that the duty on carpets be left as it is, or not reduced below five cents per square yard. We trust you will do all you can for us and not let this industry go entirely to Great Britain, as it would under the present bill. We cannot afford to live as the mill hands do in Dundee on their small wages, and ask you to help to maintain our present wages, which this bill would greatly reduce.
As all the signatures were obtained in the company’s mills, and as less than 300 male adults are there employed, it is evident that many of the signatures to this petition must be those of women and children. There is, of course, no reason why women and children should not petition for or against legislation; but it may well be questioned whether in this case, their petitioning has anything of that free and spontaneous character which should distinguish the addresses of American citizens to their legislative representatives. As to how the signatures to the petition actually were secured, the Herald tells the following story:
Superintendent Cheyne was instructed to get as many signatures to the petition as possible and he followed instructions. The work of the factory was practically suspended, and the hands of each room were called up by the foreman in charge and requested to sign the paper. Many of the hands were given to understand that it was a protest against free trade, and—here’s the milk in the cocoanut—it is charged that it was pretty plainly intimated to them that it would be for their interest to append their signatures to the document.
One of the employes of the company said yesterday to a reporter of the Herald that the men who were requested to sign were convinced that if they didn’t sign they would certainly lose their situations whenever a pretext offered itself for their discharge.
With this understanding on the part of the employes it is not surprising that the petition received, as Superintendent Cheyne informed the reporter yesterday, between five hundred and seven hundred signatures.
The Paterson Guardian gives this account of the way some of the names of the boy signers were procured:
“One little fellow asked, ’What is it?
“‘It’s against free trade.’
“’What’s free trade?
“‘Oh, it means that unless you sign this your wages will be reduced to a few cents a day, the same as they pay in England.’
“‘Oh, jimminy! I’ll sign it then.’
“’What is it all for? asked another lad.
“‘Oh, step up here and sign it, and don’t be asking foolish questions.’ And he signed it.
“’What do we do this for? asked another.
“‘It’s for a picnic up the Hudson.’
“’Bully boy? shouted the youngster. Of course he signed.”
That’s the way the signatures were procured among the infants.
PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF GAS WORKS.
A Powerful Arraignment of the Gas Companies—Is Not This Really an Argument Against Monopoly of Every Kind?
Real Estate Record and Guide.
There are three gas companies in St. Louis the charters of which soon expire, and it is proposed that hereafter the city shall furnish its own gas. The rate now is only $1.25 per thousand cubic feet, but at this figure there is a profit of fully fifty per cent to the gas companies. Of course the city would not make all this profit, for the politicians would do some stealing; but then, as we have often pointed out, where politicians pilfer dollars the corporations appropriate hundreds of dollars. According to the statistics gathered by the American economic association gas could be manufactured under the present improved processes at from fifty to seventy-five cents per thousand cubic feet. The cost of gas to the consumers in the past has varied from $1.25 to $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. It is estimated that one-half of the nominal stock in the gas business of this country represents no original expense to the stockholders.
The output of gas in 1885 was estimated at 29,000,000,000 cubic feet; the capitalization of the various companies is within a fraction of $300,000,000. Gas consumers, the same authority tells us, have been paying at the rate of ten per cent on the $150,000,000 of fictitious stock. As is well known, Philadelphia, Richmond and a few other cities in this country manufacture their own gas, to the great advantage of gas consumers and the tax paying public. In the city of Nottingham, England, the municipality took possession of the gas works in 1875. The price was then [83½?] cents per thousand feet, and the consumption was nearly 500,000 cubic sic. In eight years the price was lowered twenty-five per cent, the consumption nearly doubled and the profit increased about 600 per cent. The London companies sell gas at sixty-five cents the thousand feet and still make nearly thirteen per cent dividends.
From these facts and figures it will be seen that the gas companies in this country have been monopolies of the most offensive kind. They have profited enormously at the expense of the gas using public. Of course they are all honorable citizens, and are probably the most indignant censors of the morals of the “boodle” aldermen. Yet really what difference is there between the corrupt public official who sells his vote to a corporation and the owners of a corporation stock which exact a tribute from the community out of all proportion to the value of the service rendered. And then it is these plundering corporations which are the great bribe offerers that demoralize our local and state politics. However, they have the press on their side, which is ready enough to denounce the politicians and cover up the tracks of the bribing and exploiting corporations. It is these journals which have created the public opinion against government ownership of public works in face of the patent fact of the efficiency of our police and fire departments and of the excellent service rendered by our Croton water bureau.
There are in the United States 1,402 water works almost entirely under the control of city and county local officers. There have been some few scandals, caused generally by contractors, or by understandings between money lenders and its local officers, but, on the whole, the service has been honest and very efficient. Compared with the management of the gas corporations the water service has been purity personified. It should always be recalled that the city, the state and the nation, in doing its own work, is fairly honest, though slow and unenterprising; the mischief comes on when public officers have dealings with corrupt corporations. All our public scandals, from the Credit Mobilier down to Jake Sharp’s operations, have been caused by the private greed and consciencelessness of incorporated wealth. But how ingeniously the newspapers have managed to divert the attention of the public from the real criminals to the politicians, whom the former have corrupted! Should our cities p. 2, col. 6
manufacture gas themselves, the price could be reduced fully fifty per cent, while the consumption would be doubled. For with cheaper gas would come less use for coal, as the former would be utilized for cooking purposes.
Count Tolstoi at Home.
Pall Mall Gazette.
Here we are in the full splendor of the early summer. All day long the air is tremulous with the song of larks, and at night, when the stars begin to glisten and glitter in the beautiful blue of the sky after the gloaming, the nightingales fill the woods with plaintive music. The lilacs are in full bloom, and the yellow acacia; the plantations are fragrant with the heavy scent of the lily of the valley, which grows everywhere wild among the trees. Great silver birches, with trembling leaves, bend and bow in the pleasant wind, and down the long avenue of elms y[illegible] glimpses of the ponds wherein the fr[illegible] up that curious chorus so strange to [illegible] ears. Everywhere the ground is [illegible] with vegetation, green and rank. [illegible] overflows with verdure, and the bee[illegible] acacias keep up a ceaseless and s[illegible] murmur. The silence at present is [illegible] absolute. Only now and then the fa[illegible] notes of a lark invisible in mid heaven [illegible] heard, or the sharp twit-twit of the gl[illegible] swallow. It is still early morning. [Later in?] the day the voices of children at play wi[illegible] sound fitfully in the distance, blending [pleasantly?] with the birds’ song, and the [soughing?] of the wind in the trees, as natural and [as?] beautiful as they. I am writing in [Count?] Tolstoi’s little study. In the next room, separated only by a door that is ever ajar, he [has?] his shoemaker’s outfit—his awls, his [knife?] and his leather. On the wooden partition wall hangs the scythe with which a little later he will renew the pleasures of mowing which he has eulogized in “Anna Karenine,” pleasures which, however rapturous they appear in his pages, depend largely for their enjoyment upon the existence of a stouter back and sturdier loins than those possessed by gentlemen who first take to mowing in middle age. In an hour or two the great novelist—perhaps the greatest living novelist—will appear in his moujik’s garb, with the dark loose coat and leather girdle, and we shall sally forth together over field and forest, drinking in the glad sunshine, and exulting in the beauty and glory and melody of spring. What a charm there is in these walks! Last night we rambled for verst after verst through the woods, now stopping to drink at a rustic well, then exchanging greetings with pilgrims passing on their way to the shrines at sic or Troitsa, anon pausing on the hill side to catch the strain of music that floated up the vale from where the village maidens were trilling out in chorus a peasant’s song. The sun sinking low on the western horizon lit up with golden radiance the zebra-like trunks of a great plantation of silver birches, filling them with a glow and a warmth that contrasted strangely with their appearance an hour later, when twilight had succeeded sunset, and their white bark glimmered pale and ghostly. The cuckoo’s note rose and fell, a heavy winged crow flapped his solitary home ward way overhead, and in the coppice the nightingale began with his first few broken notes to prepare for his song. Before us in the moist glades of the forest the count’s daughters skipped from side to side graceful as young deer, and as much at home in the woods as they. Further on the workmen, finishing their evening meal, entered into friendly converse with the count, while we warmed our hands at the fire on which water was boiling for their tea. What a change from the crowded streets of St. Petersburg, the Nevski noisy with droschkies even at two and three in the morning, and all the artificialities of high society!
The Galveston News Makes a Suggestion, and Then Goes a Gunning on Its Own Hook.
Galveston News.
It makes a good deal of difference as to the popular acceptation of a preachment which side is presented. To tax land or to untax improvements may express the same intention, but the first of these modes of presenting the idea, or one side of the idea, arouses such apprehension as that expressed by the Athens (Tex.) Review in denouncing the proposition “to make 5,000,000 farmers pay the tax for 60,000,000 people and allow the railroads, steamboats, pork packers, manufacturers and capitalists to escape taxation.” Of course there are two or three full sized misunderstandings somewhere between the Review and the Georgeic sic.
If the latter are misunderstood they may in a measure blame their own peculiar enthusiasm in preaching the alleged gospel of taxation when they might more artistically align their heavy batteries for demolition of the great number of taxes which deplete the pockets, not only of 5,000,000 farmers, but of as many more working people of other industries. And perhaps there is not a tax levied upon the manufacturers and transportation agencies which is not as surely collected from the people as if levied direct upon the people individually. It appears that the classes paying taxes are the agents for their collection. Mr. George’s theory may be too attenuated an abstraction and may presuppose too much governmental wisdom and purity to be workable without corruption, but it would take a hard lot of politicians to tax the working farmers more than they are now taxed. Country real estate may have little value apart from improvements. If these were exempted, it would remain to be seen whether the valuable real estate of the manufacturers, the wharf owners, the railroads and other enterprises would not have to pay more tax. Of course the unused valuable sites now held for speculation would be forced upon the market by George’s tax method. It would not be worth while, apparently, to examine in what proportions corporate enterprises would be taxed, for their taxes are distributed upon the people, and must necessarily be so distributed in the long run. The people have almost everywhere subscribed and given real estate to railroads to attract capital into such enterprises. Would an opposite policy be rational? The exemption of improvements from taxation might be accepted as the most agreeable statement of the position that industry needs untaxing whether or not taxation is the proper way of dealing with monopoly.
The Tariff Enables the Rod Manufacturer to Crush the Protected Wire Manufacturer.
Joliet, Ill., special to Chicago News.
There is considerable feeling here on the part of the barb wire manufacturers against what they term a trust of rod manufacturers composed of four large concerns, headed by Washburn & Moen, the Cambrian iron sic, the Joliet steel company, and the Cleveland rolling mill company to manufacture rods in this country and monopolize the [illegible] wire industry by saving the $13.40 duty [illegible] ton and driving the barb wire [manufacturers?] who have the duty to pay, out of [business?]. The barb wire manufacturers ask that [illegible] duty on rods be removed so that they [illegible] compete for the South American trade. [illegible] claim they can and do manufacture [illegible] cheaper than Europe does. This [proposed?] trust, they allege, has lobbyists at [Washington?] asking that the duty on rods be [increased?] so that they can more effectually [build?] [illegible] their monopoly.
An Aristocratic Angel.
Boston Transcript.
“Ain’t it too bad grandpa’s dead?” said Boston Ida.
“Yes, dear, but he is happy [with?] the angels?”
“Did all the angels go from Beacon street?”
“Oh, no, dear.”
“Then I know grandpa ain’t having a bit good time. He never took no notice of people unless they lived on the Back bay. I do hope he carried his card in his pocket, else how’ll anybody in heaven know he lived on Beacon street? They might take him for a South ender—and O, mamma! if they should think he belonged to Columbus avenue!”
Page 3 of 8contents
THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888. 3
p. 3, col. 1
ONE OF THE COUNTRIES WE FENCE OUT.
The Growing Wealth of the Argentine Republic—Englishmen, Italians, Germans and Spaniards Enjoy a Profitable Trade, but Americans Must Wait for a Subsidized Steamship Line.
The Mail and Express, which is never tired sic explaining in its editorial columns that any American who advocates that Americans should trade with foreign countries is, ipso facto, a renegade and a paid agent of the Cobden club, has of late developed a habit of giving on its non-editorial pages most tempting descriptions of the advantages which we might secure by trading with certain countries if it weren’t for the immorality of the thing. It is perhaps not good judgment, while denouncing the sin of Achan, thus to put on exhibition the silver and gold and garments to be gained by imitating his crime; but the Mail and Express does it all the same.
Recently the Mail and Express has been interviewing Mr. Charles H. Sanford, a wicked American, doubtless secretly in British pay, who “has been connected with Buenos Ayres for twenty-two years, but has always kept his residence in the United States, and lives at present on Fifth avenue, in this city.” Mr. Sanford communicated some facts about the Argentine Republic w[illegible] the Mail and Express communicates to [its re?]aders. They are interesting.
[The?] Argentine Republic, Mr. sic says, [is a v?]eritable eldorado, offering a better [field?] for the investment of capital than any country in the world.
[The?] prosperity of the people is remarkable. [Failur?]es are almost unknown, and none of im[port?]ance have taken place in sic last eight [ye?]ars. An Argentine’s word is his bond. A note was never given there for a debt before 1876, and to-day the largest transactions of the country are done on simple verbal promises or agreements to pay. I have done millions of dollars of business without ever having a document pass until the business was fully completed. The people I have sic found hospitable and amiable. I have known few worthy Americans who did not succeed there.
The government is similar to ours, and its constitution is an exact copy of ours, with the exception that the president is elected for a term of six years instead of four. The present president is Mr. M. Juarez sic. He is a very young man to occupy such a position, being under forty years of age. He is a very energetic and enterprising ruler, and I have no doubt that his years will be of prosperity to the country. Military rule and dictatorship have long since been a thing of the past in the Argentine Republic, although many people think that that is still the rule of the country.
Every state of the province has a normal school for boys and another for girls. At the head of the latter, with but few exceptions, there are American girls. In Buenos Ayres the public school buildings are handsomer than those of New York. Last year the total number of schools in the country was 3,028. They were served by 6,241 teachers, and their attendance numbered 227,450.
“How is the climate?”
“Very temperate and delightful. The mercury rarely goes above 80 degrees in summer or below 60 degrees in winter. The greatest extreme is 40 degrees. It is not a tropical country, but is dry and healthful, about the temperature of Georgia, except that it does not have the extreme cold that state sometimes experiences. Rarely does ice freeze thicker than a pane of glass. This makes the Argentine Republic the best cattle raising country in the world. It is never necessary to house the cattle. The number of sheep now being raised there is 100,000,000, and of cattle 20,000,000. A new industry has taken a great hold of the people of late. It is the raising of horses. It is prophesied that in a few years the Argentine Republic will have as fine stocks of horses, if not finer, than any country in the world. One of the latest horses imported for breeding purposes cost £5,000.”
“What about railroads?”
“The number of miles of railroads in the country is 4,450. They cost $167,000,000. Their gross earnings are $25,000,000 and net earnings over $13,000,000. They pay dividends of from ten to twelve per cent. One company has 1,000 miles, another 800 and one is now building to be 1,200 miles long. The government has ordered the building of a road about 1,200 miles long. Another now being constructed is to reach from Buenos Ayres to Chili. The line will be done in two years. It will connect Buenos Ayres via Mendoza with Valparaiso and will make Buenos Ayres the great metropolis of South America, as all west coast passengers, mails and light freight, etc., for Europe will save ten days by using this railway.
“Is there much emigration to your country?”
“A very great deal. It is one of the great factors in the progress of the country. During last year 137,000 immigrants arrived at Buenos Ayres. During the first three months of this year the number arriving was 40,000. It is expected that at least 200,000 will arrive there this year. They are principally Italians, Spaniards, French and Germans, and are of a good class. They all go to work at once. No beggars or paupers are allowed to come to the country. This is one of the reasons for the rapid growth of Buenos Ayres. A remarkable fact is to be noted in the growth of that city. It has been shown that in the last three decades Buenos Ayres has doubled every ten years. It is prophesied that it will be the size of London in less than fifty years, and will certainly beat New York in twenty years. In connection with this subject I want to tell you of a city whose record of growth is marvelous. Its name is LaPlata, and it is the capital of the province of Buenos Ayres. It was founded in November, 1882, and now contains 50,000 inhabitants. All the houses are built of brick, the streets are perfectly paved and lighted with electricity. It has banks, theaters, a chamber of commerce, and it has the finest public buildings in South America. Its tramway lines are numerous and first class. All this has been done in five years. LaPlata is about thirty miles from Buenos Ayres, on the same river.”
With regard to the foreign trade of the republic Mr. Sanford gives some interesting statistical information:
The National bank was founded in 1872, has a capital of $40,000,000 and deposits of [$90,000,000?]. The Provincial bank, founded in 1820, has a capital of $35,000,000 and its deposits are $97,000,000. The London and River Plate has a capital of £1,500,000, the English bank a capital of £1,000,000, the Carobosa $7,500,000 capital, the Italian $3,000,000, the Commercial $2,000,000 and the Mercantile $2,000,000. Besides these there are German and Spanish banks and a number of banking houses. The principal exports are wool and hides. These, a few years ago were the only exports. Now we have twenty articles on the list, notable among them being wheat and flour, of which our exports amount to between $50,000,000 and $60,000,000. In 1887 our imports and exports amounted to $218,000,000, an increase over the previous year of $24,000,000. Last year the number of vessels entering and departing from Buenos Ayres was 4,000 more than in the year previous and with 1,000,000 more tons of freight. The average number of steamers leaving the city each month for Europe is sixty. The income of the government for 1887 was $58,000,000, an increase of $13,000,000 over the year previous.
“Is there much money raised in England for the River Plate countries?”
“Yes. The money raised in London up to the present time for loans, railways, banks and other companies is as follows: Loans payable in London, £33,000,000; loans sold in London, but coupons and principal payable in Buenos Ayres, [£2,800,000?]; bank capital, £3,000,000; tramways, gas companies, etc., £5,000,000. Uruguay, which is on the opposite side of the river and can almost be called the same country, has raised in London £15,000,000 in loans and £3,500,000 for railways and other companies. This will give you an idea of the
p. 3, col. 2 English enterprise in those countries. When I went to South America the American trade was of great importance and the imports and exports with that country were second to none, but English and French subsidized steamships have changed all that, and now the fight for control is between English, French, Germans and Italians. Americans are nowhere.
Mr. Sanford’s prolonged absence from the residence which he has so carefully kept in the United States has doubtless prevented his observing that within the twenty-two years, during which he “has been connected with Buenos Ayres,” the Chinese-American protective system has done its perfect work of destruction on American foreign trade. He has a queer idea that we can increase our commerce with the Argentine Republic by punishing people who buy Argentine products, and at the same time rewarding the people who bring those products here. He doesn’t suggest that we should take off the duty on Argentine wool, but thinks we can build up a trade by the simple expedient of paying steamers to run backward and forward between Buenos Ayres and New York.
I believe that if America had direct steam communication with the River Plate, doing as all the great nations of the world do, such as England, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, the government of each of which gives subsidies, the result would be a source of immense profit to this country. American importations are being driven out of business through the lack of communication with this country, and, in consequence of a lack of such communication, there are only a few American firms who have succeeded in keeping up relations with the Argentines. And even their business is steadily growing less. I believe that if the American government would give extra mail compensation to enable two steamers a month to run to Buenos Ayres the American people would greatly gain by it. The Argentines like the United States, and would come here in large numbers if they had the opportunity. They are great travelers, shown by the fact that the Argentine colony in Paris is very large and important, as is also that in London. I am very certain that large numbers of them who now go direct to Europe from Buenos Ayres would, if there were a steamship line to New York, come here first. Some idea of the ocean traffic out of Buenos Ayres may be had from the fact that on a single day not long ago three large passenger steamers left the city well laden, one for England, one for France and one for Belgium. But none came to America. In fact, the American flag is not seen there on steamers, and rarely on sailing vessels.
When “large numbers” of people have a determined anxiety to go anywhere, a transportation man or corporation is generally pretty sure to turn up with a proposition to take them there. That Argentine merchants would gladly buy American goods is likely enough. That American merchants would like to buy Argentine goods is certain. The trouble is that the exchange of products between the two countries is practically forbidden by our tariff laws. We allow England, Germany and France to exchange their manufactures for Argentine wool, which they spin and weave and send to us to pay for breadstuffs and provisions. This is a good thing for Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans, and not as bad as it might be for the Argentines. Its advantage to Americans is that it pleases the Mail and Express. Whether it is wise to sacrifice so much to gain so little is a question. Even a daily quotation from the sacred scriptures may be paid for too dearly.
The Sentiment for Electoral Reform Spreading.
The growing sentiment in favor of honest elections is manifesting itself in several states in the form of a demand for the adoption of the Australian system of voting. Following the example of New York and Massachusetts, “an act to provide for the printing and distributing of ballots at the public expense, and to regulate voting at state and congressional elections,” has been introduced in the Rhode Island legislature with favorable prospects of becoming a law. The press in several western states, regardless of party lines, is beginning to urge this reform upon the attention of the state legislatures. The interest in pure elections in New York has assumed such respectable proportions that Governor Hill’s veto of the New York bill will undoubtedly cut a considerable figure in the approaching state campaign.
Michigan has the honor of being the state in which the first of the recent attempts to purify elections was made. For two years some of the legislators have been trying to pass a new election law in that state, but they have been voted down. The success achieved in Massachusetts and New York will doubtless help the Michigan men to pass a bill in the next session.
Easier to Fight Savages than Landlords.
DALLAS, Texas.—The land tax theory is becoming more and more popular every day in this country as people understand it; and those who thought the real farmer who cultivates his own land and the renter who cultivates the landlord’s land and gives half he makes for the privilege of killing crab grass and burrs would oppose this reform, are beginning to see their mistake. All over Texas the real working farmers are getting deeper and deeper into debt. English, Scotch and American companies loan money to them at one per cent per month interest, payable yearly and secured by iron-clad mortgages on their homes, running for five years. At the expiration very few, if any, will be able to meet the principal, in which event their homes will be taken from them. Far better would it be for women and children to-day were the once hostile Comanches back here with their bows, arrows and scalping knives; they could be kept off with Winchester rifles. But before the landlord savages, with the sword of vested rights and the shield of the law, the farmer is defenseless.
JOHN C. BURGE.
Out Door Meetings In and Around Boston.
BOSTON.—We are getting the taxation question before the people in various ways, the chief one of which is through mass meetings on the common on Sunday afternoon after the public concerts are over. These meetings compare favorably in size with any meetings held in this section in years. In addition to these Sunday meetings, at least one out door meeting a week is held in some suburban town. A portable platform, light, strong, and easily taken apart has been constructed by one of our members, so that we have merely to find a suitable open place in which to set it up. There is no lack of speakers, and if some, perhaps, are not bookish and close reasoners, the plain truths they proclaim and the hard facts they display are not the less interesting to the crowd. One of the best results of this kind of agitation is the increased demand for literature.
E. M. W.
A Note from London.
LONDON, W. C., June 20.—We are pegging away here. The leaven has enormously spread. Land nationalization is now popular in all the advanced liberal clubs. Candidates are now being selected for parliament. Scarcely any of these are fully with us, but all (or nearly so) are in favor of taxation of land values.
The new evening paper, the Star, is a phenomenal success. It is straight on the land question.
J. C. DURANT.
p. 3, col. 3
THAT PROTECTION PLATFORM.
A Life-Long Republican Hotly Denounces It and Joins in the Free Trade Fight.
CHICAGO, June 25—“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad,” reads like a sic of the action of the republican convention of 1888. What else than insanity can have directed its course in the promulgation of a platform so saturated with monopolistic villainy that even the “railroad kings,” and “coal barons,” and “manufacturing lords,” and “merchant princes,” and “iron masters” stand aghast at its audacious demands for more plunder and further robbery of the peoples’ earnings.
In these closing hours of the convention, during which the banded sic forces seemed to think they had the country by the throat and shamelessly abandoned all disguise or pretense of patriotic motives, there is a kind of hush—a sort of listening for a response from the people so outrageously misrepresented, much as the burglar may listen to learn if, in blowing the safe, the report has aroused any one.
In this case the alarm is surely sounded, and I misread the spirit of the times if this people tamely submit to being “held up” and “sandbagged” and forced to make further deliveries to this insatiate monster of monopolistic greed. After a tariff plank of the most ultra high protective pattern, what monumental effrontery it is to propose the disbursement of the treasury surplus by creating a navy with “all modern improvements” and in the latest style! Why, this nation has no more use for a navy than a peaceful citizen has for a revolver or bowie knife.
Then, not content with the hundred or more millions to be distributed in navy jobs, we must submit to being robbed of unguessed millions more for a line of coast defenses.
Who, in the name of a long suffering and overburdened people, do we need to be defended against? Are the “infant industries” in danger? Surely the tariff wall should protect them. It would seem to a mind not warped by the beauties and benefits of monopoly that the surest defense the country can have is an impregnable wall of loyalty in the hearts of its citizens, built up by the granite blocks of exact justice and cemented by the enduring mortar of equal rights, with no special privileges to favored classes.
Then comes a proposition to subsidize ship companies and to dig a ship canal across the isthmus; and seeing with eager, hungry eyes and parched throat the surplus revenues from the robber tariff still inexhausted, the climax of insolence is reached when “We favor the entire repeal of internal taxes (on whisky and tobacco), rather than the surrender of any part of our protective system.”
Carlyle once spoke of England as having some twenty millions of people, “mostly fools.” The builders of this platform must have had the same low estimate of the American people in mind when they so insolently thrust it in our faces as a declaration of principles.
I have been a life-long republican, but my political stomach revolts at this dose, and hundreds of my old party associates agree with me in the belief that it will not only defeat the candidate, but destroy the party. And that it ought to.
The tariff is the only issue in the coming campaign. The lines of battle are formed; the question at issue is clearly defined; and I have an abiding faith that the result will prove that our sixty millions are not “mostly fools.”
WM. SPALDING.
Laboring Men and Protection.
HUTCHINSON, Kansas, June 23.—It is really refreshing to read the stand taken by the Workingmen’s tariff reform association of Philadelphia. Out here we are constantly told that the laboring classes know which side of the bread their butter is on, and that now that the issue is free trade or protection, there is no doubt that laboring men will vote for protection.
A protective tariff means that the government shall dictate to us where we shall buy and where we shall sell our goods, and that we shall be compelled, under a penalty, to buy and sell at the government’s “pluck-me” stores. This is contrary to the principles of liberty. I am either a free man or a slave. There is no middle ground. If I am a free man I am at liberty to buy or sell wherever I please, without let or hinderance, without fines, or penalties, or tariffs. If I cannot do this I am not a free man. If I am not a free man I am a slave. The tariff of this country is forty-seven per cent of slavery.
The excuse for depriving us of our liberty is that it is for the benefit of the laboring men. If that is true it surely is the first time in the history of the world where people were deprived of their liberty for the benefit of the poorest class of the people. All along down through the ages men have been deprived of their liberty for the benefit of kings, and nobles, and dukes, and earls, and such favored individuals. But we of the United States are asked to believe that we are deprived of our liberty for the benefit of the poor laboring man! How this joke must make our millionaire manufacturers and millionaire landlords smile!
But if the whole of the people of the United States are to be continually deprived of their liberty for the benefit of the laboring men, the latter should be grateful and satisfied. What more should they ask us to do for them? Laboring men should manifest their appreciation of this by showing that they are happy and contented. They should work and behave themselves. Indeed, I think, we have a right to demand of them that they shall not disturb the peace or endanger the welfare of the rest of the people by strikes to raise their wages. If a protective tariff raises wages and they have got a protective tariff they should be satisfied, and if their wages are not high enough they should vote for more protection instead of striking.
J. G. MALCOLM.
Has the Protective Tariff Suspended Operations in Pittsburg?
Pittsburg Dispatch.
That there will be a long lockout among the employes in the various iron mills in this vicinity after July 1 seems a certainty.
The striking employes of Singer, Nimick & Co. have been notified that they will be paid off on Wednesday, and that the mill will be closed indefinitely unless their men consent to a ten per cent reduction. The employes at the Soho mill of Moorhead, [McClean?] & Co. will also refuse to accept the proposed reduction of ten per cent to go into effect July 1. The employes of the Pittsburg forge and iron company also refuse to accept any reduction in their wages. Quite a number of sub lodges of the amalgamated association have already decided to reject the manufacturers’ scale.
Is This Not What the Protected sic is Intended to Do?
Pittsburg Times (Protectionist).
With every natural advantage and political trend on the side of the United States, we have permitted the European nations to capture the greater part of the rich trade with Brazil, the Argentine Republic and the rest of South America, while the singular spectacle is afforded of one part of a continent communicating with another part of the same continent by way of another continent more than 3,000 miles distant and involving two crossings of the broad Atlantic ocean.
p. 3, col. 4
TINKERING WITH THE IRISH PROBLEM.
The National Leaders Trying to Harness Peasant Proprietary on the People With a Ruinous Landlord Compensation Scheme—Ireland’s Only Hope.
BELLAGHY, County Derry, Ireland, June —.—The present aspect of the Irish land agitation borders on the region of hopelessness. sic tinkering measures of reform proposed by the national leaders, the action of the landlords and the miserable condition of the farming population, unite in creating a feeling almost of despair in the breasts of true land reformers. Monstrous rack renting, eviction and poverty stare us daily in the face, and in the near future we are threatened with a peasant proprietary and extensive landlord compensation. The £5,000,000 granted under Lord Ashbourne’s act for compensation has been already gobbled up by the landlords, and another appeal will be immediately made to parliament for a further vote to continue the steal. In a few years, if the Irish representatives take no means of stopping it, this gigantic and iniquitous robbery will have been effected over the whole country, and the Irish people will be crushed down for another half century under its terrible weight. Paying purchase money will be just as severe a burden on the industry of the country as paying the same amount of rent, so that virtually this monstrously unjust purchase scheme is equivalent to a respite to landlordism for fifty years.
Under these circumstances many will be inclined to ask themselves whether the agrarian agitation of the past nine years has been a benefit to Ireland? Has it not rather been a curse? There cannot be a doubt of the opinion posterity will hold if its leaders permit this tremendous robbery to be perpetrated. Davitt calculates that during the past thirty years £360,000,000 ($1,800,000,000) have been paid by Irish tenants into the pockets of Irish landlords. And now when the people clamor for this wanton and barefaced robbery to be stopped, those engaged in it have the supreme audacity to demand compensation; and the national leaders in face of this terrible record of pickpocketing are disposed to entertain their claim. Compensation to landlords a few years hence will be considered as immoral and unjust as compensation to slaveholders after the civil war in the United States; and to think that the national league by its action will result in mortgaging labor for the next fifty years and allowing the individuals who have despoiled, wasted and ruined our people for centuries to be rewarded for their accursed work by an enormous premium, when in a few years hence they would have been dealt with in accordance with justice, is enough to make one wish that the national league had steered clear of the land problem. The democratic spirit which is making itself felt everywhere, and the vivid light of the aurora of the far west, “Progress and Poverty,” makes it an absolute certainty that future legislation would solve the problem in conformity with the neo-economics.
Land god sic is not the worst calamity with which we are threatened. When the compensation scheme is successfully carried out the leaders contemplate the handing over of the land to the present farmers as their absolute property, or in other words, the creation of a peasant proprietary. This is a still more retrogressive step. Virtually it is strengthening the landlord power of the country. Every farmer who becomes a freeholder becomes a landlord—one who will think as a landlord, vote as a landlord and [rack?] rent as a landlord. If this change be accomplished it will make it vastly more difficult to carry out a true reform of the land laws. Instead of having 10,000 self interested enemies, as now, it will have 600,000, who will rule the roost in spite of and to the utter ruin of the rest of the population.
The all important point in real land law reform is the removal of the artificial impediments which prevent access of labor to natural opportunities. This is the reform that dwarfs all others, that renders capital powerless to exploit labor, that kills the drone and makes involuntary poverty impossible. Now peasant proprietary is not such a reform. It does not make it any easier for labor to get upon the land. Its warmest advocates must be constrained to confess this. Peasant proprietary perpetuates private property in land, and so can effect no good to the landless masses of the country. It gives the farmer absolute property “up to heaven and down to hell” on the farm he cultivates, thus barring labor as effectually from the land as if a wall topped with glass was erected round it. The crude and impracticable proposals which are being made to buttress and support it, viz., the prevention of sub-letting and the limitation of the size of farms, clearly demonstrate its disastrously retrogressive character. The national leaders are leading the people after a mirage—a mocking, cruel mirage which will bring bitter disappointment by and by. When peasant proprietary is established rent will continue to rob industry in our towns, the monstrously rich will still rub clothes with the hopelessly poor, labor will be as far off the land as ever, and as a result capital will grind it with as much facility as it does now.
Turn from the proposals of the Irish leaders to the action of the landlords. The people are being pauperized more and more every year by rack rents; the hellish work of eviction is in full swing; ejectment notices are falling thick and fast; and depopulation from enforced emigration is going on with alarming rapidity. Is it not time under these circumstances that the Palinurus of the Irish people should examine his chart and take the soundings of his present position. Scylla and Charybdis lie directly in his course, but there is yet time to save the good ship if he tacks about to the quarter which offers the only haven of security. But there is no time to be lost. Delay means certain destruction. The English parliament is bent on extricating the landlords from their present difficulties by purchase, and farmers, weary of their unbearable position and deluded into the idea that they are making a bona fide bargain, are not averse to considerable compensation. Lord Salisbury will try to force an extensive scheme of purchase on the Irish tenants before he quits his present office, and he will try successfully unless a speedy change is effected in the minds of the Irish people. To thwart so great a calamity Davitt, although he advocates a certain amount of compensation himself, has started an agitation to have the land question left to an Irish parliament for settlement. This, so far, is a step in the right direction, but Davitt, by admitting the right of the landlord to compensation, has deprived such agitation of its strength. It would be incalculably better not to broach the question of compensation at all, but to commence a process of education on the true economics of the land problem, and follow it up until every man, woman or child in Ireland recognized the inherent injustice of private property in land, and the truth that the land “was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,” the common property of the whole people. Once let the great truth be brought home to the minds of the Irish people, and all the “queen’s horses and all the queen’s men” would not be able to enforce a measure of compensation. The farmers would sooner think of cutting their heads off than paying men for a thing which
p. 3, col. 5 will be appropriated by the state in the near future, and the rest of the population would see to it that they were not taxed to compensate the legalized despoilers of their country. Ireland would then become
Great, glorious and free,
First flower of the earth,
And first gem of the sea.
JOSEPH DAVISON.
TAXATION IN ITALY.
Some Facts Which Explain Why the Inhabitants of a Highly Protected Country Come Here at the Rate of 50,000 a Year.
Our minister to Italy, Mr. J. B. Stallo, has an article on the national finances of Italy in the consular report, entitled, ’Budgets and budget legislation in foreign countries,” which sheds some light on the question of why Italians prefer New York to Rome or Naples.
The writer draws attention to the fact that national government of sic does a good many things which are here left to individual or municipal control. It fixes and pays the salaries of ecclesiastical functionaries of all degrees of the Catholic church; it owns and manages all the railroads, telegraphs and telephones; it provides not only elementary schools, but colleges, universities, schools of art and technical institutes, and maintains art galleries and offers prizes for literary and scientific achievements; supervises the manufacture of salt, tobacco and cigars, which are government monopolies; and conducts the national lotteries. There are eight departments: foreign affairs, war, public instruction, justice, interior, navy, public works, and finance. The department of finance is divided into five bureaus; that of public works into four. All the bureaus of the various departments report to the “court of accounts,” which keeps the great book of the public finances by a very ingenious system of book-keeping, said to be much better than the ordinary double entry system, devised by Cerboni and approved by the eleventh congress of scientists.
It is unnecessary to go into the details of the form of the budget, but the method of raising the revenue is worth examining. There are four sources of revenue, classified as follows: 1. Direct taxes. 2. Taxes on consumption. 3. Taxes on business. 4. Divers taxes (fines, lotteries, etc.).
1.—The direct taxes include taxes on incomes and real estate; real estate includes buildings.
Incomes are taxed 13.2 per cent, and the tax is levied on every individual and corporation in the state excepting privates in the army. But all incomes are not assessed alike; thus, permanent incomes, including those from interest on loans, are assessed at their full valuation; temporary or contingent incomes, which are the fruit partly of capital employed and partly of labor, are assessed at three-quarters of their full value; wages or salaries, and all gifts or gratuities, are assessed at five-eighths of their value; incomes received from the state and pensions are assessed at one-half their value. Thus the tax on the first class would be 13.2 per cent; on the second class 9.9 per cent; on the third class, 8.25 per cent; on the fourth class 6.6 per cent.
The real estate taxes have been so unjustly apportioned that they are now being revised and systematized. The tax on buildings is “twelve per cent on their value and thirty per cent of the rent or income thereof.” This is somewhat obscure, as no one could pay twelve per cent annual tax on a building and in addition nearly one-third the rent. It may mean that twelve per cent of the cost is paid when the building is erected, and thirty per cent of the rental value thereafter.
2.—The taxes on consumption are: Duties on imports and exports; taxes on the manufacture of beer, spirits, gunpowder, prepared chicory, beet sugar and some other manufactures; the proceeds of the salt and tobacco monopoly.]
3.—The business taxes comprise: A succession tax on inheritances and bequests; a registry tax on mortgages, leases, etc.; a proportional stamp tax on bank bills, checks and contracts; a graduated stamp tax on insurance policies, receipts, orders to deliver property, acceptances, powers of attorney, invoices, etc.; a fixed stamp tax on operations in the stock exchange, playing cards; on the provincial revenues derived from real estate, renewals of mortgages; on government licenses, such as to hunt, carry arms, change names, run a theater; on licenses for the transportation of corpses, passports, legalization of passports, authentication of signatures, market privileges, patents, trade marks, designs, copyrights, etc.; on railroad freights.
To collect all these various fines on industry methods are employed which Mr. Stallo describes as “barbarous, being the survivals of the practices of the old governments pre-existing to the present national government of united Italy.” He says: “It may be said that the ‘direct taxes’ are not directly collected by the state. The administrative departments of the state simply prepare the tax lists or rolls, and thereupon the actual collection of the taxes is intrusted to private persons or associations who are not officers of the state at all, but to whom the right to collect the taxes is let or farmed out, their compensation being not a salary or a fixed sum, but a commission or percentage on the amount collected. In some cases these persons or societies even buy the right to collect the taxes within a given region, paying a fixed amount to the state and taking the chances of collection themselves.
“Similarly the taxes on internal consumption are not collected directly by the state, but their collection is left to the communes, which pay a fixed annual amount to the state, and then reimburse themselves, as best they may, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. The communes in turn, in many cases, resort to the system of ‘farming out’ the taxes to private individuals or associations, who in most cases undertake to pay fixed sums, and then proceed to harry the tax payer.
“The only cases in which the collection of taxes is effected directly by appropriate officers, appointed and salaried by the state, are those of the business taxes and the duties on exports and imports.
“It is important to note that the expenses of collection are thrown upon the tax payers, being added to the amounts assessed against them or their property.”
Minister Stallo thinks that in time this system will be rationalized “so that the Italian tax payer, though his burdens will always be heavy, may at least enjoy the comfort of knowing that he is taxed on scientific principles and uniformly with all the other inhabitants of the state.”
Probably he will, although it will not make a heavy burden light to know that science helps to lay it on. In the meantime, however, the poor Italians swarm to America and are admitted duty free.
Free Trade Doctrines a Light in the Window to Him.
MCKEESPORT, Pa., June 30.—Please send me some of Thomas G. Shearman’s tracts. His speeches, as published in THE STANDARD, have been a “light in the window” for me, and, I am sure, for many others who are groping in the darkness of protective doctrines. I have distributed quantities of tracts, and I found many men in favor of the single tax.
B. F. MORGAN.
p. 3, col. 6
STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.
Industry has been enslaved. Laborers have been cut off and fenced out from natural opportunities by monopolies. Our “illogical, unjust and erroneous” system of taxation has done it, and the masses are beginning to see it.—[Pearsall, Tex., Sun.
This Australian system of voting is the best the ingenuity of man has yet devised to prevent fraud, intimidation, bribery or corruption in elections, to give a perfectly secret and free ballot and secure honest counting of the votes actually cast.—[Council Grove, Kan., Anti-Monopolist.
The onslaught of government journals against unrestricted reciprocity has slackened remarkably of late. Have they suddenly become conscious of the hopeless absurdity of preaching to the electors of Canada that they would not profit incalculably by free trade with sixty-two millions of neighbors—the wealthiest people in the world!—[Toronto Globe.
Hill’s veto of the election reform bill in New York, at the behest of the heelers and strikers and ward bosses who composed the democratic convention that sent the delegates to St. Louis, has rendered that state very unsafe for the democracy this fall. The indications are that Cleveland may carry the state, but that the democratic state ticket will be buried out of sight.—[Marinette, Wis., Eagle.
It is only a short time since the teachings of Henry George were treated with derision, and were laughed at as vagaries. It was not dreamed that his theories would ever gain a foothold among the people. But George’s land theories have grown until they have grown into a great issue. The eagerness of the masses to hear George and read his writings on the subject is evidence of the rapid spread of his doctrines.—[Santa Barbara, Cal., Herald.
Before wages can be much or permanently raised business must be made better and the demand for labor increased, while its burdens are at the same time diminished. That means that the excessive and unneeded taxation that both restricts demand and diminishes the purchasing power of wages must be stopped. To this great work, the first step in true labor reform, President Cleveland, undismayed by lying misrepresentations, has bravely addressed himself.—[Boston Globe.
Shall a few men be supported in luxurious idleness because they permit other men to occupy and use land the so-called owners do not want to use themselves? Or shall all have access to the materials out of which labor produces wealth, and shall each be permitted to keep for his own use all he earns or produces—no more and no less? The decision of how taxes shall be imposed will settle this question, and we hope to see it settled in favor of those who work though those who loaf should be the losers by the change.—[Hamilton, Ont., Times.
We want it understood that we are working to secure the adoption of “the single tax” as soon as it can be brought about. Tariff reform will be one great step in the right direction. Tariff reform, if it can be carried out to the end, will shortly lead to free trade. Free trade will be another step. The removal of internal revenue, and so on, will follow as the people gain more light, until in the end, and in a much shorter time than many imagine, the present unjust system of taxation will be a thing of the past and taxes will be settled on the values of land, where they ought to be.—[Minneapolis Labor Union.
There is no reform more imperatively needed in our country than such an improvement of election methods as will prevent bribery and intimidation in voting and fraud in counting. Such a reform can be sic accomplished by something akin to the Australian system. The Saxton election bill, recently vetoed by the democratic governor of New York, was such a measure, and was admirably adapted to accomplish its end. Minnesota is getting to be a populous state. It is time for us to take action in this matter. We trust that the legislature will not f[ail?] next winter to pass a suitable law. The[re?] will be no veto to fear from a Minneso[ta?] governor.—[Minneapolis Journal. [The line ends here are damaged: a displaced scrap of paper or type shows the stray letters “ity” at the right of this line.]
The tramps are a great nuisance in Ang sic. They are infesting the city in large numbers—begging on Main street for a little money, begging at back doors for crumbs to eat, many of them stealing when they can get a chance. Last Sunday at least twenty-five swarthy, ragged, dirty fellows lounged on the bank of the river not far from the M. C. R. R., holding a sort of convention. The current explanation of “tramps” and poverty in general is that “it is all their own fault.” “If they would only work and economize as I did,” said one gentleman, “they might get a good living.” As though in a system of monopoly all could monopolize any more than all the competitors in a race can be successful.—[Ann Arbor, Mich., Register.
The men who have absolute ownership and control of land own the mines, the forests and the fields from which labor must draw its sustenance, and labor can only work for itself by giving up a portion of its earnings to the owners of these natural opportunities for the privilege of working. Is it not a self evident fact that any plan which would make it unprofitable for land owners to hold these opportunities in idleness—which would compel them to use these opportunities or give them up to those who would use them—would increase the demand for labor and raise wages? By what simpler method could this be accomplished than by transferring all taxation to land? and who except the useless speculator in land would be injured by such a tax? It is a land tax that your true free trader hopes to see in place of a tariff tax, and this is the logical conclusion of the free trade argument.—[Rock Springs, Wyo., Independent.
“Much Virtue in an ‘If.’”
Commercial Bulletin.
If, as well posted men will allow, the progress of this country in the present era of protection has been marvelous and stands unparalleled in the world’s history—
If the policy of protection rules at the present time in all nations of the earth with but two or three exceptions, and is everywhere gaining in favor rather than losing, even in England—
If the products of our manufacture have grown so tremendously in this era of protection that we are now the foremost manufacturing nation on earth—
If the multiplication of industries during the era of protection has brought about such domestic competition as to materially reduce the cost of every article of living save rents—
If the American citizen is better paid, better clad, better educated and (unless he is a free trader) more contented than any other on the face of the globe—
If the American workman not only earns more and spends more, but also puts more money in saving institutions than any other class of working people—
If business is fairly good and we are holding our own in every branch of trade and industry except our unprotected ocean carrying trade—
Why, in the name of common sense and ordinary prudence, should we aim a deadly blow at this same protective system which has served us so well!
But the Poor Have to Spend All They Get and Are Taxed on Every Cent they Spend.
New York Sun.
The Vanderbilts and the Goelets spend much more of their incomes proportionately than the Astors, but after all, only a small part of them; and Mr. Gould, reputed to be now richer than ever in substantial property, lives on a scale which requires only an insignificant sum as compared with his revenues from investments and speculation. The same applies to the very rich men of New York generally. What they are expending is a trifle by the side of what they are receiving and making. It is also to be remembered that profuse expenditure is no guarantee of solid wealth, and modest living does not always imply its absence.
Page 4 of 8contents
p. 4, col. 1 4 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888.
THE STANDARD.
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THE RATIFICATION MEETINGS.
Both wings of the democratic party and the republicans in this city have held their ratification meetings. Such meetings would have been held with much show of enthusiasm had both parties nominated men never before heard of by their respective voters. There is a tacit understanding among Americans that a candidate for the presidency must be hurrahed for with ever accelerating energy from the moment of his nomination to that of his triumph or defeat at the polls. Nor are the cheers thus given altogether perfunctory. There are in both parties large numbers of men who really enjoy such cheering and who can readily work themselves up into a condition of personal devotion to their candidate that savors largely of the emotional loyalty of an English cockney to “’er gracious majesty the queen.” Nevertheless there is some conscious manufacture of excitement on such occasions, and this is notably true of the republicans this year, who have two candidates that they do not really care for, while the majority of the party is bitterly disappointed that Blaine was not nominated.
The Tammany ratification was chiefly distinguished by Governor Hill’s repudiation of any sympathy with free trade. Governor Hill has apparently learned something since then, and he was a little more discreet and less sensational when he spoke at the county democracy meeting last Thursday evening. Though he again insisted that the democratic party did not mean free trade, the governor made a strong attack on the protective delusion and declared that American labor needs no protection, and that the protective system oppresses labor and builds up monopolies. The governor seems to be something of a democrat, after all, and if he will keep right along in this direction no free trader will care to quarrel with him about the mere use of terms. In fact, he is absolutely right when he declares that the present movement aims, not at free trade, but at “freer trade.” No rational free trader asks any more than “freer trade” from year to year until trade is free indeed. We suspect that if it were not for Governor Hill’s profound ignorance of the real sentiments of workingmen he would be as about as sic a free trader as the author of the Mills bill.
But while Governor Hill’s speech was more satisfactory to free traders than could have been anticipated after his Tammany hall performance, they have the right to feel somewhat disappointed with the talk of Speaker Carlisle, who occasionally “doth protest too much.” When the brilliant galaxy of able Kentuckians who now so well serve their country and honor their state meet “the star-eyed goddess” and her keeper in familiar intercourse, they are understood to be about as radical a lot of free traders as can be found; but they have agreed among themselves apparently that they owe it as a duty to the northern democracy to conceal their sentiments in the presence of our working people; and since no one expects free trade as the immediate outcome of pending legislation, they take frequent occasion to repel the accusation that the democratic party is committed to free trade. We advise them not to carry this policy too far. The bosses of the two machines in this city are not very safe advisers as to the sentiment of those workingmen whose votes may go astray in the pending contest. However great may be the alarm among the street pavers, garbage dumpers and ash cart men on account of free trade, there can be found in the two political machines men fully competent to allay it and restore equanimity to the perspiring patriots whose votes are supposed to be in jeopardy. These are not the workingmen who are likely to desert the democratic party to support the “pedigree and pocket book” ticket of the republicans. The men whose votes must be retained in order to assure democratic success in this city are those who have been deceived by republican assertion and democratic silence into a belief that a burdensome system of high tariff taxation assures higher wages to American workingmen than they would otherwise receive. These men cannot be deceived into the belief that the democratic party is as good a friend as the republican party to the protective idea, and unless they are undeceived as to the effect of protection they are going to vote for the party that can safely be depended on to continue the protective policy. This is
p. 4, col. 2 all that the tariff question means to them, and so long as they believe that protection does give higher wages they will not care a bawbee whether the party which opposes THE protection party wants only to reduce protection a little or to abolish it altogether. They will be against that party all the same.
If Mr. Carlisle wants to do any real good in New York he ought to set about destroying the delusion, fostered largely by so-called democrats here, that the republican policy of protection is a great boon to labor. He can depend on a most courteous and interested audience of workingmen whenever he proposes to discuss this question and declare his real views concerning it. He ought to have seen evidence of this in the warm greeting he received at the hands of the Academy of Music audience. Mr. Carlisle is chiefly known to New Yorkers as the great apostle of tariff reduction. He has no local following or influence such as gives Governor Hill the carefully stimulated applause with which he is usually greeted. Why then was Mr. Carlisle received with such enthusiasm? It was undoubtedly as the leader of the tariff reformers. If he and Mr. McMillan, who followed with another repudiation of free trade ideas, could only escape from the hands of our local bosses and face a meeting of real workingmen they would be surprised and delighted at the intelligent and even critical attention with which their most sincere utterances would be received. One or two such experiences would show them how little the Tammany and county democracy leaders understand the line of argument necessary to democratic success in this state at the coming election. There is scarcely a limit to the effect that a series of speeches against protection by such men as Carlisle, Breckinridge, Mills, McMillan and others would have. We warn the true friends of Mr. Cleveland that they must set about this work and abandon the cowardly policy of the local bosses if they are to save New York for Cleveland and tariff reform.
The republican ratification meeting was held on Friday evening in the Metropolitan opera house. The crowd was enormous and the enthusiasm intense. The mass of republicans appear to be sincere worshipers of their party’s fetich, and fanatical believers in its power to bring them success. Their candidates are not those they would have chosen had they had their own way about the matter, but they are working up the regular quadrennial enthusiasm for them with considerable success. It will be at white heat before the dog days.
There is one thing to be said to the credit of the republicans, and we say it with sincere satisfaction. There is no concealment, double dealing, or backing and filling about their declarations. In the language of Ben Butler, they “know what they want and are not afraid to ask for it.” Every speaker at the Metropolitan opera house lauded protection to the skies. Colonel Robert Ingersoll was particularly emphatic in asserting that in it lay the hope of high wages for American labor. He sneered at free raw materials as entirely unimportant to manufactures, and insisted that only $5 worth of raw material enters into a $12,000 locomotive, all the remainder being the product of labor. This is interesting, and we hope that the workmen in locomotive shops will promptly call on Colonel Ingersoll for information as to what becomes of the $11,995 of value that they create in the building of each engine. Does protection give it to them? In fact, Colonel Ingersoll, prodded by some impolite free trader in one of the boxes, admitted that even under protection the workmen does not sic all that he ought to get; but, he continued, “if protection is not an advantage, why does not American labor emigrate? Why is the tide of immigration this way?” Some one in the audience cried “that’s a corker!” and the whole audience went wild with enthusiasm, which continued for some minutes.
Colonel Ingersoll’s question indicates clearly the republican line of argument in this canvass, and the democratic speakers and writers have got to answer that very question and answer it satisfactorily. They cannot answer it without bringing in the land question. If they try to avoid that they will find that the man in the audience was right and it is a “corker.” American labor does migrate, and has been migrating for years. As migration began to be checked the existing difficulties began to appear and wages began to fall. The migration that kept up wages was not toward the protected factories, but toward the once free land of the great west, where the unprotected industry of agriculture was carried on. The cause of labor troubles is land monopoly. When land was easy of access to all who sought to employ themselves wages were high, no matter what tariff hampered trade. And so long as land is monopolized and men must work for others or starve, wages will tend to fall, whether we have a high tariff or free trade. Free trade will for a time provide new channels for labor and increase the purchasing power of the workman’s wages, and it is a good thing in itself, but it will not finally solve the labor problem. Let any man who thinks so prepare an answer to Colonel Ingersoll’s question and then try it on a crowd of laborers.
This may not be a pleasing fact to those who are mere free traders or tariff reformers in the ordinary sense of those terms, but it is eminently pleasing to the advocates of the single tax, because it demonstrates the sic of carrying on the fight against protection without bringing in the land question. We single tax people are the only ones who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by this p. 4, col. 3 contest. Colonel Ingersoll can frame no questions that will alarm or embarrass us; and the men who are alarmed or embarrassed by such questions must ultimately accept our answer to them or let them go unanswered. If the democratic orators do the first, they will assist in spreading the single tax propaganda, and if they accept the alternative, and permit the question to go unanswered, they will cause their party to be defeated and have finally to turn to the single tax programme as their only way out of the wilderness. Our heartiest thanks are due to President Cleveland for bringing the great economic question into politics, and, now that it is in, neither the president nor all the democrats combined can take it out. It is here to stay, let who may run away from it; and it can only be solved by the truly American policy of freedom, and never by the Chinese policy of restriction.
THE TARIFF DEBATE.
The debate on the Mills bill drags along in the house, and it becomes clearer from day to day that the republicans are seeking to delay a final vote rather than to effect any changes in the measure. On Wednesday of last week Mr. Kelley of Pennsylvania coolly proposed that, since the issue had now been clearly made between the two parties, the democrats should consent to lay the bill aside until after the presidential election. Mr. Mills very properly proposed that, instead of pursuing such a course, the minority should cease to offer obstructions and permit the democrats to put themselves on record in favor of the bill, in order that the republicans might use their action against them in the campaign if they thought they could make anything out of it. Mr. sic of Kentucky suggested that the republicans should prepare such a measure as they were willing to stand by and offer it as a substitute for the pending measure, promising, on the part of the democrats, that the minority should be given as early an opportunity as they may desire to vote on their own bill. Both Mills and Breckinridge informed the republicans that, if they persisted in their tactics of delay, the democrats would stay there, if necessary, until the fourth of next March rather than consent to an adjournment without action on the bill.
Nothing fairer could be proposed, and if the republicans really had the courage to face the country on the issue made up between the two parties they would accept the democratic proposition. It is needless to say that they did not accept it, but went on with the weary debate on each separate line. Their object is perfectly plain. Nearly every protectionist member is the representative of some private interest affected by the bill, and each of them wishes to prove to his particular master that he does not propose to neglect the private interest thus intrusted to him. This is made all the plainer by the fact, alluded to by Mr. Breckinridge, that the bill must go to a republican senate, which would doubtless prevent its passage, thus putting the two parties even more plainly on the record in the matter of reducing taxation.
An amusing feature of the dreary debate since the Chicago platform was adopted is found in the indignant repudiation of one of the planks in that platform by those republican members who are afraid of the temperance vote. The democrats constantly twit the republicans with their party’s declaration that it prefers the abolition of the tax on whisky rather than submit to any reduction of the tariff taxes on the necessaries of life. Mr. Ezra B. Taylor of Ohio grew excited over the accusation on Thursday, and Judge Kelley, of pig iron fame, literally held up his hands in horror at the thought that he could be regarded as favoring free whisky. This was all the more amusing, as the judge, though usually a temperate man, has certainly no personal prejudices against the great Kentucky beverage. Mr. Weaver quoted the Chicago Tribune as authority for the declaration that the whisky plank in the republican platform was a great blunder, whereupon the republicans promptly repudiated that great journal and greeted Mr. Weaver’s assertion that it is a republican paper with derisive cries. It is a pity that the Tribune was not thus formally read out of the party in time to prevent it from stultifying itself by even such half hearted support as it has begun to give the organization that has rejected its candidate and given it a platform that it is forced to repudiate.
THE COURT OF APPEALS DECISION.
The more the action of the court of appeals in the Gill conspiracy case is considered the greater becomes the wonder that so momentous a decision should have been rendered without the assignment of any reasons. The decision, as we have already pointed out, strikes a deadly blow at labor organizations, and is more in accord with English public opinion a quarter of a century ago than with what has been supposed to be American opinion during recent years. At a time when all sorts of combinations of employers are in existence, many of them actually promoted by a perversion of governmental powers, the working people of New York are suddenly denied the right to maintain any kind of effective combination for the promotion of their own interests as workmen. Since THE STANDARD called attention to the gravity of the decision, the New York Herald has taken the matter up, and it, too, complains of the failure of the court to offer any explanation of what it holds to be the law in the matter.
There can be but two possible explanations of the failure of the court to render p. 4, col. 4 an opinion. One is that the appellants, being mere mechanics, are regarded as persons of too little account to command the serious attention of an august body which is largely occupied with the preparation of minute opinions concerning comparatively trifling disputes in which great and wealthy corporations are concerned. The other is that the judges did not dare to put into words the full enunciation of the law as it is interpreted by their decision. It was much easier and safer to render a decision that may arbitrarily send a number of reputable mechanics to jail for the assertion of what they, and most other people, believed to be their legal rights than to expound the law with such clearness that a plain issue would have been raised which the aroused and indignant working people could have carried into politics with a view to compelling the rewriting of those laws that now deny to them the rights freely accorded to workmen in countries nominally less free.
As matters now stand the members of the labor organizations can scarcely take one step in the darkness in which the court of appeals has left the question of their rights without incurring danger of imprisonment as criminal conspirators. If the refusal to work in the same shops with non-union men is conspiracy, it is difficult to imagine any course that the union men can take to protect the integrity of their unions and uphold wages that will not be accounted a crime. If a decision similarly outlawing the established customs of great moneyed corporations had been rendered it would have been accompanied by an elaborate opinion in which shrewd lawyers would have endeavored to find loopholes of escape for their clients. Schemes to evade the operation of the law would have been devised, and, at the worst, those concerned might have anticipated a final defeat after prolonged litigation and a new decision by the court of last resort. Workingmen cannot afford to attempt such tactics, and they must, therefore, obey, so far as they can, this arbitrary dictum of the court or risk the consequences, which in their case is not the mere defeat of a money making scheme, but imprisonment in case they even unwittingly offend. Such a discrimination between two classes of citizens in the administration of the law in what is called a free state, will, if continued, make our boasted American freedom a mere snare for the feet of the unwary.
JIMMY O’BRIEN ALARMED.
Mr. James O’Brien of this city appears to be greatly concerned lest the tariff issue may injure President Cleveland’s chances of re-election. He has written a letter to that unselfish and consistent upholder of democratic principles, Samuel J. Randall, in which he manages to put a protectionist stump speech of chestnutty flavor in the mouths of a number of supposititious democratic workingmen, whom he represents as being ready to organize for the defeat of any democratic congressman from this city who shall vote for the Mills bill. The spectacle of Messrs. Randall and O’Brien weeping together over the possibility of such a result is an interesting and instructive one. Mr. O’Brien confines himself to his statement of the case without suggesting a remedy, but, after the “don’t nail his ears to the pump” method, he says that “if a number of workmen who are democrats come together and pledge themselves to vote against candidates for congress unfriendly to American labor and American interests they may vote against our president.”
Here we are shown Mr. O’Brien’s real animus. He is talking for himself in this sentence, and he speaks of those who support the Mills bill as men “unfriendly to American labor,” thus placing himself in accord with the party that insists that a high tariff means high wages and general prosperity and against the party represented by the president and a large majority of the democrats in congress. Even if there were nothing in the past career of Mr. O’Brien to suggest a doubt as to his interest in the democratic party, we should find here conclusive evidence that he is not now in accord with its principles as declared in its platform. Yet this is the kind of man who writes to Mr. Randall a letter pretending to solicitude for the interests of the democratic party!
That there are workingmen talking as Mr. O’Brien declares is doubtless true. Most of them are of the sort that constitute this so-called Irish high tariff league. Politicians of the Randall and O’Brien sort encourage such talk and then base on it predictions of disaster. Their predictions will prove well founded if somebody does not get at these deluded workmen and show them that the movement for tariff reduction is not only not “unfriendly to American labor,” but directly in the interests of American labor and the general welfare. This may not be an easy task with workmen who have been led by O’Brien and instructed by Randall, but it can be done if men of sense and courage go about it. The attempt, however, to fool these men into a belief that the two parties are equally committed to protection will, despite the present confidence among the democratic leaders, cost the democratic party the loss of New York.
We have already got far beyond the question as to which political party is the best friend to “protection.” That is settled, and the workingmen understand the matter just as fully as anybody else. The republican party is the natural political home of all men who believe that such moderate legislation as that recommended by the president and embodied in the Mills bill is p. 4, col. 5 “unfriendly to American labor.” The question now is whether the policy to which the democratic party is irrevocably committed is in the interests of labor or against those interests. Those who, from whatever standpoint, propose to show workingmen that a high tariff does not promote their interests are the men who will help President Cleveland to win a success. Those who propose to inculcate the opposite opinion, no matter what their name or profession, are seeking, consciously or unwittingly, to prevent Mr. Cleveland’s re-election.
People who argue with figures, like people who lie, should have long and ready memories. The stock argument of protectionists, duly ornamented with statistics, is to the effect that American wages would fall to the level of foreign wages if American and foreign products were allowed to compete on equal terms; but now comes the Press and says that the average farm wages here have for several years been $220 per annum, as against $30 per annum in India. How happens it then that American farming is not ruined by the importation of Indian products? and how are American farmers able to compete in European markets with the farmers of India? The answer must be that wages do not determine the price of products. If they did—if, for example, the wages for raising a given number of bushels of wheat in India were $30, and $220 for raising the same quantity here—Indian wheat would drive American wheat out of every market in the world, including our own. But the truth is that though the farmer in India pays but $30 a year per man for wages, while the American farmer pays $220, the American farmer gets a good many more bushels of wheat for the wages he pays.
As with farming, so with all other industries. The employer who gets more for given wages can undersell his competitors; but if he gets no more for the wages he pays, even though he pay smaller yearly wages than does his competitor who pay high yearly sic, he has no advantage. And so it is that, if the markets of the world were opened to us by abolishing the tariff, our labor would have an advantage in these markets in respect to all commodities for the production of which our country is naturally adapted.
It is singular that the Press, which is so expert with figures, should not stop in its headlong career and think a little, when it makes itself authority for the statement that farmers’ wages in the eastern states are $312; in the west, $267; in California, $456; in Virginia, $167, and in South Carolina, $147. If the protection doctrine that wages control prices be true, South Carolina and West Virginia ought long ago to have made farming a lost art in the east and west, and especially in California. These differences in wages are not confined to farming. They appear in all industries; but when all the facts are collated it will be found that the low priced man of one locality returns low values to his employer, while the high priced man returns high values. High priced labor is cheap labor, and in most employments American labor is the cheapest in the world.
“Like the English sparrow, the American tramp must go,” says the Philadelphia News. Better that he should not come. If every man had an equal chance there would be no tramps. Neither would there be any millionaires; and that is what makes the shoe pinch.
Philadelphia has a citizen named Theodore Search. Mr. Search is trying to make a living under difficulties. He is in the worsted yarn business, which has to be carried on at a loss, according to Mr. Search, while the manufacturers hold on “in the hope that the government will do something for them.” It is extremely unfortunate that any American should be compelled to do business for nothing until the government helps him, so Mr. Search thinks, and therefore he goes into the newspapers to complain of the tariff of 1883, which seems to have been badly arranged for worsted men, who, instead of getting help from the government have, been sic to struggle along just like other people who do not get help from the government. We are sorry for Mr. Search, and yet we cannot think it quite right to tax people for Mr. Search’s benefit. But there is nothing mean about us, and we are willing to help him out by calling for subscriptions. Any one desiring to contribute a penny or upward to help Mr. Search make a living may forward to him, care of Eben Search & Co., Philadelphia, and he will no doubt acknowledge with gratitude.
Bill Nye has a rival who is furnishing protection papers with funny articles about a duty on imports not being a tax, but a means of compelling foreigners to support the American government. Some of these articles surpass anything that our most noted humorists have ever done. When he feels like giving variety to his subject, we suggest that the wit in his own unique way expose the popular fallacy that water has sic to run down hill.
The South Orange, N. J., Bulletin has been moved by an object lesson. On South Orange avenue, in that village, there is a lot of ground—ten acres—which is allowed to lie idle in such condition as to be a blot on the appearance of the village; but it is assessed for taxation at the value of $400 an acre, while opposite to it improved property is assessed at $15,000 p. 4, col. 6 per acre. These facts arouse the Bulletin to say that the owners of the vacant ground are “holding on for a large price,” and the “tax assessor is aiding and abetting this disgrace by putting the tax on the property so low that the holders can afford to wait till the enterprise and energy of their neighbors make their property more valuable.” Such object lessons are rapidly educating the people all over the country.
That Mr. Ring is making himself felt in Texas is evident not alone from the great number of signatures he is obtaining to the single tax petition, but as well from the way in which he is making the land speculators mad. Here is a communication to the Houston, Tex., Post, which may pass for a specimen: “Why don’t you give those single tax advocates—Ring and his gang—some nuts to crack. Common sense should tell the farmers the theory is fallacy. Ring would make 5,000,000 farmers pay the tax for 60,000,000 people and allow the railroads, steamboats, pork packers, manufacturers and capitalists—the men who are able to support the government—escape taxation.” The reason the Post does not give “Ring and his gang some nuts to crack” is because it has the sense to know that “Ring and his gang” can crack any nuts it may give.
The Atlanta Constitution has made the important discovery that the way to raise wages is to do more work and better work. The Constitution forgets, if it ever knew, that it takes two things to make wages—work and material. Without material, work cannot make wages, whether it be more or less work or better or worse work. If material were as free as when all things were pronounced good, it would be perfectly true that more work and better work would make higher wages; but when the source of material is monopolized, so that no one can get any material without paying for the privilege, it ought to be evident, even to the Constitution, that more work and better work, as soon as it became general among laborers, instead of raising wages, will only raise the price of the privilege of getting material.
A gentleman named John Tyree, of Gerenemo, Osage county, Kansas, has just come into his own, and is duly congratulated by the Cincinnati Christian Standard. Brother Tyree, as the Standard calls him, “has always been liberal toward the cause of Christ;” but little could he have thought that ages before the Christian era the creator of all things was preparing to reward him for his nineteenth century liberality and Christian goodness. Far back among the darkest clouds of the misty past Brother Tyree’s inheritance was prepared for him. It was deposited in Osage county, Kansas, and through all the long ages was hidden away from the sight of men. But when in the fullness of time Brother Tyree’s liberality had been proved, the Lord put it into the mind of a single ditcher on the good Deacon Tyree’s farm to uncover the treasure. And now Brother Tyree is one of the richest men in the country, to be pointed out to the youth of his time as an example of what industry and piety will do for a man in this free country where all are equal except those who are not. Brother Tyree’s inheritance consists of an ocher deposit, the richest and largest yet found on the American continent; it covers an area of at least thirty acres and is six or eight feet in depth. Thousands of tons are now in sight and millions of tons in deposit, worth from $10 to $60 each. Industry is all right as a virtue among the masses for whom the Lord has not made ocher beds, but an ocher bed in Kansas in conjunction with a million free and equal citizens anxious to work in it on almost any terms lest they starve, makes industry a very bad second in the race for wealth.
Here is a little story, shining with the beauty of true womanly sympathy, which we clip from an article in the Press by Mrs. Robert P. Porter:
I felt a breath on my cheek, and a moment later a head slid gently on to my shoulder. On the head was a coarse straw hat. Its sex was unmistakable. Turned very much up at one side, with a pert wing and a bunch of faded ribbon, it told of poverty and of love of finery carried with a certain amount of jaunty ease. Looking down I saw a faded blue dress reaching just over the knees of a pair of thin black stockinged little legs that hardly reached the floor. A jog of the train, and the hat slipped back. Under it was the worn, pale face of a child of twelve. It had no claims to beauty, except in the long black lashes that followed the curve of the well shaped eyelids. Every now and then a tear slowly trickled down the girl’s face, following the little channels which time alone is not cruel enough to leave on the face of a child. Finally the tears stopped. Sleep became sound, and station after station was passed without a move. The park rose green and lovely on one side, on the other flowed the Hudson, crested with gold and streaked with the crimson of the setting sun. Perhaps the child was going beyond the street where she lived. A gentle shake roused her and brought a stammered “Oh!” of apology from her lips. “I did not know where I was,” she added, hastily.
“Where do you get off?
“At 135th street, and I was so tired and warm I hope you’ll ’scuse me.”
“Shall I be a fairy and tell you what you are?” I asked.
A sort of withered smile came over her thin face, and her big gray eyes settled curiously upon me as I said: “You’re a cash girl in a Sixth avenue shop. To-day you got into trouble, but you were too proud to cry before the others; you meant to wait until you got home.”
“Yes, that’s all true, but it’s strange how you know it. Perhaps you saw me in the store. It was all over that package of stockings, and to be fined for it seemed too mean. It was Miss ——’s fault, but the salesladies always put it on to us.” Then this mite of a business woman went on to tell me how she worked from 7 in the morning until 6 at night, continued on p. 5 →
[text breaks off mid-sentence at the foot of page 4; no continuation line is printed]
Page 5 of 8contents
THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888. 5
p. 5, col. 1 [continued from page 4]
← continued from p. 4 for $2 a week, running here and there, always with the cry of “cash” and the tap of pencil on counter in her ears. How her car fare consumed 60 cents out of her $2, and her daily lunch of milk and doughnuts 30 cents more, and a fine or two would break into the second dollar, which her mother so much needed, “because I am the oldest, and the only one that can earn anything yet,” she concluded, with an air of mingled pride and responsibility.
“And when you are older?”
“Oh,” and her eyes sparkled, “I shall be a saleslady, and get $5 a week, and if I am real smart and stay on, I shall get $8. I’m not big enough now.” This apologetically. Would she ever be big enough, I wondered, this woman child, with her old face, her narrow chest, her thin wrists and nervous little legs! Within a yard sat a real child of twelve—golden hair, rosy cheeks, white frock, laughing lips. The contrast smote the eye. Yes, and it smote the heart.
Such a story of every day actual life is enough to undo the work of a hundred “tariff talks” and labored editorials on the blessings of protection. What has protection done for this worn, pale child of twelve, weeping in her sleep because her pitiful wage has been cut down? What can it do for her, save to reduce the purchasing power of “the second dollar that her mother so much needed?” Will it lighten the fine imposed on her by her employers to know that her mother will be fined five cents every time she buys a peck of potatoes? Is life any easier for her because her faded blue dress and her thin black stockings are “protected?” The issue of the hour was incarnate in that “woman child, with her old face, her narrow chest, her thin wrists, and nervous little legs.” No wonder that it smote a woman’s kindly heart!
Many of the smaller republican newspapers, relying on the ignorance of their readers, pretend to rejoice in the failure of the republicans of the Fifth Minnesota district to renominate Hon. Knute Nelson for congress. Mr. Nelson was renominated after supporting the Morrison bill, but they say the people of his district could not stand his support of the Mills bill. These papers are either mistaken or are deceiving their readers by deliberate falsehoods. Mr. Nelson voluntarily retired because he intends to contest Mr. Sabin’s seat in the senate; but he practically named his own successor, who has publicly declared that his position on the tariff question is the same as that of Nelson. Nor is this all. The republican convention of the Fifth district indorsed Nelson’s course and declared for tariff reform, the only difference of opinion among the delegates arising from the desire of the farmers in the convention to make a more radical declaration in favor of free trade. How these farmers can vote for Harrison and Morton and the republican national platform no one can see, and it is therefore among the possibilities that Minnesota may accompany her election of republican tariff reformers to congress by the choice of democratic presidential electors. If the people there are logical they must do so.
Mr. E. A. Hartshorn tells an interesting story about a Minnesota farmer in a recent Press tariff talk. The farmer, it appears, is a Scandinavian, who came to this country twenty years ago and earned his first dollar working on the farm of one of Mr. Hartshorn’s friends—a fact which the tariff talker, and the friend, and Mr. Hartshorn himself, all seem to think should have made a life long protectionist of him. This Scandinavian, we learn, now farms four hundred acres of land, keeps seventeen horses, milks thirty-eight cows, finds it doesn’t pay to raise wheat, has lost money by investing in a factory, and thinks the tariff a robbery. Mr. Hartshorn’s friend says this “will serve to show what the Cobden club educational work has done for the Minnesota farmer.”
Mr. Hartshorn’s friend is a little hasty in his judgment. Even admitting that the Cobden club’s educational work has been guilty of producing the seventeen horses and thirty-eight cows, which is absurd, and conceding, which we deny, that it has swept away the profit in wheat raising and compelled a Minnesota factory to lose money, still this does not account for the four hundred acres of land, which we respectfully, but firmly, insist were brought into being by Almighty God without the aid or intervention of any club or educational work whatever. The Press, probably, regards those four hundred acres as a very minor factor of the moderate prosperity of the misguided Scandinavian. To us, however, they sufficiently account for the horses and the cows, as well as for the bias against protection. As for the cause of the loss on the factory investment and the depreciation in the value of wheat, we think the Scandinavian can be trusted to figure that out for himself.
Taxing Our Trade.
Says McKinley: Our beautiful tariff was made
To “protect” you by heavily taxing your trade.
But, McKinley, it’s death
When you choke in our breath,
Just as surely as though you were choking it off;
And we seize this occasion to ask, as we cough,
Can you choke the life into our trade?
W. H. B.
The Kind of Robbing Peter to Pay Paul Business That the Tariff Fosters.
Burlington, Iowa, Western Herald.
The republican platform asserts that taxes are a good thing in themselves, that, entirely apart from revenue, we are made richer and happier by piling on “duties.” The men who own pine forests, iron deposits, grazing lands, tell us in effect that if we continue to shut out the pine logs, iron ore and wool that might come in from neighboring lands, they need not reduce the rent demanded for the privilege of cutting logs, procuring iron for ourselves or for grazing sheep; and that they, the owners of nature’s gifts, upon getting rich will spend some of these rents in providing elegant houses, horses and carriages, and diamonds, for themselves. This will stimulate industry, give employment to the poor and further the coming of the kingdom of Christ.
p. 5, col. 2
MEN AND THINGS.
The New York coffee exchange gave an object lesson in mercantile economy last week—nothing less than a “corner” in coffee, well managed and completely successful. The men who had contracted to deliver coffee on or before June 30 were unable to get the coffee to deliver, and were consequently obliged to pay over to the men entitled to receive the coffee the difference between the prices at which contracts were made and the price at which it was agreed that coffee could have been bought if there had been any for sale. Within a few minutes the price of coffee advanced nearly seventy-five per cent, and had the managers of the corner desired, it could doubtless have been easily forced much higher.
The story is a very simple one. In April last two firms began buying coffee for June delivery. The price was low, and they accepted every contract offered them. The men who sold the coffee, of course, didn’t have it on hand—men don’t keep coffee in store for two months because somebody has agreed to buy it at the end of that time—they expected to buy it, or to have it on hand when the time came for delivery. Soon it became evident that the two buyers were operating very largely. The sellers concluded that when the time should arrive for delivery the buyers would be unable to pay for all the coffee that would be delivered them without reselling it almost as fast as they received it, which, of course, would force the price down and enable the sellers to fill their contracts at a profit. Unluckily for the sellers of June coffee, the buyers showed themselves amply able to pay for all tendered them, and the result was that the sellers were compelled to settle, practically, at prices named by the two firms who held their contracts.
It is the fashion to stigmatize transactions of this sort as gambling, and to invoke legislative interference to render them impossible. And yet a close analysis of this coffee corner reveals nothing reprehensible. The merchant who in April believes that there is going to be a brisk demand for coffee in June has an unquestionable right to make a contract for coffee to be delivered him in June at a settled price. The merchant who thinks it is going to fall in value does nothing wrong when he undertakes to deliver coffee two months hence that he hasn’t bought yet. To deny the right of either would be to put the commerce of the country into fetters. The law that should prevent dealing in futures on an exchange would also prevent a farmer from contracting for the sale of his potatoes before they were actually dug and barreled, or a manufacturer from taking advance orders for goods. It would practically forbid producers to make any effort to learn the needs of consumers in advance—to feel the coming market as it were; and making production a matter of guesswork, it would largely and wastefully increase its cost.
Our exchanges really perform for the community the work which the advocates of state socialism would assign to clumsy bureaus of statistics. By the constant “higgling of the market,” by the never ending friction of buyers and sellers, they maintain the equilibrium between production and consumption, and secure that neither shall our stock of wealth be abruptly diminished, nor our markets suddenly filled to overflowing with goods for which no demand exists.
That it is possible to gamble on an exchange is true enough. Men can and do buy and sell coffee for future delivery without the slightest wish or expectation either to receive or deliver it. But that is no more an argument against the coffee exchange than is the fact that men may bet on the success or failure of the peach crop an argument against raising peaches. Mercantile exchanges are legitimate and economical instruments of production. The gambling that occasionally disgraces them is a consequence of the belief, bred and fostered by unjust social conditions, that the chief end of life is money getting, and that the slowest and least certain way of getting money is by working for it.
One thousand and thirty-eight human beings died in this city last week. Of these 577 were children under five years, and 408 were babies less than a year old. How the hot spell stifled the little ones in the crowded tenement houses may be judged from the fact that the deaths dropped from 227 on Tuesday to 106 on Saturday, the latter days of the week having been refreshingly cool.
It is no figure of speech, but the statement of a cold, hard fact, to say that hundreds of these little ones were crowded off the planet because society refused to allow them standing room on it. If they had been stifled in a panic stricken crowd trying to force its way out of some public building, what an outcry would have gone up against those responsible for the insufficiency of exits. Yet how silently and carelessly we listen to the record of the social crime. There was room enough in New York for all these suffocated babies could they but have been allowed to occupy it; a rich heritage awaiting them had they been permitted to live and to possess it. Surely their puny wailings and their mothers’ tears shall be a testimony against us.
The Depositors’ guarantee company is a recently formed organization of banks and bankers, whose objects are thus defined by one of its officers, Mr. A. M. Scriba, late United States national bank examiner, in an interview with the Times:
It is intended to absolutely insure the solvency of state and national banks by forming a combination of banks for self-protection through this corporation. As a measure of the guarantee principle, $1,000,000 of the capital of the company will be deposited with the treasurer of the United States at Washington, and such amounts in bonds with the proper officers of the various states as the laws of such states may require. Already 1,000 of the most prominent banks in the United States have signified their intention sic becoming stockholders and having their deposits guaranteed by the company. These banks have agreed to pay the company one-fifth of one per cent annually upon their gross deposits, which will give a yearly income over estimated expenses of about $500,
p. 5, col. 3 > 000. In every banking center of the country there will be a competent bank examiner, who will make a thorough examination of a bank before a policy will be issued to it, and the bank examiners of the company will have the right to examine any bank included in the guarantee at any time during the year without any notification to its officers and directors. Upon the delivery of a guarantee the company will have an advertisement, to run for a period of six months, inserted in the leading newspaper in the locality of the bank bearing the notification that all depositors in the bank are guaranteed against loss, and that in the event of the bank’s insolvency all deposits will be paid in full by the company with interest. The company will start upon a sound financial basis, and with abundant resources, for not a guarantee will be issued until the guarantee fund of $5,000,000 has been paid in in cash. No bank will be guaranteed unless holding stock in the combination. The charter calls for a lease of fifty years with power to extend.
This is a commendable step toward co-operation in a business in which co-operation is much needed. The proper function of banks is to facilitate production. By their aid the worker in every stage of production is enabled to secure the reward of his labor without waiting till the process of production is absolutely completed. The laborer, helping to build a railway which will not be finished for months to come, transforms his share of railway at the end of each week or month into shelter, clothing, provisions, or what else he will, by virtue of the banker’s guarantee to the community that the work of production will be carried forward until the railway is completed and ready for use as a tool of further production. The farmer, whose grain in bags is still far from being a completed product, would have to wait for his share of its value until the grain had been transported to some distant market and there ground into flour, the flour baked into bread, and the bread sold to actual consumers, were it not that the banker steps in with a pledge that the transportation, and the milling, and the baking, and the selling of the bread, shall all be duly and promptly attended to. The merchant of a few generations ago, when he freighted a vessel and so aided in producing goods at the port of destination, had to wait weeks or months for his reward, and consequently insisted on and received high wages for his labor. The merchant of to-day, from his office in New York, directs the production of 10,000 bales of cotton from the Mississippi to the Mersey; the intervention of the banker secures him the wages of his labor the moment he has performed it; and as a result he finds himself well paid with a reward which would have seemed contemptible to his predecessor a hundred years ago. It is no part of the banker’s work to supply capital. His whole duty is to render it possible for labor to be applied to a series of productive processes without waiting for its reward until the whole series is completed. He can enable labor to produce capital whenever capital is legitimately needed. The bank is the clearing house of industry.
A misapprehension of the true function of the banker is one of the reasons why economists of the Edward Atkinson school fail to understand that, given access to natural opportunities, there need be no limit to the production of wealth save the limit of the availability of labor. These men have a perplexed notion that the aggregate of the capital which constitutes the guarantee fund of the banks somehow marks a limit beyond which capital cannot be increased except by slow accretions of savings. If they would think more closely they could not fail to observe that the periods when capital can be most easily secured for industrial enterprises are precisely those when labor is most fully employed, and when, upon their hypothesis, capital should be most difficult to get—since their constant claim is that the possibility of employing labor is limited by the amount of capital in existence. The time when men find it easy to build railroads, to erect buildings, to open mines, to establish manufactories, is not when bankers’ vaults are crammed with idle money and laborers are loafing on the streets, but when every dollar is in active circulation, every man employed at good wages, every wheel of industry revolving at topmost speed. When Brown, and Jones, and Robinson are profitably employed is just the time when Smith also can work to most advantage; and the banker’s part in the scheme of production is to enable Smith, whose product is itself the tool or material of further production, to obtain, day by day, in the products of Brown, Jones and Robinson, the equivalent of the value he creates.
The Depositors’ guarantee company is a step in the right direction, because by federating the banks of the entire country it will render each one of them more capable of performing its share of the common duty. It is only to be regretted that, while thus strengthening themselves for their legitimate work, they cannot be deprived of that power of issuing money which should appertain to the government alone.
The Australian colonies have apparently made up their minds pretty sic on the subject of Chinese immigration. New South Wales has already forbidden Chinese passengers to land, and forced the ship bringing them to take them away again; and now the telegraph announces that the Sydney ’longshoremen have refused to work at loading a steamer unless the Chinese sailors and firemen employed on board are first replaced with white men.
It is not unlikely that the outcome of this Chinese difficulty may be a serious modification of the relations between Australia and the mother country, if indeed it do not hasten that “cutting the painter,” of which the young Australian party has begun to talk so freely. Great Britain still retains a veto power over Australian legislation, which, as in the recent case of the South Australian bill legalizing marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, she does not hesitate to use on occasion. And as regards their relations with the outside world, the colonies are bound by treaties in the making of which they have absolutely no voice whatever. The home authorities are slow to understand the reason for the Australian repugnance to Chinese immigration, and have so far
p. 5, col. 4 showed no disposition to aid the colonists in their struggle against it. If Great Britain refuses to negotiate for a modification of her treaty with China, and insists that the Australians shall respect its present provisions, the world may witness the birth of a new nation before the close of the present century.
It is a little amusing, amid the wailing of the protectionist organs over the dreadful depression of industry that the mere introduction of the Mills bill has caused, to read a dispatch like the following in the columns of the Tribune:
FALL RIVER, June 30 (Special).—M. C. D. Borden of New York, who is now principal owner of the American print works, and who recently purchased the Fall River iron works adjoining the print works, has just purchased the land next south of the old iron works property of the Richard Borden manufacturing company. This tract comprises about five and one-half acres and gives Mr. Borden control of all the land from the Old Colony railroad company property at the steamboat wharf south to Ferry street, in all fifteen acres, including the most valuable wharf privileges in the city. Ten acres of this land are now unoccupied, including the old iron works, from which the buildings have been removed. What disposition will be made of this property by Mr. Borden is not definitely known, but the general opinion among manufacturers is that Mr. Borden will not suffer it long to remain idle. A report is gaining circulation that he and other New York capitalists contemplate utilizing this tract for mills to supply the print works, and that the plans are for a much larger plant than that of any present concern in the city.
The old iron works, from which the buildings have been removed, eh? It seems as though under the beneficent tariff an industry that formerly existed in Fall River has so completely died out that the buildings adapted to it have been removed. Perhaps free iron ore and free coal might be a benefit to the wage workers of Massachusetts, and not damage those of Pennsylvania either.
The coal barons of Chicago have issued an edict that, beginning with July 1, the people of Chicago shall pay them an extra tax of twenty-five cents on every ton of coal they burn. “What can we do about it?” said the largest of Chicago’s retail dealers. “Nothing. We can only advance the retail rates correspondingly. We are at the mercy of those who control the anthracite fields. The owners of the mines have the advantage, and they are using it.”
The committee of the Lombard peace and arbitration society (Unione Lombarda per la Pace e l’ Arbitrato Internazionale) offers a prize of 1,000 lire for the best essay in reply to the two questions: (1) What are the predominating causes which have hitherto prevented, and which still prevent, the establishment of a secure and lasting peace in Europe? (2) What are the likeliest means to the abolition of these causes? Full particulars of the competition may be obtained by writing to the secretary of the union, Signor Angelo Mazzoleni, 91 Via Cerva, Milan. Writers of any nationality may compete, but their essays must be written in French or Italian. The copyright of the successful essay will remain the property of the author. The union will not undertake to print it at its own expense, but if the author should resolve to print it he will be expected to present a copy to each member of the committee. The essays are to be sent to the secretary, at the above address, before December 31, 1888.
Here is an opportunity for advocates of the single tax on land values who can express their ideas fluently in French or Italian. It ought not to be difficult to trace the international jealousies and discontent of the European people to their true source in the monopolization by the few of the magnificent and all sufficient heritage of all. Tear down the tariff walls and throw open natural opportunities to labor and a single generation would see the end of the present wasteful system of armaments and camps.
Another rich man has done for New York one of the things that New York ought to do, and could amply afford to do, for herself. Mr. George W. Vanderbilt has presented to the public a handsomely furnished building on Eighth avenue, with a selection of some six thousand books, the whole to form a branch of the New York free circulating library.
It is a good thing for Mr. Vanderbilt that he is thus mindful of the needs of his fellow men. It is a good thing for the citizens of New York that their needs should be thus remembered. But it would be a better thing for him and for them if the people of New York would bethink them that they have lying ready to their hands, waiting only for them to claim it, a heritage of wealth sufficient to provide every public convenience they can wish for without the aid of private benefactions.
The Equitable life assurance company of this city have purchased the block bounded by Tenth and Eleventh avenues and Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh streets, and are going to cover it with tenement houses. There will be sixty-four houses, accommodating in all 800 families, with stores on the ground floors. Allowing five members to each family, there will be 4,000 men, women and children crowded on to 160,000 square feet of earth surface—which is at the rate of nearly 700,000 to the square mile. To appreciate what this density of population means, imagine 15,000,000 of people inhabiting Manhattan island and forced to remain in the city during the heated term.
The new sic loan of the Panama canal company seems destined to failure. The exact amount of subscriptions to the bonds has not been published, but it is said, on apparently good authority, that less than $40,000,000 of the $135,000,000 needed has been tendered for. This means simply that the French public have lost confidence in the canal, and is ominous of a coming crash. When the end does come more than $400,000,000 will have been sunk in the effort to pierce the isthmus; and the French government will then have to decide whether it will itself undertake the completion of the canal, or allow the savings of scores of thousands of its citizens to be hopelessly swept away. That the canal ought to be completed, if possible, is certain. It will be an international calamity if the results already achieved are allowed to go to waste.
p. 5, col. 5
CAMPAIGN “STANDARD” FUND.
The following subscriptions to the fund for special circulation of THE STANDARD during the presidential campaign have been received this week:
| Subscriber | Amount |
|---|---|
| “An Iron Worker,” Johnstown, Pa. . | $5 00 |
| Robert Baker, Albany, N. Y. ($1 per week) . . . . . . . . . . . . | 1 00 |
| Silas M. Burroughs of Medina, N. Y. | 121 75 |
| M. C. Barry, Georgetown, Minn. ($1 per month) . . . . . . . . . | 2 00 |
| Ben Adams, Charleston, S. C. ($5 per month) . . . . . . . . . . . | 5 00 |
| Messrs. Quimby, Merrill and Thompson, Concord, N. H. ($3 per month) | 3 00 |
| Louis Prang, Boston . . . . . . | 5 00 |
| E. W. Nellis and four others, Paterson, N. J. ($2.50 per month) . . | 2 50 |
| M. R. Leverson, Burlington, Vt. . . | 5 00 |
| Edward Ferguson, Brooklyn ($2.50 per month) . . . . . . . . . . | 2 50 |
| J. L. Barker, Santa Barbara, Cal. . | 25 00 |
| A. R. Wynn, Toledo, O. . . . . . . | 5 00 |
| $182 75 | |
| Previously acknowledged . . . | 1,242 00 |
| Total to date . . . . . . . . | $1,424 75 |
ALBANY, N. Y.—It gives me pleasure to add my mite to the fund proposed for the circulation of THE STANDARD during the campaign. I send you one dollar for the month of June, and you may rely on me for a dollar a month up to and including October, 1888. I am glad to see that there are some men of means in this movement who are willing to provide the money to distribute single tax literature and thus open the eyes of their fellows to the injustice of our present system of taxation and the remedy that is within their power to apply. Your attitude in opposing the nomination of a candidate by the party this year meets with the approval of the majority of single tax men in this vicinity. I would recommend to all subscribers of THE STANDARD who do not feel able to contribute financially to the fund for the dissemination of our principles, that they on no account allow THE STANDARD, after perusal by them, to lie idle, but to pass it on among their acquaintances. This will cause those who casually read an article or two to inquire further concerning our principles, and possibly result in obtaining an ardent convert to the cause. My experience is that a large proportion of the people are thoroughly dissatisfied with the present condition of public affairs, but lack definite views of amending them.
ROBT. BAKER,
178 Madison avenue.
LONDON, June 12, 1888.—I have great pleasure in inclosing another hundred dollars to spread the gospel of truth about the land, poverty and tariff question by distribution of copies of the New York STANDARD.
I never parted with money with greater satisfaction to myself, feeling that any one who will take the trouble to read THE STANDARD, or any of your works, will see that they are right and true, that you labor but for the natural rights of man of which he has been deprived by blind or selfish but certainly unjust legislation. The sooner the people see that those who collect toll or tribute for God’s bounties are in the same boat with all other pirates, and the sooner they vote for the abolition of all taxes, excepting the tax on land values, the sooner will peace and justice reign upon the earth and the nearer will the millennium be at hand.
S. M. BURROUGHS of Medina, N. Y.
GEORGETOWN, Minn., June 18.—Inclosed find $2 for the months of June and July to promote the circulation of THE STANDARD. I’ll send monthly after July.
M. C. BARRY.
CHARLESTON, S. C., June 7, 1888.—Your idea of opening a “free trade campaign fund” is a good one, and I take pleasure in pledging myself to $5 monthly from now until November. I inclose installment for June.
BENJAMIN ADAMS.
CONCORD, N. H.—There are three of us here who have been circulating tracts and copies of THE STANDARD as extensively as we have felt able. We feel encouraged at the tariff discussion which this has excited. As the fight progresses I believe the truth will be more clearly presented, and as men come to understand that we are right on this question it seems to me they will be better prepared to listen to arguments on the land doctrines.
I have talked with my friends Merrill and Thompson, and we are of the opinion that we want to be represented in the fund to circulate THE STANDARD during the campaign, so we therefore agree to give monthly, until the first of November, $1 each.
Inclosed you will please find postal note for $3 that being the amount due for the month of June.
FRANK P. QUIMBY.
BROOKLYN, N. Y., July 1.—I am glad to see that a campaign fund has been started by THE STANDARD. If single tax men felt the full importance of this act you would receive from them $1,000 a week for this purpose alone. If it were in my power I would send you something worth while; but, as it is not, I can only add to my mite my best wishes and a promise that I shall work to the best of my ability to increase THE STANDARD’S circulation. Inclosed is $2.50, and I shall send you the same amount monthly during the campaign.
EDWARD FERGUSON,
762 Myrtie sic.
PATERSON, N. J., June 27.—The plan of circulating THE STANDARD as a campaign document is a good one. This campaign is bound to push our movement far ahead. Inclosed find $2.50, which amount will be sent every month, possibly with additions. Five of us chip in fifty cents each. My four friends prefer not to be known.
E. W. NELLIS.
SANTA BARBARA, Cal., June 23—Inclosed find check for $25 to aid in the distribution of THE STANDARD. I will send a check for a like sum before the campaign is over. I would like to contribute more, and realize that this is the time of all others that it is needed, but I am so financially situated that I feel this is all I ought to do in justice to myself. It may be that I may feel able to do more than I have promised; and if so, it will give me great pleasure.
J. L. BARKER.
TOLEDO, O., July 1.—Find inclosed postal order for $5 to be placed where you think it will do the most good.
I have just returned from a short trip through Michigan, and from what I could learn the people are not pleased with the nominations at Chicago, and I believe the high tariff platform has made the state a very doubtful one. All the prohibitionists that I have talked with are free traders.
A. R. WYNN.
A Voice From Limerick.
LIMERICK, Ireland, June 22.—Inclosed find order for books. I am one of those who go in heart and soul for your land doctrines, as I consider them the just solution of the social problem. I have read with deep interest “Progress and Poverty” and “Social Problems,” and I can frankly tell you that my estimation of them is that they show a thorough grasp of the land difficulty, and prove most convincingly the injustice of private property in land and the blessings of making land the property of the whole people.
FRANCIS A. P. GAFFNEY,
21 Upper Mallow street.
p. 5, col. 6
SOCIETY NOTES.
The few fashionable people, with few exceptions, who had lingered in town until a week ago to-day, departed on Monday. Many of them, who have friends or relatives in college, stayed several days at New London to see the Yale-Harvard race. But even this interesting incident, absorbing as it is, caused but little excitement, and the week promised to be flat, stale and unprofitable. By Thursday, however, there was a change, for it became known to intimate friends that Mrs. Hamersley was to be married to the duke of Marlborough.—[New York Tribune, July 1.
Eliot F. Shepard of New York has taken both Mr. Blaine’s splendid cottage and the equally handsome one adjoining it on the High Brook road, Newport, and will entertain very extensively during the summer. Mr. Blaine’s cottage will be given up to Mr. Shepard’s guests.
Michael Mack was a book keeper in New York. He lost his situation some time ago and went to Chicago to find work, taking but little money with him. Of course the new position did not present itself, for labor is a drug on the market out west. His scanty funds were soon spent, and for a fortnight he has been sleeping in the parks at night and living by day on what he could beg and get at the lunch counters. He was out in the parks during several heavy storms, and rheumatism crippled him. Last night the police found him helpless in Lincoln park and took him to a station. He said he had not tasted food since last Sunday, and his stomach was so weak he could scarcely swallow a cup of coffee. The police fed him. He was well dressed and talked and acted like a gentleman. His family in New York has been communicated with, and he will be kept at public expense until they are heard from. He pawned a watch and ring in New York to get to Chicago.
The New York Sun having said that the Stewart estate was not as large as several other estates and fortunes in New York, a correspondent asks for the names of the others. The Sun in replying says: “The Goelet estate as a whole must much exceed $20,000,000. Then there are the Standard oil fortunes of the two Rockefellers and Mr. Flagler, each of which can safely be estimated now at more than that sum, and they are rapidly increasing. Mr. Herbert R. Bishop can be set down as worth more, and probably Mr. D. O. Mills also. Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s fortune is supposed by those best informed as to such matters to be greater than a score of millions, and Mrs. Hetty Green is not forced to the rigid economy she practices, for doubtless she has more than the sum at which we estimated the Stewart estate. Then there are Messrs. Amos R. Eno, Andrew Carnegie, Percy R. Pyne, Charles R. Pratt, Jabez A. Bostwick and Herman O. Armour, each of whom is reported to have $20,000,000 and over.” And this, says the Sun, is not a full list.
George M. Pullman of sleeping car fame has caused to be erected on an island near Alexandria bay a magnificent summer residence. It is built of granite, and it has stately towers that remind the passer by of some ancient castle on the Rhine. The cottage and grounds cost the owner over $100,000. Mr. Pullman and family will soon be here to occupy it, and it is said that among their guests this year will be James G. Blaine on his return from Europe.
Louis Frandzen of 139 Franklin avenue was run over by a horse car last September, and received such severe injuries that he is to-day a helpless cripple. He has a wife and three children, the eldest of whom is only fifteen years of age. His wife is unable to work and the entire family relies for support at present on the $6 a month which Lizzie, the eldest girl, earns by folding papers in a publisher’s office.—[New York Herald.
The old Ellingwood estate, a charming property lying at the foot of the well named Serpentine road, on Staten island, was yesterday the scene of an animated and joyous gathering. The place has become the property of a hundred and odd islanders, who have converted it into “the Richmond county country club,” with the object of promoting social recreation and intercourse among its members, and particularly of encouraging and stimulating an interest in riding and driving. It was at first intended to keep it open until December 1 only, but it is now proposed to make use of it during the winter, with the object of introducing Canadian winter sports on Staten island, as the locality abounds in natural tobogganing slides. Although the club now boasts of twelve acres of ground, the intention of its members is to increase this quantity by the purchase of a flat field to be used for polo playing. A part of the estate has already been appropriated to a gun club, another to a track dotted with hurdles, while a third will accommodate lawn tennis players. There is stabling for twenty-five saddle horses and a coach house that will hold a dozen “traps.” Guests from New York were conveyed from Grasmere by four-in-hand stages, after being greeted at the station by handsome and well mounted cavaliers, acting as aides-de-camp. The club grounds presented a picturesque sight, dotted as they were by well dressed and charming women, having for a background the luxuriant foliage of the island’s most stately trees, and at 7 o’clock one and all of the guests were loth to depart.—[New York Herald.
Vanderbilt once paid Miss May Tillinghast $30,000 for inventing a new kind of tapestry hanging.
Mr. J. F. Irwin of Oswego is said to have paid $10,000 for a bible. It was originally in three volumes, but by the insertion of wood cuts, manuscripts, engravings and etchings had been expanded to sixty imperial folio volumes.
Blanche Clinton, a young girl of seventeen, jumped off the pier at the foot Oak sic, Chicago, last week. Two men rescued her after a hard struggle and a physician managed to bring her to life. In the girl’s pocket was found the following note:
“I have had no work for a long time, and would rather die than live, as I have no friends or relatives. My name is Blanche Clinton.”
A New York lady has a diamond ring for which she paid $48,000.
While the emperor of Brazil was ill in Milan his estimated expenses were [40,000?] sic. The regular hotel bill was 1,000 francs a day; but on account of his illness other guests had to leave, and for thirty-five days the cost was 65,000 francs. A physician from Paris made two trips to Milan for 40.000 francs, two Italian doctors were paid 1,200 francs a day, and he had to give a lot of fees.
Joe Boatright, a colored man, was knocked down to the highest bidder under the vagrancy act at the court house steps in Memphis recently. His services for the next six months were sold to M. A. F. Rector, prosecuting attorney, for $6.50. This is the second vagrant sold or bound out to service in this city since the war. The other one was Nelson Thomas, in the “seventies” bound to Mr. Edward Dance for six [months?]. Mr. Dance says he made a good hand.
It is a unique fashion for the present summer to have a set of covers for parasols made detachable and to match the various toilets with which the sunshade is to be carried. The form has an elaborate handle, either of modeled silver or gold, or carved ivory or shell, and these exquisitely and artistically embellished handles cost almost any price that anybody feels like paying, for they are sometimes set with jewels, besides representing a great deal of skilled handiwork. A handsome handle and form, with a set of twelve assorted covers, may easily cost $100, although half that sum will buy a tolerable outfit. If the belle desires to be further extravagant, she may have as many handles as covers, and prove that they are inseparable by painting the former in enamel of colors and designs to match the latter.—[New York Sun.
Page 6 of 8contents
6 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888.
p. 6, col. 1
THE SINGLE TAX DOCTRINE.
BY H. F. RING.
Reprinted from the Houston Post.
About two thousand of the voters of Harris county have already signed a memorial to the twenty-first legislature of the state asking the submission to the vote of the people of a constitutional amendment exempting improvements on land and personal property from taxation, and requiring all direct taxes to be levied on relative land values only. It is no exaggeration to say that at least four men out of five to whom this memorial has been presented and explained, have signed it. The memorial is also being circulated with equal success in many other portions of the state. It would, therefore, seem that the single tax doctrine has now obtained sufficient foothold in Texas to justify its serious consideration by every thoughtful and patriotic citizen.
The petition referred to is accompanied with a brief statement under several heads, or propositions, of the principal reasons why this change in our system of taxation should be adopted. I propose, if the Post will kindly allow me the space, to take up and discuss, in a series of three or four articles, each of these propositions.
The first proposition is that the adoption of the proposed amendment, while increasing the tax on vacant lands held for speculative purposes, would result in reducing taxes on farms, homesteads and all species of improved real estate from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent, without in any way increasing the burden of indirect taxation.
By the exemption of improvements from taxation is meant the exemption from taxation of all values placed upon land by the application to it of human industry, such as values resulting from breaking up the wild sod, clearing land and reducing it to cultivation, as well as such improvements as fences and buildings. It means the collection of no more taxes from homesteads, farms and factories than are collected from unimproved, vacant lots and lands adjoining, of equal value, exclusive of improvements.
It is urged as an objection to this measure, that if personal property and improvements on land were exempt from taxation, and if speculators and land monopolists were made to pay as much in taxes for the privilege of excluding capital and labor from the use of land as farmers, merchants and manufacturers are required to pay for the privilege of employing labor on lands of equal value, the owners of improved real estate would, in the end, have a greater tax bill to settle than before; because, it is urged, no one could then afford to hold land in idleness and pay the increased tax on it; and hence, that vacant land and lots would soon revert to the state for non-payment of taxes, thus compelling the owners of improved lands to bear, in addition to the present taxes, all that portion of the burden now borne by land speculators and land monopolists. In other words, it is urged as an objection to the measure, that it would so effectually destroy every species of land monopoly that every unoccupied tract of land, business or residence lot, every unused coal bed, mineral deposit or water privilege, would revert to the state, and thus become free to the first comer who wanted to use it badly enough to be willing to pay a little higher tax on it than is now required of its present owner. Let us see if this would really be the case.
In this connection the first thing to be considered is, what portion of the present taxable wealth of the state is in personal property and improvements on land, and what portion is in land sic.
It was shown by ex-Mayor Opdyke of New York, in a treatise written by him nearly forty years ago, that the value of land is at all times almost exactly equal to the combined value of all that is on the land, the price of land always reflecting the value of its accumulated productions. That is to say, one-half of the wealth of a community is in land values, and the other half is in personal property and improvements on land. This is now an undisputed fact in political economy, and its truth is proven approximately by an examination of the assessment rolls in those communities and states in which improvements on land are assessed separately from the land itself, as is the case in Vermont and California. Thus in sic, the total assessment of the state of California was [$642,000,000?]. Of this sum $150,000,000 was in personal property, $143,000,000 in improvements on land, and $349,000,000, or about half the total assessed valuation of this state, was in the land itself. In Texas, improvements on land have not been heretofore separately assessed, but the the sic of the comptroller for the fiscal year ending August 31, 1887, shows the total assessment of the state to be sic, of which sum $190,000,000 is personal property. It thus appears that the proportion of personal property to real estate is about the same on the assessment roll in Texas as in California, and there can be no doubt but that the proportion in regard to improvements on land is also practically the same.
It therefore follows if we were to exempt personal property from taxation, and also omit the value of improvements in assessing land for taxes, we would thereby reduce the aggregate wealth on our assessment rolls about one-half. In other words, the values remaining on the rolls, which would then simply be the land values, would only amount to about one-half of the present assessed valuation. In order, therefore, to raise the revenue at present derived from direct taxation it would be necessary to increase the percentage of the tax so that the tax on land values would be twice as great as it is at present.
At present the tax on my farm is, say $25 a year; my land is worth, exclusive of all improvements, $500, and my improvements, including the additional value which the land has from having reduced it to cultivation, are worth $2,000, or four times the land value. I am now paying a tax of $5 a year on the land value of my farm, and a tax of $20 a year on its improvement value. Under the new system my land value tax would be doubled, and it would be $10 a year instead of $5; but as my improvements would be free from taxation, the taxes on my farm would actually be reduced from $25 a year to $10 a year; and so the taxes would be reduced on nearly every other farm and homestead in the state, because, in the great majority of cases in Texas at least, the improvement value of a farm or homestead largely exceeds its land value. Where there are no improvements on the land the increase in the percentage of the tax referred to above would, under the new system, on an average, double the taxes on such vacant lands, and thus make up the deficiency resulting from exempting the products of industry from taxation. Thus, where the tax is now, say $20 a year on a thousand acres of vacant land, under the new system it would have to be $40 a year, and it would therefore be necessary to raise the percentage of the tax until the revenue derived from vacant land would, on an average, be twice as great as it is at present. The new system would thus double the taxes to be paid on ever sic of unused p. 6, col. 2 land, but it would reduce the taxes to be paid on nearly every tract of improved land.
The next proposition in support of the tax reform memorial is to the effect that farmers, merchants, mechanics and manufacturers ought not to be compelled to pay any more in taxes for the privilege of using land and thus adding to the prosperity of a community, than land speculators and land monopolists are required to pay for the privilege of withholding land of equal value from use, and thereby detracting from its prosperity.
A tax on real estate is in effect nothing more or less than ground rent paid the government annually for the privilege of the exclusive possession of a tract of land. If the owner does not pay this ground rent every year he is sold out for non-payment of taxes, and the government, or the purchaser under the tax sale, takes possession. Why should the government compel the man who uses his land to pay a higher ground rent for it than if he permitted his land to remain idle? If I build a house, or a factory, or open up a farm on my land, do I injure any one by so doing? Have I not employed labor in so doing? Have I not in fact benefited the community and added something to the prosperity of its merchants, as well as its working people, by this investment of my capital? Have I not even added greatly to the value of the vacant land adjoining my own, which is held for speculative purposes? Who has benefited the community most? I, by using my land and giving employment to labor on it, or the speculator who holds the adjoining land in idleness, the value of which is greatly enhanced by the improvements made by me on my own land? Why should I be fined by an increase of taxes for having made that speculator’s land more valuable, as well as for having benefited the community generally? If any discrimination must be made between me and that speculator in the matter of taxes, because of the difference made by us respectively in the use of these adjoining tracts of land, and if the government must punish one or the other of us for this reason, on whom ought the blow to fall? Should it fall on me for making my land useful to mankind, or on him for withholding his land from the use of mankind? And yet, under our present system of taxation, the moment a man begins to employ labor upon a piece of land, by breaking up the wild sod, or otherwise, the tax assessor pounces upon him as though he had committed a heinous crime, and fines him for his enterprise by doubling and quadrupling his taxes.
To one who has seen the cat, as we single tax men say, nothing seems more absurd or barbarous than the present system of taxation, a system which taxes the products of industry and fines people for producing things useful to mankind. What sense or reason is there in a system of taxation which encourages speculators in the gifts of nature to hold lands in idleness until they can extort from enterprise the highest possible amount of blackmail?
Every dollar of taxation raised from taxing the products of industry lessens to that extent the tax on the land value. sic to that extent the burden of holding land in idleness, and encourages to the same extent the speculator in his blackmailing schemes against thrift and industry.
I will suppose the reader to be the owner of a thousand-acre tract of wild land, in the neighborhood of which a number of industrious farmers have already settled. You may not think of it, and they may not know of it, yet all of these farmers are putting a considerable sum of money in your pockets for every day’s work in the hot sun done by them in improving their own lands.
Ten years ago you paid $1 an acre for that thousand-acre tract. You are now holding it at $5 an acre. Whose labor has put this additional $4,000 of value upon that vacant land? Was it your labor or the labor of any one employed by you? You now refuse offers of $3 and $3 an sic, because you say you do not need the money and can afford to hold the land. You demand $5 an acre and are stiff at that price, since you know that some of those farmers around you there will soon want to enlarge their farms or settle their children in the neighborhood, and meanwhile the population of the country is steadily increasing. You are well satisfied that the necessities of these people, or those of other people, with the natural growth of population alone, will compel some one to give $5 an acre for that land, and more, too, in a few years.
Meanwhile you expect the tax assessor will continue to deal very gently with you, on account of the the sic that your land is unproductive real estate, as though you were a public benefactor in keeping your land idle and in refusing to accept $2 or $3 an acre for it from those who wish to make it useful to mankind.
Your plan is to squeeze the farmers, who must buy your land sooner or later, up to the highest notch; and you do not doubt but that the tax assessor will let you carry out this programme with the least possible expense to yourself. You expect to pay in taxes for the privilege of excluding capital and labor from the use of a free gift of nature about one-fourth or one-fifth as much as farmers around your tract of land have to pay in taxes for the privilege of employing labor on land of equal value. You have done nothing with your land except to drive labor off from it and thereby to retard the prosperity of the community, and it is, therefore, thought proper to encourage you for it by assessing your land for taxes at only $2 an acre. These farmers, however, have done something with their land—they have improved it, and in so doing have given employment to labor and thereby sic the prosperity of the community, and it is, therefore, thought proper to fine them for it by assessing their land at $10 an acre, so as to make them pay five times as much in taxes for benefiting the community as you are required to pay for injuring it.
But now suppose the constitutional amendment which the single tax men advocate to be adopted, and the deficiency in the public revenues, resulting from exempting personal property and improvements on land from taxation, to be made up by doubling, or, if need be, by trebling the percentage of the tax; your thousand acre tract being vacant land, the tax on it is of course, doubled; before it was $20 a year, now it is $40. It now costs you annually twice as much to prevent farmers’ sons from opening up homes on that land as it did before. It will seem right hard on you, won’t it?
But as a result, while you would hold on to that land and pay your taxes on it as before, you would moderate your price perceptibly, and be content with a little less blackmail paid you for the privilege of access to a natural element. Under the present system, you pay in taxes for the privilege of preventing labor from being employed on a hundred acres, $2 a year, while the farmer pays in taxes for the privilege of employing labor on the sic hundred acres of land of the same value, exclusive of improvements, $10 a year. Under the new system your tax on that 100-acre tract of land would be $4 a year, and the farmer’s tax on his 100 acre tract of land would be the same. Your taxes are increased 100 per cent, the farmer’s taxes are reduced sixty per cent, so that you and the farmer will then be paying each the same tax to the government for the privilege of p. 6, col. 3 the exclusive possession of tracts of land of the same value, exclusive of improvements.
Why would not this be just and right? Why should other men be taxed five times as heavily as you for the privilege of improving land adjoining yours of the same value, and thereby at the same time making your land more valuable?
Land is not really property, because it is not the product of human industry. It is the gift of nature, intended by a kind, heavenly Father for the equal use and enjoyment of all his children. The child of a pauper born in a garret is, by natural and inalienable right, as much entitled to free access to a portion of the surface of the earth as the child of a duke. And no act of the people of any preceding generation can rightly be held to have deprived that pauper’s child of an inheritance bestowed upon him by the almighty Creator of the land. Since land, exclusive of all improvements on it, by natural right belongs in common to all, a tax on land values alone is simply something paid for the benefit of all for the privilege of the exclusive possession of a portion of that which, by natural right, belongs equally to all. This is the proper theory on which to base the right of taxation, to the exclusion of the notion that taxes should be paid as an equivalent for the protection received from the government.
It is also claimed in favor of the proposed constitutional amendment exempting improvements on land and personal property from taxation that the value which land has, exclusive of improvements on it, results from the presence of population; that it increases with the increase of population, and is produced by the common energy and enterprise of all, and that hence a tax on these values simply enables the community to appropriate, for the good of all, a portion of the values which have been produced by all.
A man buys a vacant block of ground in Houston to-day, for which he pays $10,000. He has no notion of ever making any use of it himself, and so he holds it in idleness, and five years hence it is worth, say, $20,000. He may have lived in China all these years, while his land has been increasing in value. Will he, by any act of his, have made the land worth $20,000? Will not this additional value of $10,000 have been produced by the joint enterprise of the entire community? Will not every man, woman and child, by simply living in the community, and making a community, have jointly produced this $10,000 of additional value and placed it on his land, just as effectually, so far as his benefit is concerned, as though they had, by contributions among themselves placed a $10,000 brick building on it for him? He sells out and pockets a profit of $10,000, but he has not thereby increased the sum total of the wealth of the world one iota. He has simply been enabled to pocket $10,000 of wealth, which the community has produced in common and placed upon his land. Had he, however, instead of investing his $10,000 in vacant land, put it into the products of industry—i. e., into buildings, tools, or any enterprise giving employment to labor—where, as in a machine, it would have been instrumental in the production of more wealth, then a profit to him of $10,000 would represent so much additional wealth in the world, which had been brought forth by his capital, not to the injury of, but to the benefit of labor.
The sod on that vacant block of unimproved land in this city, just referred to, has never been disturbed, and its condition to-day is precisely what it was fifty years ago. Then that block of ground was valueless; to-day it is worth $10,000, and its owner can command from labor, for the bare privilege of making it useful to mankind, the total earnings of 100 laborers for 100 days at the rate of $1 a day. In other words, he can demand, almost as effectually as though these laborers were his cringing slaves, that the total product of 10,000 days of the hardest kind of toil be yielded up to him before labor shall have the bare privilege of being employed on that bit of vacant ground. And so it is as to every other unused natural opportunity for employment. The price that the owner demands and obtains for the privilege of using the raw, natural element is all that labor can make out of it above the bare cost of subsistence. Is not this always a fearful obstacle for idle capital and idle labor to surmount in gaining access to the original source of employment, to-wit: to the unused lands, coal beds, mineral deposits, homesteads, business and manufacturing sites? Need we wonder at dull times? Need we wonder that men are always out of employment and eagerly hunting for work in a country containing unused natural opportunities for work sufficient to give employment to ten times its present population? Need we wonder that soul-destroying poverty abounds on every hand? Need we wonder that, though inventions have increased tenfold the capacity of the laborer to produce wealth, the purchasing power of his wages has remained comparatively stationary, and that with him the struggle for food for a bare subsistence, is as intense to-day as when the wheat crop was garnered with a sickle?
No one can claim that the present owner, or that any previous owner, of that vacant block of ground has placed upon it the $10,000 of value which it has to-day. No one can deny but that this value has been placed there by, and is sustained by, the present generation of people who comprise the present community. That which is produced and brought forth by and owes its existence to my industry belongs to me. It is mine by every moral and divine right. Now, since the value which that block of land possesses has been produced by, and brought forth by, and owes its existence to, the community, why does not this value belong to the community by a moral and divine right just as sacred? And why has not the community the right to appropriate, by means of a single tax on land values, at least so much of the value which the community has produced as the needs of the government require? In so doing the government is but appropriating for the good of all a portion of the values which have been produced by all. And since a tax on land values will yield more than sufficient for the needs of government, why should we hang a millstone around the neck of enterprise by taxing the products of industry?
The land of a farm is worth, we will say, exclusive of improvements, $500. The improvements are worth $2,000. This means that the community, by its common industry, has put $500 of value on the farm, and that the farmer, by his individual industry, has put $2,000 of value on it. When the farmer pays his land value tax on the $500 he is simply repaying the community a portion of the values which the community has produced and placed upon his land; but if the farmer is required also to pay a tax on his improvements and personal property, he is thereby deprived of a portion of the values which he has individually produced. It is right for him to be compelled to pay the community a tax on the land value of his farm, because the value has been brought forth by the common industry of the community. It is wrong for him to be compelled to pay a tax on the improvement and personal property values of his farm, because these values have been brought forth by his individual industry. The community does not give value to them in the way in which it gives value to his land. Thus, land increases in value with the mere increase of population, because, no matter how great the p. 6, col. 4 demand for land may be, the surface of the earth cannot be extended.
Improvements on land and personal property, however, do not increase in value by the mere increase in population, because, no matter how great the demand for them may be, the products of industry can be indefinitely increased to meet the demand.
Double the population of Houston, and a lot worth $1,000 to-day will then be worth $2,000, but the building on that lot will not be worth a dollar more, nor can it be insured for a dollar more. How absurd then to subject both species of property to the same burden of taxation.
Now, some one rises up and says, your idea of exempting improvements on land from taxation is all right, but the millionaire owners of stocks and bonds and other personal property ought not to be relieved from the payment of all taxes, as would be the case were this constitutional amendment adopted. My dear sir, if the taxes on your little home or farm are reduced one-half, why need you find fault with the system simply because it happens to benefit also those rich men who have fortunately invested their capital in the products of industry instead of putting it into vacant lands, coal beds and forests, and unused homesteads, and business sites, for the purpose of being able to levy blackmail upon enterprise and labor?
But even if a plan could be devised which would not offer a premium on fraud and perjury, and by which all personal property could be ferreted out and placed upon the assessment rolls, and taxes on it collected with impartiality, which, by the way, is a manifest impossibility, yet even if it could be accomplished, out of whose pocket, in the end, would come the money with which these rich men would pay the tax?
Suppose the assessed valuation of the stocks of merchandise in this city should be increased so that on an average the taxes paid on them would be doubled. Would not this increase of taxation increase to the same extent the expense of doing business in this city? Suppose W. D. Cleveland’s tax on his stock of goods to be $2,000 a year. Would not this tax increase the expense of his business to that extent in just the same way as the salaries of two clerks at a thousand dollars a year each increase it? Is not W. D. Cleveland and every other merchant obliged to charge enough more for his goods to cover all expenses connected with his business, including his taxes, as well as rent and clerk hire? And do not all the people, the poorest as well as the richest, pay all of these expenses in the increased price of the goods which they are bound to purchase and consume? When the government taxes the stock of goods carried by merchants, the government simply makes the merchants tax collectors. The merchants collect the taxes from the customers in the increased price of the goods, and turn the amount over to the government. W. D. Cleveland to-day sells his goods for as much money as he can possibly get for them. So does every other merchant, but competition among merchants keep the prices down. Now, if by exempting personal property from taxation we were to quit fining merchants for carrying stocks of goods, we would thereby reduce Mr. Cleveland’s business expenses, say $2,000 a year; but we would at the same time reduce the business expenses of all merchants in the same proportion. Competition would then reduce the prices of the goods at least to the same extent, and the people at large, instead of the merchants, would in the end reap the chief benefit of this exemption. Who got the benefit of the exemption of the tariff tax on quinine? Was it the importing merchant who paid the tax, or the people who consumed the quinine? Before the tax was abolished quinine was $3.50 an ounce and upward. After the tax was abolished it fell to a dollar an ounce. And so it can be just as easily and clearly shown that a tax on any other of the products of industry is in the end shifted to the consumer, and that the great bulk of such taxes are finally paid by the poorest class of people, who constitute the mass of the consumers, in the additional cost of everything they buy.
Since, then, it is perfectly futile for society to attempt to put the burden of taxation on the rich, by taxing the products of industry, what is the use of trying to do it when by so doing we check enterprise and lessen the demand for labor? By putting the burden of taxation, however, on land values we will thereby, instead of retarding enterprise, actually stimulate it, increase the demand for labor, and make times better for all except the land speculators and land monopolists, and the sooner they are driven out of business the better for all concerned.
If we were to tax land values only our city debt here in Houston to-day, instead of being in all respects a curse to the town, would actually become in some respects a blessing to every laboring man and merchant in the place. Whether this debt shall be in some respects a blessing or in all respects a curse to them depends simply upon whether we shall put the burden of the debt on the values which the community has produced by its enterprise in common, or on the values which have been brought forth by individual industry. If we increase the burden of taxation on the products of industry, on stocks of goods or on factories, merchants and manufacturers will shun the place as though it were a pest hole; but if we could take the burden entirely off from stocks of goods, buildings and factories, and put it on land values alone, capital and enterprise would be attracted to this city as though drawn here by a loadstone. The increase of taxation on the vacant lots and business sites would make the owners of these unused sic for the employment of capital and labor more anxious to sell and would keep the amount of blackmail demanded for the privilege of using them within the bonds of sic. Speculators would let land in Houston alone. Business and homestead sites would remain cheap, and the greater the land value tax on them became the cheaper they would get. The cheaper such building sites became the less would be the portion of the mechanic, merchant or manufacturer’s capital exhausted in the purchase of a site on which to do business or build a home, and the greater the amount of capital left to be used in the employment of labor. Nor would the capitalist or the home seeker thus attracted to the town be frightened away by this tax on land values however high it might be, because he would be able to discount the tax in the purchase of his ground, and as to him the tax would be nothing more than ground rent annually paid in lieu of a greater investment of purchase money.
It is claimed that the adoption of the proposed constitutional amendment requiring all taxes to be levied on relative land values only would render the investments of capital less profitable, while the exemption from taxation of buildings, tools, machinery and all products of industry would make the investment of capital in productive enterprises giving employment to labor more inviting and more profitable, and that hence the demand for labor would be increased, and business generally would be stimulated.
A capitalist can increase his wealth in two ways. One way by which he may increase it is by investing it directly or indirectly in the products of human industry, as in buildings, factories, machinery—anything in the production of which labor has been employed. The capitalist whose wealth was invested in this p. 6, col. 5 channel is himself a wealth producer. While he is increasing his individual wealth he is at the same time adding to the sum total of the wealth of the world, and in this channel he can only increase his wealth by calling on labor to assist him; in other words, by giving employment to labor.
The other way by which a capitalist may increase his individual wealth, is simply by investing it in land. With increase of population his investment increases in value, but his capital is not used so as to assist in the production of wealth, nor is he in any sense a wealth producer. By investing in a free bounty of nature to which all are by natural right equally entitled, for the purpose of forestalling his fellow men and taking advantage of their necessities, he is enabled to draw to himself wealth which others have produced; and he does it without calling on labor to assist him—in other words without giving employment to labor.
Can there be any possible doubt that it is to the advantage of the farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, and the manufacturer that capital should be invested in the former channel rather than in the latter? Can there be any possible doubt that exempting the products of industry from taxation, and taxing land values only, would tend to discourage the investment of capital in the latter channel and encourage its investment in the former?
By taxing improvements, buildings, tenement houses and factories we discourage the investment of capital in a direction where it stimulates business and increases the prosperity of all. By taxing land values alone, however—by increasing the burden of taxation on land values—we do not lessen the amount of land, but we cheapen its price, we make the speculator a little more anxious to unload, we make the land owner a little more anxious to improve.
A tax on land values alone, therefore, instead of retarding enterprise, stimulates enterprise.
What is the great obstacle which stands in the way of the working people becoming the owners of homes in cities and of farms in the country? Is it because of a scarcity of vacant lots in cities and towns, or of vacant lands in the country? Even in the city of New York half of the resident lots are vacant, and it is much the same in all our towns, while scarcely one acre in ten in this state is in cultivation. The great obstacle preventing poor people from becoming the owners of homes in towns and farms in the country is high price of land. In order to get hold of a piece of land on which to build a house or open up a farm working people must first bind themselves to pay over to some land speculator all which they can possibly make above a bare living for a long term of years. And what is the equivalent which is given them for these years of practical servitude? Simply the gracious permission of a forestaller to make a bit of the surface of the earth useful to mankind.
Why is land so high? Why is the homestead seeker always compelled to use up so much of his capital in the purchase of some unused site on which to erect his improvements? Simply because our laws encourage men to invest their means in vacant lots and lands for the purpose of forestalling labor, instead of investing it in buildings, in mills and factories, and other channels for the purpose of employing labor.
How do our laws encourage men to bury their money in dirt instead of investing it in productive enterprises? By an absurd system of taxation which encourages people to hold land in idleness by taxing it on a low valuation so long as it is held idle, and discourages people from improving land by taxing it on a high valuation the moment it is improved. If taxes on vacant land in the country and vacant lots in the town were doubled, would not the people be a little more shy about investing their money in such vacant lands? Would not people having vacant land be a little anxious to get rid of it? Would not this tend to keep the price of land down, to make it cheaper and make it easier for working people to get hold of homes and farms, and for capitalists to get hold of it for business houses, mills and factory sites, and mining operations, all of which give employment to labor and make times better? And furthermore, if people having money to invest were discouraged from investing in vacant lots and lands, and vacant coal beds and mineral deposits, on account of this tax on land values, or, in other words, were discouraged from trying to invest their money so as to forestall their fellow men, would they not be much more inclined to invest it in buildings, tenement houses, factories and mills, particularly if such investments were exempt from taxation except as to the value of the land occupied? And if more of the capital now going into land—into the raw element—went into productive enterprises, would not more labor be employed and times be livelier, to the benefit of the merchant as well as the farmer and mechanic?
An objection hastily urged against the single tax doctrine is that its application would reduce taxes on railroad property. If a railroad were not necessarily from its very nature a monopoly, a reduction in the running expenses resulting from a reduction of taxation would finally bring about corresponding reduction of tariff rates, to the benefit of all consumers of goods hauled over railroads. The fact is, however, that a railroad company, except occasionally as to rates from points where there is competition, always charges all that the traffic will bear, regardless of running expenses and everything else. That is to say, unless the rates are limited by law, a railroad company will always charge what, in the opinion of its managers, will produce the largest net revenue, and these charges are practically in no way affected by a slight decrease in running expenses. Railroads in Texas collect three cents a mile from passengers. In the northeast, especially in the neighborhood of New York, at least one hundred passengers are carried on railroads where one is carried in Texas, and the cost of carriage per passenger there is probably not one-tenth as much as in Texas. Yet the rates are almost as high there as here. In consequence, railroads running out of New York actually earn thirty-three and a third per cent annually and upward on the actual capital invested, exclusive of course of the water in the stocks and bonds. It is evident, therefore, that a reduction of taxation on railroad property would benefit only the owners of railroad stocks and bonds; the public generally would derive no benefit from this reduction of taxation, as would be the case were it practicable for railroads to be subjected to the free play of the laws of competition. But by adopting the single tax constitutional amendment we would not thereby reduce taxes on railroad property. In the first place the land on which the road bed of a railroad rests has, on account of its shape and the franchise rights attached to it, a peculiar value over and above adjoining lands. It is a narrow, continuous and unbroken strip of land running from county line to county line, and having for this reason a relative value far in excess ordinarily of adjoining lands. The tax assessor and the commissioners’ court would therefore be authorized to fix the value of the land covered by the right of way of a railroad company at a figure from which as great a revenue would be derived to the government from p. 6, col. 6 taxation as at present. Again, if found necessary, an occupation tax could be levied upon railroads, as is now done in several other states, from which the deficiency in the revenue, if any, resulting from taxing the land values only of railroad properties would be made up at the expense of the owners of railroads.
If one will only think twice about it before coming to a conclusion, it will be found that there is no truth in the assertion that the single tax would reduce the burden of taxation as to railroads or any other species of property having an essentially monopolistic character.
My Faith.
In ancient days a bitter cry Went up from Israel’s toiling race; And thou didst hear, Oh, God most high, And give it in thy heart a place.
Thy love for crushed and hopeless men— Thine anger, stern, ’gainst pride and might, Were manifest to nations when Old Egypt sank in rayless night.
Thou didst command thy servant, bold, Along the path thy wisdom showed, To lead the toilers, young and old, To lands where milk and honey flowed.
Thy presence lingered day by day, To guide and guard them through the land— Nor left them on the weary way Till rescued by thy sov’reign hand.
In later days, when savage greed Had burdened man with want and care, Thy son came down his cause to plead, And bring deliverance everywhere.
But not with angry sword and flame, Consuming kingdoms into dross— With words of peace and love he came, And wondrous lesson of the cross.
He taught the righteousness of love; That goodness is forever kind; Thy kingdom coming from above, A faith that leaves all self behind.
That everywhere—in church or state; ’Neath lifting domes, or towers tall; From city slums to heaven’s gate— Thy justice rises over all.
In humble toil his life began; A willing sacrifice he died, To teach us that pure love for man Is better than all things beside.
Our Father which in heaven art, We love thy name, revere thy laws; We crave while here to have a part In spreading o’er the world thy cause.
We cannot add to thy great fame; We cannot please thee with mere praise; We cannot gild thy sic name, Or with our wisdom mend thy ways!
And so with love and eager prayer— And weary haltings, now and then— We strive to show forth, everywhere, Thy love, and ours, for toiling men.
(Rev.) C. M. MORSE.
What the Tariff Costs a Photographer.
The following extract from a letter to the Truth-Seeker gives some figures which are not quite as large as those of the ordinary statisticians but which mean a good deal more to the average citizen:
I am a photographer; have worked at that business for fifteen years. Last fall I purchased a bill of 5,000 cabinet mounts of a Philadelphia manufacturer at $12 per thousand. This spring through an importer I purchased 5,000 of the same grade of cards from a German manufacturer. The bills were the same; were the goods alike? Yes, to all outside appearances, but when torn apart the home manufactured card was of a coarse, unfinished pulp, while the imported one was of fine fiber and compactly pressed. Now, I paid $27 import duty on the German cards and $33 for the 5,000 cards, making $60. I did not pay any import duty on the Philadelphia card stock, but I paid $60 for them all the same.
I have a lens that cost $125, the duty on which was $56.25. I have another lens that cost $60, the duty being $27. I have still another lens that cost $25, the duty being $11.25. During the last fiscal year I have purchased four reams of photograph paper, the duty on which was $57.60; thirty-one boxes glass (at $4 per box), $124, duty 78 per cent.
I state further that I have footed up the cost to myself of the tariff per year at $960. No government on the face of the earth would dare levy a direct tax on a business of about $4,000 per annum in that amount. My entire property would not bring under the hammer $2,000; yet I am compelled to pay yearly almost the half of what I am worth to support the most damnable system of robbery the world has ever known. Nine years since (1879), I purchased the property on which I now live and gave a mortgage of $800 on it! To sic I still owe $700, not having been able to pay a dollar, except the interest, for eight years.
Now, I and my workmen earn this $960. Has any one on the face of the earth a right to deprive me of it? Has any government, autocrat or power of whatsoever nature the moral right to force me to contribute to their personal aggrandizement to my personal discomfiture and loss?
An Illustration of the Republican Platform Reduced to Practice.
Henry Watterson’s Paper.
Taxation is one thing and revenue is another.
Taxation is what is taken from the people directly and indirectly under the form of law.
Revenue is that portion of taxation which goes to the government.
Protection is that portion of taxation which goes to the manufacturers.
The constitution authorizes taxation only for revenue—taxation for any other purpose is robbery.
As an illustration, take the tax on sugar; it amounts to about sixty millions; of this $54,000,000 goes to the government and $6,000,000 to the sugar planters. The government collects its sugar tax at the custom house by a duty; the planter collects his of the consumer by adding it to the price of the sugar, bringing up the price of the American article to a par with the imported article, plus the tariff.
Now it would be possible to reduce the revenue by an increase of taxation. If the rate on sugar should be advanced the imports would fall off, and the price in American markets would increase.
As imports fell off the revenues would decline, but this would not lessen, it would increase, the burden of taxation by the increase in price. Though the share going to the government would be reduced, the planter’s proportion would increase as prices increased. The result would be that the sugar tax would be sixty-five millions, the government getting 48,000,000, the planters 17,000,000.
The illustration is used to make clear what the republicans mean by insisting on a revision of the tariff which would reduce the revenues of the government by advancing the rate.
Before and After the Monopolization of Coal Lands.
“I remember when a coal miner was an aristocrat among workingmen,” said an old coal miner to a Chicago Mail reporter. “I have seen the time when $90 a month was a poor month’s work with me in a western Pennsylvania mine, and I have often drawn $120 in a month. It is wonderful what a change has taken place in that great branch of industry. The coal miner now who can make $1.25 a day is doing well, and that is above the average wages. If he could make that the year round he would be doing well, as things are now, but strikes and lockouts and the shutting down of the mines to regulate the output and keep up the selling price cut into his small yearly income fearfully.”
Page 7 of 8contents
THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888. 7
p. 7, col. 1
QUERIES AND ANSWERS.
Land Tax and Land Value Tax.
NEW YORK CITY.—Will you be so kind as decide the following:
John says that your single tax is a tax on land; James says it is no such thing, but a tax on land values. Which is right, John or James?
Please explain the difference between a tax on land and a tax on land values.
J. MCAVEY.
James is right.
A tax on land without regard to its value taxes all land, so that no one can apply his labor to any land without paying for the privilege. A tax on land values makes common and free all land having no value, so that whoever will work may find the opportunity near at hand, without price, rent or tax.
Does Clarinda Want Protection?
CLARINDA, Iowa.—Will you kindly answer the following, clipped from a local paper:
“A trade between man and man benefits both parties to the transaction because each secures from the other what he wants; therefore free trade between two nations must be mutually beneficial.” The premise is correct, the conclusion erroneous, because each separate item of trade between nations is trade between two individuals, one of which lives in this country and the other in a foreign country. But half the benefit of the trade is derived to the people of this country that would have been the case had both parties to the trade resided here. The Clarinda lady who buys goods in Omaha adds to her wealth by so doing, but if she bought them in Clarinda two parties would be richer for the act. Trade between nations should be free only in articles which each cannot produce advantageously at home.
I have looked through “Protection or Free sic?” but find nothing that hits this argument directly.
A. S. B.
If the Clarinda lady gives a dozen eggs for a yard of cloth in Clarinda, each party to the transaction will be benefited, because each gets what she would rather have than what she gives. But the aggregate wealth of Clarinda is not increased. The eggs and cloth have changed hands, but have not increased in quantity or value. But if the Clarinda lady sends her eggs to Omaha and receives back cloth in exchange, it is manifestly because eggs, as compared with cloth, have a less relative value in Clarinda and a greater in Omaha, and the aggregate wealth of both places is increased by the exchange. This is the reason why free trade increases wealth. If your local paper really thinks that it will profit Clarinda to compel Clarinda people to trade with Clarinda people it ought to advocate the building of a high wall around the town.
You will find this fallacy, that domestic trade is more profitable than foreign trade—a fallacy which entangled Adam Smith himself—fully explained and exposed in chapter 1 of “Protection or Free Trade?”
Where to Find the Information.
CINCINNATI.—In THE STANDARD of June 9 the condensed history of tariff legislation and the effect of the same on public interests proved of the greatest interest to single tax men. At the request of others this is written asking that you give us such reference that we may be able to prove these statements when using them in debate. Of course as to events of the present generation and much of the past we can find our own proofs, but we would prefer to call on a gentleman of Mr. Shearman’s vast resources for all possible assistance.
C. S. WALKER.
Mr. Shearman is abroad. sic at present the answer cannot be obtained from him.
The history of the country under the different tariffs down to 1869 is given in Grosvenor’s “Does Protection Protect?” which you will find in your public libraries.
TOWNSEND, N. Y.—Will you please publish a description of our national banking system.
H. M. NEWCOMB.
The peculiar feature of the national banking system relates to the issue of circulating notes. By depositing United States bonds at Washington a bank receives ninety per cent of the face value of the bonds in national bank notes, the payment of which is guaranteed by the government. For this privilege the banks pay a tax of one per cent on their circulation; but they receive full interest on their deposited bonds. Thus. sic sic,000 in bonds a bank draws interest on that amount, and has $90,000 of notes to use as money.
In recent years the most dangerous power of the banks—that of increasing or diminishing their circulation at pleasure—has been destroyed by legislation.
A story was told in the early days of the national banking system which illustrates the character of the institution at that time. A rich man bought, during the war, $300,000 of United States bonds, for which he paid $150,000 in gold. At his death he left the bonds in trust to his lawyer, who. sic the five heirs came of age, proposed that they form a national bank. This was agreed to, and the bonds were forwarded to Washington. In due time $270,000 of circulating notes, guaranteed by the government, were received. The question of investment then arose, and the circulating notes were invested, under the lawyer’s advice, in United States bonds at par. The “bank” then drew interest from Uncle Sam on $570,000, for which Uncle Sam had never received more than $150,000. But the lawyer’s shrewdness was not exhausted. He had his bank made a national depository, and the government intrusted to it $3,000,000 of government money, which it invested in United States bonds. So the descendents of the defunct patriot, who made a loan of $150,000 to the government in its need, were rewarded with interest on $3,570,000. It was one of those cases which are often cited to prove the efficacy of labor and prudence in accumulating fortunes.
Notes.
J. J. Newman, New York, and R. J. and C. A. Evans, Binghamton, N. Y.—Will get the information you seek and publish in a later issue.
Free Trade Draws Like Molasses.
HARTFORD CITY, W. Va., June 30—I have hitherto been a thorough-going republican. Commencing with Lincoln, I have never failed to vote for the republican candidates. But at the coming election I shall make a change. I will not favor protection any longer. I thank God for Cleveland’s message. It means a cheapening of the necessaries of life.
ABRAM GIBBS.
p. 7, col. 2
THE BEATING OF THE DRUMS.
“Tariff reform” among republicans means protection. Among democrats it means free trade.—[Chicago Evening Journal.
All that is needed to carry Pennsylvania for Cleveland and Thurman is to get the true issue fairly before all the people.—[Mauch Chunk Democrat.
This election is to decide whether the protective system is to be continued, or whether there is to be a new departure in the direction of free trade.—[Pittsburg Commercial-Gazette.
The iron, steel, glass and coal industries are highly protected industries, yet the lowest wages prevail in them. Wages are highest in unprotected industries.—[San Francisco Examiner.
The republican platform is one of the most sturdy and straightforward platforms on record. There cannot be the slightest doubt about the attitude of the party on the tariff.—[Philadelphia North American.
The democratic party have adopted a platform which proposes a reduction of our tariff taxes, which, while it does not go as far as we would like, yet, it is going in the right direction.—[Dayton, O., Workman.
Except in great emergencies, when governments must have revenue, food products never should be taxed. Salt, therefore, should be placed on the free list, but rice should be placed on the free list too.—[Portland Oregonian (Rep.).
But we do not see where Harrison can draw a single vote outside of his own party. Nor do we see how he can hold the sincere tariff reformers among the republicans. The rigid high tariff platform might be relied on to drive them away, and Harrison clinches the platform upon this issue.—[Minneapolis Evening Star (Ind.)
The Star is an independent paper, devoted to tax reform and tariff reduction, and it is therefore compelled to denounce the tariff plank of the Chicago platform. sic it is unsound and mischievous, and because it tends to foster monopoly and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people.—[Minneapolis Evening Star.
The fact that an article is cheaper than it was before the tariff was put on it does not prove that the cheapness is due to the tariff. Sugar is cheaper in America than it was thirty years ago, but it is just as much cheaper in England as the amount of the tariff tax in America. Twenty-six pounds for a dollar is the free trade price.—[Rockville, Ind., Tribune.
From all over Indiana come the most cheering reports of the democratic situation and prospects. The issue of lower taxes is immensely popular. If there is anybody in or out of Indiana who thinks this is a doubtful state this year, he doesn’t understand the situation. Indiana is easily good for 10,000 democratic majority as the situation stands to-day.—[Indianapolis Sentinel.
Every workman, by this time, ought to recognize the fact that capital will pay labor just what it can get and no more, and that when there is an excess of labor over the demand for it the wage rate will fall, and that no amount of duty on imported commodities will alter that fact.—[Havre De Grace Republican
On the tariff question—while we believe it to be hopelessly wrong—we are ready to admit the candor of the republican platform utterance. The party has thereby declared itself unreservedly in favor of using the power of taxation, intended to keep the wheels of government going, to keep other wheels going at the general expense in the pursuance of a policy of deliberate favoritism.—[Philadelphia Record.
The employes of the Pennsylvania steel works have been told that the works have been shut down because of “stagnation in business due to pending tariff legislation.” Rot! The workmen know better, and so do the bosses. And the knowledge of the workmen will become practically valuable to them when they shall comprehend that the true way of increasing wages is to lower the cost of the necessaries of living.—[Philadelphia Record.
For the first time in twenty-eight years there is a fair prospect that the democrats will make a square, honest fight on the tariff issue. It is true the tariff plank in the platform just adopted has in it some of the vagueness, trickery and duplicity which the party has always shown in recent years in dealing with this question, but the president’s message and the Mills bill have so thoroughly committed the democracy to free trade that no amount of shuffling and evasion will enable it to dodge or hide the record this year.—[St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Republican).
When considering the tariff question let the workingman remember that he is a consumer as well as producer; and that he is compelled under the competitive wage system to sell his labor in a free market in competition with every other laborer, while he must buy his own products in a market where prices are enhanced to the benefit of the capitalist by an average tax of forty-seven per cent. Keep these truths always in mind, and you will be enabled to arrive at a correct answer to the query: Does protection benefit or damage the American laborer?—[Chicago Labor Enquirer.
If money fell like manna from heaven, it would be well to bestow it as the prodigal platform of republicanism now suggests. But the colossal levy of the American nation is taken from the pockets of hard working freemen. They are not serfs of the soil, thus to be taxed as the remorseless McKinley and the renegade Randall shall direct. They will not vote for this platform. Take it to Turkey. Be careful, even, to keep it out of fighting Montenegro. George III made no such astonishing demands on his colonies when they rebelled.—[Chicago Herald.
Free lumber and cheaper iron would necessarily greatly stimulate ship building, and this stimulation would promote activity in other legitimate trades, not excepting salt making. At present the prices of all materials used in ship building are made so high by taxation that when dull times come the ship builder has no other resource than to cut down wages. If he could get his materials free of taxation ships would be cheaper, there would constantly be more of them built, there would be a greater demand for labor to build them, and with greater demand. sic, unless the law of supply and demand is at fault, would be enhanced.—[Detroit News.
The coon has come down. The mugwump newspapers of this town pretended that they went over to the democracy in 1884 because the republican party nominated Mr. Blaine. For four years they have been giving this explanation of their conduct. Now, however, they practically confess that the explanation was a fraud by arraying themselves against General Harrison, even while they praise him. The mask is off. It is clear now, if it never was before, that the true inwardness of their desertion of the republican party is to be found in the fact that the republican party flies the banner of protection, while they are in love with free trade and therefore with the democracy.—[New York Tribune.
As to the question of taxation, the republican party clings to everything that is bad in its previous policy and avows its obstinate determination to aggravate and extend the evil features of that policy. It repudiates the Mills bill in such a way as to include in the repudiation any possible revision of the unjust and unequal provisions of the tariff. The republican party would effect all needed reduction of the national revenue . . . by such revision of the tariff laws as will tend to check imports of such articles as are produced by our people and release from import duties those articles of foreign production (except luxuries) the like of which cannot be produced at home.” That means higher duties on nine-tenths of all the articles now included in the tariff, and particularly on wool, on metals, on lumber, on salt, on all textile fabrics, on everything necessary to American industry p. 7, col. 3 in its competition for the home and the foreign market. The party that, in 1884, “pledged itself to correct the inequalities of the tariff,” thus in 1888 threatens, if it get the power to multiply and intensify those inequalities.—[New York Times.
The only merit that could be claimed for the republican tariff plank was boldness, and now that they find how it is received by the public, representative republicans have set themselves to work to deprive it of this single merit by explaining it away. There was never seen in American politics a more absurd exhibition than was furnished by the leading republicans in the house on Thursday. The tariff plank was scarcely a week old, and they had all congratulated each other upon the adoption of it, yet here were all the high tariff spokesmen, from the fanatical Mr. Kelley to the jocose Mr. Reed, assuring the house and the country that the plank did not really mean what it distinctly said.—[New York Times (Mugwump).
Mr. Harrison represents an issue which, as outlined in the immoral Chicago platform, is the most wicked that ever confronted the American people at the ballot box. That issue must go down if the republic must endure. Mr. Harrison will be overwhelmingly defeated, not because he is Mr. Harrison, nor because he is not personally an acceptable gentleman and a good citizen, but because it is necessary for the welfare of the republic, for the prosperity of its people and for the preservation of the faith of the masses in the great truths of Thomas Jefferson, that this most cruel and rapacious doctrine of over taxation, unfair taxation and profligate expenditure should be wiped from the face of the earth.—[Chicago Herald.
Irish republicans in New York are said by the Tribune to be organizing against what is termed “Cleveland’s English free trade policy.” Now, one of the highest hopes of the Irish home rulers is that when Ireland shall have secured the blessings of local self government she shall enter upon an enlarged and prosperous manufacturing career. Suppose that when she did, some republican representative in congress should rise in his place and demand a high tariff on the linen manufactured by the “pauper labor” of Ireland, would not all Irishmen among his constituents be justly indignant, and would they not be ready to calathump the offender over the border of his district? Does this not show plainly that it is an insult to an Irishman’s intelligence to try to fool him with the cry of “English free trade” into refusing and opposing any relief to himself and his neighbors from the unnecessary and exorbitant taxes on his food and clothing?—[Reading Herald.
The republican party has taken up the challenge of the democratic party, and a clear and definite issue is presented to the American voter by the contrasted platforms. . . . We put the policies of the two parties in parallel columns, to make apprehension of the difference between the two easier and clearer:
| Rep. | Dem. | |
|---|---|---|
| Tax on tobacco | Abolish | Modify |
| Tax on alcohol | Reduce or abolish | Retain |
| Tax on raw materials | Retain | Abolish |
| Tax on necessaries | Retain | Reduce |
| Tax on luxuries | Retain | Retain |
| Object of tax | Protection | Revenue |
| Expenditures | Liberal | Economical |
It would be an absurd and a dishonorable affectation if we were to pretend to look upon the issue thus framed with indifference. We believe that it has vital relations to the future of our country. We believe that the coming election will be likely to settle the trend of national life for some years to come. Nor have we any wish to conceal our personal predilections and prejudices. They are in favor of economical expenditures and a lowered tariff.—[Christian Union.
Democrats’ Only Hope is to Stand to the Free Trade Guns.
Detroit News.
It is the message, not the platform, which the democrats will have to defend, for it is the author of the message, not the platform, who is running for the presidency. The approval of the Mills bill by the St. Louis convention, with its reduction of the tobacco tax, will not enable the democracy to escape from the message. Squirm as democratic orators may, they are pinned down to the programme of reducing revenue by reducing duties, and by reducing them on free trade lines. Their frantic and cowardly protests that they are not favoring free trade cannot obscure from the intelligent that their leader has had the courage nobly to set his face at least in the direction of free trade, and that, in spite of themselves, they have to fall into line and follow him.
If protection is the right policy for the country; if the postulates of that system are founded in reason; if, as is claimed by its advocates, it is intelligently designed to build up the prosperity of the country, the republican programme is the right one. It is only on the ground that protection is a fraud and a delusion, on the ground that it robs and not blesses the people, that a reasonable voter can condemn the Chicago platform. Politicians may palter with the question, but honest men who do their own thinking can reach no other conclusion than that, if the majority of the voters of the country are in favor of the policy of protection, the republican platform and the candidates who are placed upon it should carry the country in November. The democrats should expect, and should receive, no quarter from protectionists, and we do not believe they will get any.
They might just as well, therefore, indulge the courage of their convictions, and defend the president’s message and its sound and wholesome doctrines without apology. They can win on those principles if they can win at all, and they ought not to win if they abandon them or compromise them.
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[Advertisement] HENRY GEORGE’S WORKS.
PROGRESS AND POVERTY,
An Inquiry Into the Cause of Industrial Depression and of Increase of Want With Increase of Wealth—The Remedy.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
[250?] pages.
CONTENTS:
Introductory.—THE PROBLEM.
Book I.—WAGES AND CAPITAL.
Chap. 1. The current doctrine—its insufficiency.
The meaning of the terms.
Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor.
The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital.
The real functions of capital.
Book II.—POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE.
Chap. 1. The Malthusian theory—its genesis and support.
Inferences from fact.
Inferences from analogy.
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Effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth.
Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth.
Effect of the expectation raised by material progress.
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Chap. 1. The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression.
- The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth.
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- The true remedy.
Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.
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Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land.
Claim of land owners to compensation.
Property in land historically considered.
Property in land in the United States.
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How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured.
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Of the effect upon individuals and classes.
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Book X.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
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Differences in civilization—to what due.
The law of human progress.
How modern civilization may decline.
The central truth.
Conclusion.—THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.
The new Land and labor library paper edition of “Progress and Poverty” is now ready, price thirty-five cents. This is printed on better paper, in larger type, is better bound and a considerably larger book than the previous twenty cent edition.
PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?
An Examination of the Tariff Question with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
CONTENTS:
I. Introductory. II. Clearing ground. III. Of method. IV. Protection as a universal need. V. The protective unit. VI. Trade. VII. Production and producers. VIII. Tariffs for revenue. IX. Tariffs for protection. X. The encouragement of industry. XI. The home market and home trade. XII. Exports and imports. XIII. Confusions arising from the use of money. XIV. Do high wages necessitate protection XV. Of advantages and disadvantages as reasons for protection. XVI. The Development of manufactures. XVII. Protection and producers. XVIII. Effect of protection on American industry. XIX. Protection and wages. XX. The abolition of protection. XXI. Inadequacy of the free trade argument. XXII. The Real Weakness of Free Trade. XXIII. The Real Strength of Protection. XXIV. The Paradox. XXV. The Robber that Takes All that is Left. XXVI. True Free Trade. XXVII. The Lion in the Way. XXVIII. Free Trade and Socialism. XXIX. Practical Politics. XXX. Conclusion.
THE LAND QUESTION.
What It Involves, and How Alone It Can Be Settled.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
87 pages.
PROPERTY IN LAND.
A Passage-at-Arms Between the Duke of Argyll and Henry George.
77 pages.
FORTSCHRITT AND ARMUTH.
(Progress and Poverty in German.)
TRANSLATION OF C. D. F. GUTSCHOW.
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[Advertisement] THE LAND AND LABOR LIBRARY.
THE LAND AND LABOR LIBRARY.—We are now publishing under the title of “The Land and Labor Library” a series of short tracts on various phases of the social problem. These pamphlets contain facts, figures and arguments expressed in concise, vigorous language easily understood. As a means of propaganda we recommend them to all who desire to help on the movement for social reform. Those who wish to have these tracts placed where they will do good but who are unable personally to attend to their distribution, can remit the price to us, as we have every facility for sending them where they are needed and will be read.
The following have already appeared:
No. 1. “First Principles.” By Henry George. 4 sic.
No. 2. “Land and Taxation.” A conversation between David Dudley Field and Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 3. “The Right to the Use of the Earth.” By Herbert Spencer. 4 pages.
No. 4. “A Christian Minister on the Remedy for Poverty.” A sermon by the Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost of Newark, N. J. 2 pages.
No. 5. “A Sum in Proportion.” By T. L. McCready. 2 pages.
No. 6. “The Settler’s Nightmare.” By Louis F. Post. 4 pages.
No. 7. “New York’s Docks. The True Mode of Raising Revenue.” By. J. W. sic. 4 pages.
No. 8. “Unemployed Labor.” By Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 9. “Voices for Reform.” 2 pages.
No. 10. “A Mysterious Disappearance.” By Lewis Freeland. 6 pages.
No. 11. “How to Increase Profits.” By A. J. Steers. 2 pages.
No. 12. “The American Farmer.” By Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 13. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor and the Randall Farm.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.
No. 14. “The Collegiate Church and the Shoemaker’s Field.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.
No. 15. “Only a Dream.” By Abner C. Thomas. 4 pages.
No. 16. “The Anti-Poverty Society.” Dr. McGlynn’s address at the first meeting. 8 pages.
No. 17. “The Cross of the New Crusade.” A poem. By David Rorty. 2 pages.
No. 18. “It is the Law of Christ.” By Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages.
No. 19. “My Landlord. By John sic. 4 pages.
No. 20. “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” An address by Henry George before the Anti-Poverty Society. [8?] pages.
No. 21. “Christianity and Poverty.” An address by Father Huntington before the Anti-poverty society. 4 pages.
No. 22. “Poverty and Christianity.” An address by Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the Anti-poverty society. 8 pages.
No. 23. “The Single Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. [8?] pages.
No. 24. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 1. 4 pages.
No. 25. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 2. 4 pages.
No. 26. “Religion vs. Robbery.” Address by Rev. Dr sic before the New York Anti-poverty society June 12, 1887. 8 pages.
No. 27. “Back to the Land.” Bishop Nulty’s letter to the clergy and laity of his diocese. 16 pages. Price, 5 cents.
No. 28. “Anti-Slavery and Anti-Poverty.” An address by the Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the New York Anti-Poverty Society, June 19. 8 pages.
No. 29. “Tenement House Morality.” Rev. J. O. S. Huntington in the Forum. 4 pages.
No. 30. “The Case Plainly Stated.” A speech by H. F. Ring before the Knights of Labor at Houston, Texas. 8 pages.
No. 31. “Questions and Answers.” Questions by Rev. Howard Henderson of the Sixty-first street M. E. church of New York; with answers by Henry George. 2 pages.
No. 32. “Objections to the Land Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 4 pages.
No. 33. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 34. “Horse Sense.” W. C. Woods. 2 pages.
No. 35. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages.
No. 36. “Citycus and Rusticus.” Tudor S. Jenks. [4?] pages.
No. 37. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pp.
No. 38. “God Wills It.” Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 39. “What We Want.” Everett Glackin, president Typographical Union No. [6?]. 2 pages.
No. 40. “Protection or Free Trade.” Henry George. Price, 35 cents.
No. 41. The Syracuse Platform. (German.) 2 pages.
No. 42. “First Principles.” (German.) Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 43. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error. sic.) Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 44. “How John’s Father Saw the Light.” W. C. Woods, M. D. 2 pages.
- Platform of the United Labor sic. 2 pages.
No. 46. “Taxing Land Values.” (German.) Henry George. 8 pages.
No. 47. “It is the Law of Christ.” (German.) Rev. S. H. Spencer. 4 pages.
No. 48. “The Case Plainly Stated.” (German). H. F. Ring. 8 pages.
No. 49. “The Distribution of Wealth.” Thomas G. Shearman. 16 pages.
No. 50. “Progress and Poverty.” (German.) Henry George.
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No. 62. “Progress and Poverty.” Henry George. Price, 35 cents.
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No. 67. “A Piece of Land” By the late sic G. Shaw. 2 pages.
No. 68. “The Tax on Buildings.” William T. Croasdale. 8 pages.
No. 69. “Protection and Wages.” Henry George. 8 pages.
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No. 41. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages. No. 42. “First Principles.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 43. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 46. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pages. No. 47. “It is the Law of Christ.” Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages. No. 48. “The Case Plainly Stated.” H. F. Ring. [8?] pages. No. 50. “Progress and Poverty.” Henry George. No. 52. “The Case Plainly Stated.” (Swedish.) H. F. Ring. 8 pages. No. 53. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” Wm. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.
SWEDISH.
No. 52. “The Case Plainly Stated.” H. F. Ring. [8?] pages.
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Page 8 of 8contents
8 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1888.
p. 8, col. 1
CURRENT THOUGHT.
Edward Atkinson Again.
Mr. Atkinson is a man whom it is impossible, as a rule, to take seriously—except, of course, when he speaks about cooking stoves, as to which he must be acknowledged an expert. He has a habit of splashing about in statistics, throwing figures this way and that, adding, subtracting, drawing lines, and otherwise gamboling in quantities, that is amusing for awhile, but soon becomes tiresome. Like the small boy disporting in the shallow water near a beach, he makes a tremendous fuss, but doesn’t get anywhere. He is mildly funny, but not at all instructive; and too much of him is apt to be a bore.
But in his latest utterance Mr. Atkinson really does say something. Not a great deal, it is true, but still something. Another bather has been splashing back at him, and in his energetic return of the compliment Mr. Atkinson really does move in a definite direction. Mr. Frederick Hawley has been reviewing with unfavorable splashings that curious book, “The Distribution of Products,” and Edward Atkinson replies in an article in the July Forum entitled, “How Can Wages be Increased?” In this essay it is possible by patient study to discover certain vague and undulatory outlines of logical form—a sort of rudimentary theory, as it were. In a feeble, inconsequential sort of way Mr. Atkinson has begun to think. It is very curious. Here, to begin with, is a terse statement of an undeniable fact:
The annual product, or the product of each series of four seasons, is, and must be in the nature of things, the source of all rents, profits, interest, wages, salaries and earnings.
Then, alas! the atkinsonian mind wanders, and we are told:
The product is the result of the joint application of labor and capital.
See how the outline dims away. What does he mean? Joint application to what? And why of necessity joint application? Can labor produce nothing without the aid of capital? Can’t a child even pick blackberries without first getting some capitalist to join her in the enterprise? It is painful to see Mr. Atkinson floundering in this manner. Evidently somebody has tried to explain to him that all products are the result of the application of labor to natural opportunity, and that the efficiency of labor can be increased by the use of capital; and in this blundering way he is trying to repeat the lesson.
Then the outline wavers along after this fashion:
It therefore follows: (1) That in this product, or in its distribution or consumption, all persons take some part who are sic in gainful occupations, numbering in the census of 1880 a fraction less than one in three of the population, and listed under the respective heads of professional and personal service, trade and transportation, manufacturing, mechanical and mining pursuits and agriculture. By far the larger proportion of each of these classes is now, and must continue to be, either in the position of small farmers, who work harder than their hired men and who outnumber the hired men engaged in agriculture, of wage earners or of persons who are in receipt of small salaries; nearly all, with the exception of the farmers, are in the position of the employed rather than of the employer. The gains or savings of these working classes, which may be added to the capital of the country, amount to a large sum in the aggregate; but, with a few exceptions, they are small in each individual case. The lives of the great majority are mainly spent in getting a living.
- These “working classes,” so called, constituting by far the greatest proportion of all who are occupied for gain, now secure for their own use and consumption substantially ninety per cent of the total annual product of this country; consequently that part of the annual product which is or can be in an average year secured by capital for its service, whether the capital be owned by the rich, the well-to-do, or in part by the wage earners themselves, cannot exceed ten per cent on the average. This is the increment which can be set aside for the maintenance and increase of the capital of the nation.
- The working classes, making use of that term not in the broader but in the narrowest sense in which it is customarily applied, have been, and are still, securing for their own use and enjoyment, for consumption or savings, decade by decade, subject to temporary fluctuations in each ten years, an increasing share of a constantly increasing product or its equivalent in money.
It was the remarkable announcement made in section 2 of the above excerpt that called forth Mr. Hawley’s criticism; and in the essay we are considering Mr. Atkinson explains just what he means when he says that the working classes get ninety per cent of the total product. It is really very funny. We will try to explain it.
Here is a manufactory—a cotton mill, steel factory, or what you will—that, employing capital to the value of $1,000,000, has produced $5,000,000 worth of goods, out of which $1,000,000 was paid for raw material, $2,000,000 was paid for wages, and $2,000,000 is distributed in dividends among the stockholders. Thoughtless people would be apt to say that the workmen have received half the net product, and the employers the other half. “Lord bless you! no;[?]” says Mr. Atkinson. “The employers are only the distributors of what they get. They pay the biggest part of it away to other members of the working classes—to footmen, and waiters in cafes, and sleeping car porters—scatter it around generally. All they spend goes to labor, or to some other distributor who passes it on to laborers. What they don’t spend they save, and that amounts to about ten per cent of the total production, and is added to capital.”
A man may receive an income of $1,000,000 a year, but he costs only what he consumes. The richest man rarely consumes more than a small part of his income in what may be called unproductive consumption; what he and his family cost the country is the measure of their actual consumption in their own persons; what they spend constitutes the income or share of the annual product of those among whom it is spent. Every capitalist is a distributor as well as a consumer. There is, doubtless, much wasteful expenditure; but the question may well be asked, what class wastes the most—the rich in their luxurious personal expenditure, or the mass of the people who spend a sum variously computed at $700,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 a year on spirits, beer and tobacco? So far as any computation is possible, in my judgment, the annual product, i. e., the wage and profit fund, is impaired more seriously by the waste of the poor and ignorant, not only in drink, but in the purchase of bad food worse cooked, than by all the luxurious expenditure of the rich.
Mr. Atkinson wobbles a little in his argument; for certainly the men who drink beer are distributors of wages among the men who brew and sell beer. But let that pass. He goes on to show that this sort of thing is really the best that can be done for the working people. Because, if the “well-to-do classes” didn’t act as distributors to the footmen, and palace car porters, and all the rest of them, the footmen and porters, and other fellows, “must at once take to directly pro-
p. 8, col. 2 ductive pursuits, in order to sustain themselves, in place of working for the well-to-do classes for whom they had previously worked.”
But since the product of the actual necessities of life is now very apt to exceed the possible consumption of the year, and since it is becoming more and more difficult to find a foreign market for this excess of the actual necessities of life, might not this change in the form of distribution work more harm than good?
And that it is ethically correct, as well as economically advantageous, that the “well-to-do classes” should perform this agreeable labor of distribution, Mr. Atkinson demonstrates—to his own satisfaction:
There are many families of five persons who employ five servants, each of whom consumes some other man’s product. The capitalist working as a distributor diverts the production of five productively working people to the consumption of five persons in his own employment. By what right? There is only so much to be divided, and by so much as some have more others must have less. All consumption must come out of all production; by so much as the few who produce nothing become the consumers of the products of the many who produce everything, so do the latter sustain the former. Where is the compensation? That is the cause of discontent. Many an honest workman now sincerely contests the equity of distribution by way of capitalists. What is the true answer? There is, and can be, but one reply to this question. Labor does not produce the entire product; it only shares in the work as it shares in the product. Without capital, labor alone would be almost incapable of sustaining those who constitute the mere working classes in the narrowest sense. Capital is a force, and capitalists are those who direct this force. By the direction which the owners or the administrators of capital give to this force, which requires mental work of the most uncommon kind, the joint product of labor and capital is so much increased that, even though the capitalist secures to his own use a large part of the joint product, what is left to the workingman is more in quantity and in value than he could otherwise have attained by his own unaided efforts. In all commerce, in all manufactures, in all industries, in all work of every kind, the two forces of labor and capital must co-operate and must render mutual service to each other. This law cannot be impaired by either without disaster to both. The capitalist adds more, by his service, to the joint product than he can possibly take away or divert to consumers in any form of rent, profit or interest.
Look closely, now, and you will be able to discern the dim and wavering outlines of the atkinsonian theory. 1.—Capital and labor, by their joint application to something not stated, produce wealth. 2.—Labor, unassisted by capital, couldn’t produce enough for its own support, no matter what it applied itself to nor with what energy it made the application. 3.—There is more labor in existence than capital can join itself to just now; and were it not for the self-denying generosity of capitalists in employing the surplus labor to wait on them and minister to their comfort, a great many laborers would either have to starve or be employed by capitalists in producing food and other vulgarities. 4.—And if this latter were done the result would be general distress, because there is more food and clothing and things of that sort produced now than can be sold.
All this, the reader may perhaps object, is nonsense. We don’t dispute the criticism. All we say is that this is the Edward Atkinson theory, as shadowed forth in Edward Atkinson’s writings. You can buy the Forum for July and read it for yourself.
If there isn’t capital enough to enable labor to do the “joint application” act, why the mischief doesn’t labor go to work and make some more capital? Even Edward Atkinson doesn’t dispute that capital can only be produced by labor. All he claims is that capital must be in existence before labor can do anything worth speaking of. But if labor can’t even pick blackberries without the aid of capital in the shape of a basket; or if labor can’t till the ground without first getting hold of capital in the shape of a spade, why doesn’t labor take a day off and make a basket or a spade? When it comes to these questions the line of the Atkinson theory is very, very vague. Still, by persistent looking, it can be discerned. Labor can’t make baskets and spades by itself. It can only make them when told to do so, and assisted to do so by capital. Labor must hunt around for some philanthropic capitalist to give it a job, and then quit eating ham and live on rice (duty 113[?] per cent), and so save the money to buy the basket or the spade. There is no way of making anything save by the permission and aid of capital. There is no way of increasing capital save by going without ham, sausages and beer, and otherwise reducing the expenses of life. Capital is now increasing at the rate of ten per cent of the total production annually. And the only hope for humanity is that some time in the dim and distant future capital will be sufficiently increased to set all the laborers to work.
Such is the hazy economical theory of Edward Atkinson. It would do him good to be shipwrecked on an uninhabited island with a few other economists of his nebulous school. It would be interesting to see them sitting all in a row by the sad sea waves, waiting for a capitalist to come along and do some “joint application.” We fancy, however, that a few hours of such experience would modify Mr. Atkinson’s queer notions. An empty belly would play the deuce and all with his economics, and suggest to him that it might be possible to hunt for eggs, or pick fruit, or snare game, without waiting for ten per cent of the previous year’s production to be added to existing capital. As their ideas expanded, he and his friends would perhaps rig up some sort of an apology for a house, and twist some vegetable fiber into fishing lines. If they were cold, they would gather wood for a fire; if their clothes wore out, they would manage to make new ones out of something. As time went on they would plant crops, and contrive some sort of tools to cultivate and harvest them withal. After a year or two of such experience they would probably acknowledge that men can exist in tolerable comfort if only they can obtain access to natural opportunities. And then if, by some special providence, the owner of the island should happen along, their economic educa-tion would be completed in a hurry.
Judge Maguire on Ireland and the Pope.
I speak as an American descendant of the Irish race; as an admirer of the Irish character; as a sympathizer in the struggles and trials of the Irish people and in their hereditary aspirations for liberty.
That a man may be a good Catholic and at the same time an Irish patriot, seven centuries of so called “sedition,” in which the people were often led by their soggarths aroon, attest.
That a man may reject the tenets of the Catholic religion and yet be an equally good Irish patriot bear witness: Grattan, Emmet, Wolfe
p. 8, col. 3 > Tone, Davis, Mitchel, Parnell, and all the brave leaders and soldiers of Protestant faith who for more than a century have graced and glorified the political and military struggles for Irish liberty.
While I believe and declare that religion has and should have nothing to do with Irish politics, I have, in writing this book, a purpose which the public mind will not wholly disconnect from religion, principally because the art and finesse of religio-political Italian statesmanship have so interwoven questions of religion and politics.
That purpose is to assist in raising my father’s countrymen and my own kinsmen above that groveling fear of the pope which makes so many of them nerveless when he strikes a blow at their country and their race, and above their present discreditable confidence in men who have proved themselves “veriest slaves of treachery.”
There is no people on earth that the pope would treat as he is treating, or as he has treated, the Irish people; and this simply because there is no other people on earth—not even one of the half Indian states of South America—that would tolerate such political interference at his hands.
In such outspoken words as these sic Judge Maguire announce his purpose in tracing the policy of the Roman Catholic church toward Ireland (1) from the year 1152, when the first papal legate landed in the island, down to the present time. In a connected and well digested narrative he shows how, from first to last, the papal authorities, confident in the religious devotion of the Irish people, have made a merchantable commodity of Ireland and Irishmen, using them as a price with which to buy the obedience or the tolerance of less devoted, and even of hostile nations and rulers. From the time when Adrian issued his bull giving the country to Henry II in return for a guarantee of “Peter’s pence,” down to the issue of the famous rescript of April 20 last, Judge Maguire shows that the papacy has never hesitated, when any advantage could be gained by it, to sacrifice the dearest interests of Ireland. He shows, too, that this has not been done in ignorance. He tells the story of the remonstrances and protests of Irish priests and laymen, and of the callous disregard with which they have been received. And he points the moral that Ireland’s own trustfulness in her spiritual ruler—her own acquiescence in interferences against which other Catholic peoples have struggled resolutely and successfully—has been the cause and encouragement of the cruel treatment she has received.
Judge Maguire’s book is one that should be read by every man or woman, Catholic or Protestant, who sympathizes with the Irish people in their struggle toward freedom. It sheds a strong light on a perplexing problem.
Mr. VanBuren Denslow has written, and Cassell & Company, limited, have published, a book entitled “Principles of the Economic Philosophy of Society, Government and Industry.” It is a monument of hard work. It contains 802 pages and more than 400,000 words. At say 10,000 words a day, this would represent forty days of unremitting industry. Even if Mr. Denslow is an expert with the type writer, he can scarcely have fin-ished the job in less than thirty days. The author has reason to be proud of his sic.
As for the contents of the book, they are varied, but, as a rule, neither interesting nor instructive. Here are a few specimen excerpts:
Wealth is, therefore, a power to command the services of our fellow men. When these services are commanded by force only, as in slavery and under barbaric despotisms, force becomes the chief source of wealth. Wealth then takes on the form of slave owning, or seigniorage, or lordship, over many retainers, servants, henchmen or soldiers. In commercial periods the exercise of force is relegated to the government and its army and police. Wealth then becomes the power to command the voluntary services of men by paying for them. In the degree that a man possesses much of this power he is wealthy. Possessing little of it renders one poor. But even the poor obtain all the material comfort they enjoy through such share of wealth as is theirs. Wealth, therefore, does not consist in commodities, services, money, lands or pleasures, but in the power to control them at will by compensation.
Certain nations pass through successive periods of poverty and riches. Some are rich in one or two aspects, as in area, mines, fertility, government revenues, manufactures or the like, and lacking in others.
Since capital is the portion of wealth which is devoted first to bringing the corn into existence as corn (viz., land, plows, cultivators, money for seed, etc.), and then to enhancing its value by forwarding it to those who value it, it may be said that the function of capital is to create labor, commodities and values; as labor, commodities and values, whenever employed in certain ways, become capital. Capital is etymologically that which leads or commands or has the headship in industry, from caput, head. Economically it is exactly what it is etymologically. It would never have seemed to be anything else had not a desire grown up to define words in a way to win votes, instead of with a view to scientific precision. As capital has no vote, while those whose labor it creates have, it was deemed courteous to call attention only to the fact that labor creates capital, without calling counter attention to its complement, that capital creates labor. The circle is the same as in the case of the egg and the living animal. “All life from the egg” is no truer than “every egg from life.” Omnium vivum ex ovo finds its complement in omnium ovum ex vivo. So of capital and labor, each hatches the other.
It is by no means clear that laying the taxes on land either increases their value to tenants, or increases the returns from the general avenues for the investment of capital.
Rents are very much lower in England, where land is untaxed, than on like values of property in France and America, where it is taxed. But there are too many factors, more potent than this, to justify attributing it to this chiefly.
Here [in the United States] mechanics and operatives receive so ample a compensation for their services that, for fifteen years, the chief motive in forming labor organizations has been, not to secure themselves against want, but to perfect some scheme by which they can either rule their employers’ business or dispense with employers entirely.
Labor obtains employment only on condition that the employer, or enterpriser, can sell the product of the labor at a profit, after paying wages and the interest on his capital. An enterpriser or employer is generally a man or corporation who borrows his capital. In this country it is so unusually true that the enter-prisers keep the workers busy, that workingmen fall into the habit of thinking that work comes by some inevitable necessity, like sunrise or the tides. Many workingmen imagine that it is the great corporations and employing capitalists who cause their wages to be as small as they are, rather than that it is to these that they owe the fact that they can earn any wages at all.
Mr. Denslow is a protectionist—probably because he doesn’t know any better. The Press calls him “a profound student of eco-
[footnote at foot of column 3:]
- Ireland and the Pope. A brief history of papal intrigues against Irish liberty, from Adrian IV to Leo XIII. By James G. Maguire, judge of the superior court of San Francisco, California. San Francisco: James H. Barry, 429 Montgomery street. Price, fifty cents.
p. 8, col. 4 nomics”—as to which remark we think it altogether likely that the Press does know better. His book is one of those mysterious dispensations, like mosquitos and malaria, that baffle human comprehension. We must acknowledge its existence, but lookin sic for any reason of its being.
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner is contributing to Harper’s Magazine a series of “Studies of the Great West,” being a record of the writer’s travels through the western states. Interesting as mere records of personal experiences and observations these papers certainly are; but it is difficult to see in what sense they can be called studies. They give us an excellent idea of material conditions. We read about the growing cities, the magnificent public buildings and private residences, the increasing population, the manufactories, the railways, the statistics of wealth. But of any effort to study these facts, to investigate causes, to discover ten-dencies, there is very little trace. The historian of the next century will turn from Mr. Warner’s pages with a feeling of disappointment that one who enjoyed such opportunity to study actual men and things and not the mere record of them should have so neglected his privileges.
Here, for example, is what Mr. Warner tells us in the July Harper about natural gas:
It is evident that the discovery of natural gas has begun a revolution in fuel which will have permanent and far reaching economic and social consequences, whether the supply of gas is limited or inexhaustible.
Those who have once used fuel in this form are not likely to return to the crude and wasteful heating by coal. All the cities and large towns west of the Alleghenies are made disagreeable by bituminous coal smoke. The extent of this annoyance and its detraction from the pleasure of daily living cannot be exaggerated. The atmosphere is more or less vitiated, and the sky obscured, houses, furniture, clothing are dirty, and clean linen and clean hands and faces are not expected. All this is changed where gas is used for fuel. The city becomes cheerful, and the people can see each other: But this is not all. One of the great burdens of our northern life, fire building and replenishing, disappears, housekeeping is simplified, the expense of servants reduced, cleanliness restored. Add to this that in the gas regions the cost of fuel is merely nominal, and in towns distant some thirty or forty miles it is not half that of coal. It is easy to see that this revolution in fuel will make as great a change in social life as in manufacturing, and that all the change may not be agreeable. This natural gas is a very subtle fluid, somewhat difficult to control, though I have no doubt that invention will make it as safe in our houses as illuminating gas is. So far as I have seen its use, the heat from it is intense and withering. In a closed stove it is intolerable; in an open grate, with a simulated pile of hard coal or logs, it is better, but much less agreeable than soft coal or wood. It does not, as at present used, promote a good air in the room, and its intense dryness ruins the furniture. But its cheapness, convenience and neatness will no doubt prevail, and we are entering upon a gas age, in which, for the sake of progress, we shall doubtless surrender something that will cause us to look back to the more primitive time with regret. If the gas wells fail, artificial gas for fuel will doubt-less be manufactured.
I went up to the gas fields of northern Ohio in company with Professor Edward Orton, the state geologist, who has made a study of the subject, and pretty well defined the fields of Indiana and Ohio. The gas is found at a depth of between 1,100 and 1,200 feet, after passing through a great body of shale and encountering salt water, in a porous Trenton limestone. The drilling and tubing enter this limestone, several feet to a good holding. This porous limestone holds the gas like a sponge, and it rushes forth with tremendous force when released. It is now well settled that these are reservoirs of gas that are tapped, and not sources of perpetual supply by constant manufacture. How large the supply may be in any case cannot be told, but there is a limit to it. It can be exhausted, like a vein of coal. But the fields are so large, both in Indiana and Ohio, that it seems probable that by sinking new wells the supply will be continued for a long time. The evidence that it is not inexhaustible in any one well is that in all in which the flow of gas has been tested at intervals, the force of pressure is found to diminish. For months after the discovery the wells were allowed to run to waste, and billions of feet of gas were lost. A better economy now prevails, and this wastefulness is stopped. The wells are all under control, and large groups of them are connected by common service pipes. The region about Fostoria is organized under the Northwestern gas company, and controls a large territory. It supplies the city of Toledo, which uses no other fuel, through pipes 30 miles long, Fremont, and other towns. The loss per mile in transit through the pipes is now known, so that the distance can be calculated at which it will pay to send it. I believe that this is about fifty to sixty miles. The gas when it comes from the well is about the temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and the common pressure is 400 pounds to the square inch. The velocity with which it rushes, unchecked, from the pipe at the mouth of the well may be said to be about that of a minie ball from an ordinary rifle. The Ohio area of gas is between 2,000 and 3,000 square miles. The claim for the Indiana area is that it is 20,000 square miles, but the geologists make it much less.
The speculation in real estate caused by this discovery has been perhaps without parallel in the history of the state, and, as is usual in such cases, it is now in a lull, waiting for the promised developments. But these have been almost as marvelous as the speculation. Findlay was a sleepy little village in the black swamp district, one of the most backward regions of Ohio. For many years there had been surface indications of gas, and there is now a house standing in the city which used gas for fuel forty years ago. When the first gas well was opened, ten years ago, the village had about 4,500 inhabitants. It has now probably 15,000, it is a city, and its limits have been extended to cover an area six miles long by four miles wide. This is dotted over with hastily built houses, and is rapidly being occupied by manufacturing es sic. The city owns all the gas wells, and supplies fuel to factories and private houses at the simple cost of maintaining the service pipes. So rapid has been the growth and the demand for gas that there has not been time to put all the pipes underground, and they are encountered on the surface all over the region. The town is pervaded by the odor of the gas, which is like that of petroleum, and the traveler is notified of his nearness to the town by the smell before he can see the houses. The surface pipes, hastily laid, occasionally leak, and at these weak places the gas is generally ignited in order to prevent its tainting the atmosphere. This immediate neighborhood has an oil field contiguous to the gas, plenty of limestone (the kilns are burned by gas), good building stone, clay fit for making bricks and tiles, and superior hard wood forests. The cheap fuel has already attracted here manufacturing industries of all sorts, and new plants are continually made. I have a list of over thirty different mills and factories which are either in full operation or getting under way. Among the most interesting of these are the works for making window glass and table glass. The superiority of this fuel for the glass furnaces seems to be admitted.
. . . . . . .
The feverishness of speculation will abate; many anticipations will not be realized. It will be discovered that there is a limit to manufacturing, even with fuel that costs next to nothing. The supply of natural gas no doubt has its defined limits. But nothing seems more certain to me than that gas, manufactured if not natural, is to be the fuel of
p. 8, col. 5 > the future in the west, and that the importance of this economic change in social life is greater than we can at present calculate.
This is all very interesting; but there is nothing in it to show that the author is in any sense making a study of the matter. He speaks of “far reaching social and economic consequences,” of changes to be effected in social life, of “speculation in real estate without parallel in the history of the state;” but that is all. Has natural gas done anything for the people of the region which contains it? Are wages any higher, is work any easier to get, has the standard of comfort risen among laborers? Or have the chief effects been to stimulate land values, and encourage manufacturing establishments to remove from other places to where the new fuel was easily accessible? These are questions which Mr. Warner does not even ask, much less answer. Yet they are the first that would present themselves to any one really anxious to make a “study” of the great west, and not aiming merely to produce an entertaining guide book to its features and attractions.
Books Received.
The Russian Peasantry; their Agrarian Condition, Social Life and Religion. By Stepniak. New York: Harper & Brothers.
An Irish Knight of the sic Century; Sketches of the Life of Robert Emmet. By Varina Anne Davis. New York: John W. Lovell Company.
Mexico, Our Neighbor. By Hon. John H. Rice. New York: John W. Lovell Company.
Un Socialiste chez Bismarck. Par Auguste Foubert. Paris: Librairie Socialiste Internationale.
AN IDEAL ISLAND.
Where There Are No Rich and No Poor—There is No Protective Tariff Either, and Strange to Say, There is No Deluge of Foreign Goods.
Boston Globe.
In the southern Pacific is a little island, with a few surrounding islets, which, if all accounts be true, comes as near to More’s “Utopia” or Bacon’s “New Atlantis’‘ as any place on earth. Norfolk island comprises about 8,600 acres of land in all, which are mainly divided up into farms of fifty acres each, and every newly married couple gets one of these farms as a wedding dowry. According to the report of our consul, the government of the island by powers granted by her majesty is home rule, pure and simple, and is vested in three officials—a chief magistrate being responsible, and the medium of communication with the higher officials. The three magistrates act under commissions bearing the great seal of the colony, issued by the governor of New South Wales, who himself holds a separate authority as governor of Norfolk island. The governor has, in fact, unlimited power, but holds a very mild sway, allowing the islanders to do very much as they like, so long as they do not go too far. The laws are few and primitive, and could be printed on two sheets of foolscap; nevertheless they answer the purpose well, there being no crime to speak of, nor any lockup or need of one. There is no revenue, except a few waifs and strays in the shape of small fines, etc., which seldom amount to much, but is responsible for the signal master’s salary of £1.10 ($7.50) per annum, besides a court sweeper at £1 ($5). The chief magistrate’s salary is £25, but up to last year it was only £12; this, with the emoluments paid to the colonial surgeon, chaplain, registrar and postmaster is paid out of the interest of a fund in Sydney which has been accumulating for some years.
The imports include clothing, groceries, agricultural implements and timber for building purposes; the exports, oil, wool, horses, sweet and Irish potatoes, onions, bananas, and sometimes sheep. The oil and wool go either to Auckland or Sydney, the latter port taking besides sweet potatoes and bananas. The importation of liquor, except for medical purposes, is absolutely prohibited; the law is strict and the people care little for liquor; there are no duties, and consequently no custom house or any other record kept, but the imports and exports together in a favorable year would probably amount to £6,000.
The island has a population of 741, none of whom are very poor and none very rich.
Here is a British colony enjoying the freedom of self-government, and having in fact all the privileges of a republic. Compared with Ireland, the condition of the people on Norfolk island is far better. Yet Ireland is full of intelligent men and women, who in any other place would make their mark in the world, while Norfolk island is largely populated with South sea savages. Why does England make this discrimination against the superior race?
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TO THE SINGLE TAX MEN OF WEST VIRGINIA: Will the single tax men in West sic[?] please send their addresses to me at this point. Send the names of all the George men you know of in your neighborhood and be particular to give post office address. A state organization is proposed and any suggestions or information will be carefully considered. W. I. BOREMAN, Parkersburg, Wood county, West Virginia.
KANSAS STATE LECTURER.—THE undersigned state lecturer and member of the state central committee is now ready to respond to calls for work anywhere in the state of Kansas. Address Rev. W. M. GOODNER, box 355[?], Larned, Kan.
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p. 8, col. 6
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[Illustration: engraved advertisement in an ornamental border; at upper right a round seal with a keystone at its center, lettered “KEYSTONE WATCH CLUB CO.” and “NEW YORK PHILADA.”, encircled by “PHILA. OFFICE 904 WALNUT STREET”; the side borders carry small rotated lettering (city names), mostly illegible in the scan]
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[Illustration: engraved upright piano in a frame with foliage; a banner reading “SEND FOR CATALOGUE”; display lettering as follows]
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SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
342 pages.
CONTENTS: