February 25, 1891 Vol. IX, No. 8Whole No. 217

THE STANDARD

PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY, BY WM. T. CROASDALE, AT NO. 42 UNIVERSITY PLACE.

VOL. IX. | NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1891. | NO. 8.

p. 1, col. 1 SHALL A NEW ISSUE BE RAISED?—Without attempting to discuss the question of free silver coinage on its merits, we^sic clearly indicated in the last issue of THE STANDARD our opinion that it would be unfortunate to make that question a party issue until the tariff question is disposed of, and we declared our conviction that, when the leaders of the Democratic party carefully study the situation, they will see the folly of any attempt to substitute for the tariff issue any other that will divide their party and subject it to serious danger of overwhelming defeat. We anticipated much hot-headed protest and angry remonstrance from those who have committed themselves to the free coinage proposal, but we, at the same time, declared our conviction that the sober second thought of the people would result in the refusal by the Democratic party to make the dangerous attempt of subordinating the issue on which it won its phenomenal victory of last Fall to any other. Since that article was written we are glad to see that the Democratic Governor of Massachusetts and all but one of the Democratic members of the Wisconsin Legislature have boldly taken their stand against this attempt to practically abandon the tariff issue and commit their party to the new issue of free coinage.

This support of Mr. Cleveland’s attitude was, however, to^sic be expected; but the comments of the Democratic advocates of free coinage in the Southwest are of greater interest and importance. One of the most important of these advocates is the St. Louis Republic, which has been at once a stanch supporter of free silve^sic and an advocate of the renomination of Mr. Cleveland as the Democratic candidate for President. The Republic does not disguise its regret that Mr. Cleveland has not changed his mind, and^sic it still adheres to its queer notion that he may even yet be induced to run as a candidate on a platform one important plank of which he repudiates. It nevertheless declares that the Democratic party has never declared its opinion on this question, and it merely expresses a hope that if the next Democratic National Convention shall declare for free coinage that Mr. Cleveland will submit to its decision and accept its nomination. It thus confesses that the free coinage notion is not yet a part of the Democratic creed, and it insists that the tariff question is and will remain the paramount issue in our politics “until all the questions involved in it are rightly solved.” In a later issue the Republic declares its belief that Mr. Cleveland “is honestly and courageously wrong” on the silver question, but^sic it adds:

As the Democratic party, in its platforms, has not yet spoken for free coinage, he is not yet bound, as a Democrat, to hold for free coinage, and he must not be “read out” of the party for expressing a private opinion. He must come to his party on this question, and that he may have the opportunity, he must have his party support where he is right—as he is on its paramount issue of the reform of the tariff.

Of course there is nothing in the Republic’s idea that Mr. Cleveland would be bound to accept a doctrine he disbelieves in if it were adopted by the Democratic National Convention. With the Democratic platform as it stands to-day Mr. Cleveland is, as the Republic^sic says, in entire accord. If the Democratic party wants to make a new issue, then it must get a candidate representing that issue. The important thing, however, about all this is that one of the strongest and ablest Democratic newspapers committed to free coinage evidently

p. 1, col. 2 does not believe that Mr. Cleveland’s letter has made him unavailable as a candidate. If it does not think so now it never will think so.

A clearer, and^sic in some respects a still more significant utterance, comes^sic from another great Democratic paper in the Southwest, the Memphis Appeal-Avalanche. This paper treats the question with a courage and candor too rare in political journals. It asks the question : What is the Democratic position on the question of the free coinage of silver, and frankly^sic admits that Democrats in Congress have voted for free coinage, and several Democratic State Conventions—that of Tennessee among them—have declared for it. Nevertheless, it reminds its readers that no Democratic National Convention has made any such declaration, and that Grover Cleveland, whose views on the silver question were then well known, was renominated for President on a tariff reform platform that was silent on the silver question. It therefore declares that “as a Democrat,” Mr. Cleveland “has still the privilege of free speech on the coinage question, and he cannot be read out of the party, because the views he declares in 1891 are identical with those he held in 1884.” As to the timeliness of Mr. Cleveland’s letter to the Reform Club meeting, it says :

Mr. Cleveland was called on for an opinion. The request was pertinent. He is not a man of equivocations. He wears his principles on his sleeve. He seeks to secure no honors by deluding the people. He is willing to stand or fall by what he believes to be right and Democratic. As he never betrayed a trust, he never sought a trust by veiling his beliefs. He is the great, true Cube^sic among the politicians and statesmen of his day.

The Appeal then proceeds to discuss the question as to how far Mr. Cleveland’s plainly expressed opinions agree with those of Democrats throughout the country. It refers to the fact that Senator Lamar boldly defied the instructions of the Mississippi Legislature as to his vote in one phase of the silver question, and yet^sic, in a straight contest before the people, won a renomination for the Senatorship. This it apparently accepts as an indication that the free coinage sentiment had not at that time any substantial hold on the Democrats of Mississippi, despite^sic the fact that its supposed hold upon them had caused their representatives in the Legislature to undertake to coerce Mr. Lamar into voting against his known convictions. The Appeal says it has made inquiries on this subject among the Democratic business men of Memphis, and has found that the majority of them do not regard free coinage as a party question, and that they acknowledge that they have not given the subject any really serious consideration. It says :

We cite this to show that, so far as the Democratic party is concerned, the question is open for debate, and that Mr. Cleveland has done the party no wrong and himself no injury by his honest and candid declaration of opinion upon an economic proposition about which many leading Democrats differ, and to which hundreds of thousands have given no study whatever—a proposition which has not had its origin with the people, but has been submitted by the mine owners of the silver-bearing States. What the next Democratic National Convention may do is another matter. If it shall prepare a platform upon which Mr. Cleveland cannot stand, he will merely bow to the will of his party and retire. But until the Convention shall speak no man can gainsay the propriety of frank utterances among Democrats. Meantime the whole world applauds.the^sic fearless honesty of Grover Cleveland.

Of course rabid utterances by the smaller and less important Democratic papers of the Southwest can easily be found, and they are eagerly sought by papers like the New York Sun, which hate Mr. Cleveland, because he represents convictions and high purpose instead of intrigue and spoils in politics ; but the continued on p. 2 →

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THE ARCHBISHOP’S “ALBERTUS.”

—According to the meagre reports printed in the daily papers the recent conference of the Catholic clergy to consider, among other things, the hypothetical case of Albertus, resulted in nothing very startling, though hints are thrown out by some of the papers that the real sensation is yet to come. On the other hand, the Tribune represents Rev. Dr. McDonnell, the Archbishop’s private secretary, as declaring that there is no truth in the report that the Archbishop expects to issue a circular to the clergy and laity on the subject. Dr. McDonnell is represented as saying that the doctrine that private property in land is unjust is contrary to the view of the church, but that the conference was not expected to reach any decision on the subject, but was merely called to discuss a matter upon which the decision of the Archbishop was promulgated long ago.

The Sun’s report of the proceedings is apparently the most complete. According to it, Father Russo, the moderator of the conference, in his opening speech, specifically denied that the case of Albertus was a supposititious one, constructed to fit Dr. McGlynn’s Anti-Poverty Society, and he strongly indicated that the sending to the newspapers of the circular to the clergy was an act of bad faith of which some priest, then sitting in the conference, was guilty. If this was designed to call forth a confession or a defiance it failed of its object, for no one responded. One of the papers read was by Father McGovern, of Manhattanville, who, according to the Sun’s report, agreed with Dean O’Flynn in declaring that “for ages the church and the world have recognized the right of individuals to property in land. Although the doctrine which denies such right has never been explicitly denounced, the church has implicitly condemned it by her action. She has accumulated property in land. For these reasons the first confessor was right in condemning the action of Albertus.” This seems rather far fetched, and the Sun does not make it quite clear whether it is quoting Father McGovern or Father O’Flynn.

According to the same report Rev. Joseph F. Sheahan, an assistant at St. Agnes’ Church in East

p. 2, col. 2 Forty-third street, asked if attendance at meetings of the Single Tax Club was to be considered as a “reserved case.” A “reserved case” is that of a penitent who has confessed a fault the power to grant absolution for which has been taken from the priests and reserved for the action of the bishop. The moderator is represented as answering that such would not be the case, “because the reservation was against the scandal arising from attendance at the meetings Albertus went to, rather than the doctrine.” If this was an authoritative answer THE STANDARD has no peculiar interest in the proceedings of the conference. With questions of church discipline and government, as such, we have no concern. Neither does it matter to us if a majority of the Catholic clergy of this diocese choose to declare their agreement with their Archbishop on a question of economics. Probably a majority of the Protestant clergy likewise agree with the Archbishop in this matter. It is less remarkable in their case than in that of Irish priests, who must know that many of the most learned bishops and priests of their native land unhesitatingly condemn private property in land. It is natural, however, that priests should try to agtee^sic with their ecclesiastical head, and we presume that the papers are right in saying that all who expressed an opinion publicly united in condemning Albertus.

This, however, is a vastly different thing from an attempt to use the machinery of the church for coercing men, whether priests or laymen, into abandoning an economic opinion which is, or may become, an issue in our politics. That is something that the American people will not stand, and any persistent attempt in that direction will be sure to get those responsible for it into difficulties. We sincerely hope that the daily papers were mistaken in attributing any such intention to Archbishop Corrigan, and that the assurances of his secretary, as reported by the Tribune, may prove to be accurate and authoritative.

CONGRESS.

—The term of life of one of the worst Congresses that ever sat in this country will expire at noon one week from to-day., There remain to it but five and a half working days, and the necessity for getting through the appropriation bills is likely to keep the House of Representatives out of mischief. The expectation seems now to be that it will dispose of all these bills before adjournment, and thus avoid an extra session. If there be any possibility of hurrying the bills through, the pending measure, which Captain Codman has aptly described as a bill for the benefit of beggars and thieves, will be brought up. The majority of the Democrats will do all they can to prevent the passage of the bill, even to absenting themselves to prevent a quorum. We are sorry to say that it is merely a majority that will enter on this course. All should be carefully watched, and any man who assists in this monstrous steal should never again be nominated by any Democratic convention. It is simply a part and parcel of the general scheme of wasting money and giving it away in order to justify the continuance of high tariff taxation.

The mere fact that this Congress has been able to sit and legislate since the Republican party was so ignominiously repudiated by the people ought to produce an impression on the minds of the American people that it does not seem thus far to have produced. At the next session of Congress one of the first measures introduced should be a constitutional amendment providing that the House of Representatives elected in 1892 shall meet for business in December of that year, or in January 1893, and preventing the Congress elected last Fall from sitting after the election of 1892. It is difficult to account for the indifference of the American people to continued on p. 3 →

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SOME FIGURES THAT WILL NOT DO.

—Senator Stewart, of Nevada, is represented as saying: ” If the East will not give us justice, and the South stands by us, we will allow the South to make our Tariff laws for us.” ” Us,” in Senator Stewart’s sentence stands for the silver mining States, or rather for the owners of silver mines, who control those States. If the Democrats will declare for free coinage and nominate a free coinage candidate for President they are promised by those for whom Senator Stewart speaks the electoral votes of California, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Montana and Idaho, with a chance of carrying both Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana. Are the Democrats with whom Senator Stewart is trying to make a deal so gullible as to accept these figures? There are no States in the Union that seem more solidly Republican than California, Oregon and Washington. They are all represented by Republican Senators, closely associated with the corporations and great financial interests that dominate all three of those States. Nothing that has recently occurred in any one of them will warrant Senator Stewart in counting them as safe for the Democratic party on the silver question or any other issue.

These three States have together seventeen electoral votes. In the table published in last week’s STANDARD we assigned these votes to the Republicans on both the Silver and Tariff issues. The other thirteen electoral votes claimed by Senator Stewart as certain for the Democrats on the Silver issue were conceded to them in that table. In the same table we conceded to them, on the Silver issue, the twenty-five electoral votes of the two Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska, which Senator Stewart does not attempt to claim. We did, however, assign Indiana to the Republicans on that issue, and we believe it belongs there. Take it out of the Republican column, however, and assign it to the Democrats on the Silver issue and the vote would then stand: Republicans 229, Democrats 215, a Republican majorty^sic of 14. This is counting for the Democrats on that issue the twenty-five votes that Senator Stewart classes as doubtful and denying to them the seventeen votes that he claims, without a shadow of authority based on any recent vote in California, Oregon or Washington. He would be a desperate gambler, indeed, who would take such a chance as this, if he had any alternative. Senator Stewart’s figures will not incline any sane Democratic politician to chase his rainbow, even if he promises a pot of gold instead of silver.

By the way, the figures given in THE STANDARD last week were based on the assumption that the Democrats shall make so complete a surrender that there will be no important third party in the field. The New York Times,

p. 3, col. 2 which published our figures in its editorial columns, and declared that if they erred, it was because they understated rather than overstated the case, failed to note this. If the Democrats refuse to change the issue, their chances will be even better than we represented them, because there will certainly be a third party if both of the old parties refuse to commit themselves to free coinage, and that party will^sic carry Kansas, Nebraska and some of the other States that we assigned to the Republicans on the tariff issue, with no third party in the field. There is hardly any conceivable combination that can beat the Democrats on the tariff issue, while there is no rational estimate that will warrant them in entertaining the slightest hope of winning on the silver issue. The men who are trying to force this new issue on the Democratic party are the worst enemies the party has had in its whole checkered, and often stupid, career.

THE PARTY OF THE FUTURE.

—Mr. G. E. Baldwin, of Leavenworth, sends us the platform printed at the head of the editorial page of the Daily Times of that city, one of the leading Republican papers of Kansas, and says that, though it does not fully endorse our principles, it comes far enough our way to cause us to feel encouraged. He asks, ” Is it not possible that the Republican party,will regenerate itself by embracing the Single Tax cause?” The platform on which this query is based favors free silver coinage, Blaine for president, the Australian ballot, woman suffrage, ” the issuing of millions of greenbacks monthly until there is currency enough to accomodate^sic the business interests of the country,” government supervision of railroads and telegraphs, a free ballot and fair count “in the South the same as in the North,” legislation to suppress trusts and limit the power of monoplies^sic, restricting the ownership of American lands to American citizens, the substitution of treasury notes for national bank currency, the one term policy for all executive officials from President down, reducing official salaries 50 per cent., limiting the earning power of money to 4 per cent., making public officers elective by direct vote, reduction of tariff on necessities to the rate under the old law, public investments in real estate securities, exclusive of improvement, at a low rate of interest, stringent laws against bribery, statutory reduction of the profits of railroad and telegraph companies to a maximum of 6 per cent. on cash value, and various other things, some of them local, ” too numerous to mention,” as the old Vendue bills used to say. The two planks to which Mr. Baldwin calls special attention are as follows:

We favor the exemption of all manufactories, mechanical farming and other industries,from^sic taxation.

We favor levying taxes upon the land by the foot and acre, according to its value, and exempting the improvements thereon. If any other tax is needed make it upon incomes.

The utter inconsistency between these two planks and that which clearly favors a continuance of the protective tariff taxes that preceded the McKinley bill is manifest. The demand for legislation against trusts and monopolies is likewise inconsistent with the editor’s tariff views. Furthermore, the platform, as a whole, is antagonistic to the openly declared creed of the Republican party, and we therefore fail to see how it indicates a possibility that that party would ever embrace the cause of Single Tax and Free Trade.

The editor of the Daily Times is Mr. D. R. Anthony, an old war-horse politician, who will probably never free his mind from the passions and prejudices of the war. But these passions and prejudices are evidently all that now hold him in any kind of relations with the Republican party of the United States. He evidently is more nearly in accord with the local party in Kansas continued on p. 4 → [page ends mid-sentence; continuation not indicated]

THE TORRENS SYSTEM.

—Governor Russell recently sent to the Massachusetts Legislature a message favoring the adoption by that Commonwealth of the Australian or Torrens system of registering titles to land, instead of merely registering the deed. In Australia, where the system originated, it is commonly called the Torrens system, from the name of its originator, but elsewhere it is usually called the Australian system. Under it the State provides for a public registration of titles. Any person claiming to own a piece of land can submit his deed and other evidence p. 4, col. 2 of title to a judicial officer called the “Registrar of Titles.” Public notice of the application is given so that any persons having opposing claims may have opportunity to appear. When adverse claims are made action is suspended until the contest is settled by the proper court. When the title is once established it is registered, and is thenceforth beyond legal question, and it can only be transferred upon the registry books. The great recommendation of the system, in the eyes of its advocates, is its cheapness and compactness, and the certainty of the title. Its use is optional and not compulsory, but its greater convenience leads to its general adoption whenever opportunity is given.

Readers of THE STANDARD will remember that Mr. George commended the Torrens system in one of his letters from Australia. Under existing circumstances it permits the use of land for building and other purposes, by making transfers easier and titles certain, and it has the additional advantage of giving an indisputable survey and registry of all lands for the purposes of taxation. This fact may cause such landholders as Trinity Church, who conceal the extent of their holdings, to refuse to take advantage of the law, but the superior salability of land with a registered and legally indefeasible title, will cause the registry of all other land, and eventually this will give the public opportunity for a close estimate of the buildings of those who refuse to register. If the system had been in vogue in this city for ten years, there would be very little difficulty in arriving at a pretty fair judgment as to the total proceeds of a tax on land values.

A PROTECTED TYRANT.

—At Reynolds Bridge, near Waterbury, Conn., there is an establishment known as the American Knife Factory. This factory is one of those that the McKinley bill was intended to aid, and its proprietors evidently intend that any aid thus extended shall be enjoyed by themselves exclusively. The Waterbury Sunday Herald says that for some time past the men have been working at a discount of 20 per cent., but they have been promised that the deduction should cease when the state of trade warranted it. The McKinley bill imposes a 100 per cent. duty on pocket cutlery, and it has had the effect of forcing many Americans to buy at a higher price home-made cutlery in place of that previously imported. This, it is understood, is intended for the benefit of American labor.

The workmen of the American Knife Company so understood the matter and modestly asked that the cut in their wages should be reduced from 20 to 10 per cent. This seems very modest. since^sic the tariff “for the benefit of American labor” had already gone into effect. The president of the company, Dr. Ferguson, refused to grant the demand, and declared to the reporter of the local paper that the men were unreasonable since, before the passage of the Tariff bill, they had only been working six hours a day for five days in the week, and they now have work for ten hours. six days^sic in the week at the reduced wages. This enables them to make more money than they were making before the passage of the bill, and the fact that they can earn more and produce more cutlery for the company to sell does not seem to be taken into account. Dr. Ferguson, told^sic the men that he would not pay any increased wages, and said that there was one man amongst them who should never have employment in the shop again, under any circumstances. The men thereupon ceased work and he gave notice that all of them who lived in the company’s houses must vacate them at once. He also evicted the father of one of the strikers, though the old man had no connection with the strike.

The one man whom Dr. Ferguson declared should continued on p. 5 →

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THE CANADA CONTEST.

—The Toronto Evening News makes an extract from an article that recently appeared in THE STANDARD entitled, “The Canadian Liberal’s Dilemma.” In the course of an article it compliments THE STANDARD as among the fairest of the papers published in New York, and it expresses its full agreement with our declaration that “it is an essential part of any scheme of commercial union that permits Free Trade between Canada and the United States, that the tariffs maintained by the two contracting Governments against the rest of the world shall be equal and uniform.” The editor apparently concludes from this that it would be better policy to defeat the Reform party in the coming contest.

The Evening Telegram, though it alludes to the fact that THE STANDARD is “out and out in favor of Free Trade,” does not reprint that portion of our article in which the suggestion was made to the Reformers that if they had been true to Free Trade principles it would have been impossible for Sir John Macdonald to put them in such a position. We assume from this that, though our Canadian contemporary has been stirred up by Father Huntington’s recent address to view with much favor the proposal to establish the Single Tax in municipalities, that it does not yet accept Free Trade as the proper policy for the Dominion at large. We hope the editor will, in course of time, come to see that all taxes on the products of industry are bad, whether levied by a general or a local government.

A valued correspondent at Toronto, in a letter to the editor published elsewhere, without undertaking to deny what THE STANDARD says, declares that, nevertheless, he shall support the Reform party in this contest, because that party opposes the men who established high protection in Canada. We think that our correspondent is entirely right. The Reform party, despite its lack of courage and its heterogeneous composition, contains within its ranks the men to whom Canada must look for the overthrow of the Chinese policy of protection that the present Government has forced upon it. Once in power, it will encounter, doubtless, grave difficulties, owing to the tariff policy in this country, and this, in turn, may educate it into accepting the only way out, and that is the advocacy of Free Trade, without regard to the persistence of Americans in their present protective folly.

TO ENGLISH SINGLE TAXERS.

—What are you doing? Read the article that we reprint elsewhere from the London Weekly Bulletin of January 24. The paper has every appearance of prosperity, and is certainly ably written. It evidently sees clearly the evil of what Mr. Mills^sic called “The Unearned Increment,” and it sharply rebukes Mr. Chamberlain for his false and foolish misstatement concerning the cause of the rise in rents. It gives facts and figures illustrating the injustice of the existing system, and it suggests an awkward

p. 5, col. 2 and cumbersome method of accomplishing the partial righting of the most glaring wrongs, but the writer does not seem to have even heard of the simple and effective remedy known as the Single Tax. That would be general in operation. It would free improvements from the burdens now laid upon them. It would give to the community the increasing land values due to its growth, and relieve both labor and capital from all taxes save those they would pay to the State in place of the ground rents that they now pay to landlords. Our English friends should seize every such utterance as that in the Weekly Bulletin as an opportunity for pointing out the true remedy.

We fear, from all that we see and hear, that the unfortunate phrase, “land nationalization,” has stood in the way of practical progress in that country. It at once raises the question as to what kind of landlord the State would become, and time and effort are wasted in arguing about the performance of functions that there is no reason whatever for the State assuming. This was the condition in Australia before Mr. George’s visit. There was a large body of people perfectly agreed with one another as to the wrong to be righted, but not united on any explicit plan as a remedy for the evils they denounced. There they were divided on the tariff question, also. Smaller but more compact Single Tax organizations were then formed, and ever since definite progress has been made toward specific results. In England there would be no division on the tariff question, and it ought to be easy to organize a Single Tax movement for definite work in behalf of the incorporation of the true system into English law, and proclaiming its method as well as its purpose by its very name. If this had been done long ago, London papers that clearly see the iniquity of existing wrongs would not be groping about for the true remedy. Single Tax is not so poetical as land nationalization, but it is far more explicit, and there is no danger that it will be misunderstood by friend or foe.

DOING GREAT WORK.

—The Rockville, Ind., Tribune, calls itself “a pioneer Free Trade paper” and it is entitled to do so. It not only advocates Free Trade but it supports the Single Tax theory with intelligence and persistency. In an editorial on taxing railroads it calls the attention of the people to the fact that, under existing circumstances, any tax thus levied will certainly be collected from the people, in the way of increased charges, and it declares that the Single Tax is the true system of taxation.

Referring to the objection urged against the Single Tax by many farmers, it reminds them that “it has been only two short years since the majority of the farmers in the United States believed that a protective tariff benefited them more than all others.” The quiet assumption that the majority of farmers no longer think so is doubtless justified by the Tribune’s knowledge of the change of opinion that has taken place amongst voters in the agricultural districts. The Tribune also quotes THE STANDARD’S comments on the decision by the Supreme Court of Illinois, that coal under the surface is liable to assessment for taxation, and it says:

It might be added that if the surface of the United States were taxed according to the rental value put on it by population, the great cities which now get two-thirds of the wealth would be compelled to pay in proportion to their benefits, and the farmers who use land would be taxed lightest of all.

It is such papers as the Tribune, having a local circulation and reaching a large body of people holding varying views on taxation that are sure, in the long run, to make many converts, and we are glad to see that the Tribune is one of the numerous papers printing the matter weekly prepared for their use by the Single continued on p. 6 →

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CHEATING NEW YORK.

—The House Committee on the Census, at Washington, has adopted a report, prepared by Representative Sherman, of this State, refusing the recount asked for by the municipal authorities of New York City, and declaring that the city has failed to make out a case. Of course no one expected that the Census Committee of the present House would do justice to New York, but it adds insult to injury when we are told that a rural Congressman, representing the Lewis and Oneida Counties in this State, should have been made the instrument for doing this wrong to the city, and for cutting down the representation of this State in the Electoral College. New York City has no enemies more bitter, malignant and hopeless than the Republicans resident in it and their fellow-Republicans in the rural districts of this State. Nearly every Republican in this city is an actual enemy to the municipality. They oppose local self-government, and eagerly attempt to put upon our necks the yoke of the narrow partisans of the rural districts. This does not mean that the rural Democrats are disposed to be just to New York, but it shows the utter futility of attempting to combine with Republicans for any purpose of municipal reform in this city. If there were here a proper public spirit, every man in New York would so resent the injustice done it by Mr. Porter’s count, and by this partisan committee, that the city would vote unanimously against the Republican party, and turn and do the same as to the Democratic party in State affairs, should its rural members seek to treat us with similar injustice. As it is, a third of our people never miss an opportunity to betray the city’s interests and to justify every assault upon the rights of the municipality.

SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

—The President has appointed Chas. Foster, of Fostorio^sic, Ohio, and former Governor of that State, as Secretary of the Treasury, in place of Mr. Windom, deceased. It was taken for granted that Mr. Foster would be confirmed, without objection, but Senator Cameron, of Pennsylvania, objected, and at this writing the nomination is in the hands of a committee. The daily papers seem to have suddenly developed a considerable admiration for the ex-Governor of Ohio, though it was not manifest at any previous period in his career. He is in favor of the continuance of the existing silver coinage system and opposed to free coinage. The latter fact probably accounts for the frequent expressions of satisfaction with his nomination in the New York papers. In politics he has always been an unscrupulous machine man, while in his business relations he is intimately associated with those known in Ohio as “the Standard Oil Gang.” We presume he is as good a Secretary of the Treasury as Mr. Harrison could induce to take the place, but there is certainly no reason why anybody should get enthusiastic over his appointment.

RECIPROCITY WITH MEXICO.

—It is reported that as soon as Congress adjourns Mr. Blaine will begin negotiations for a reciprocity treaty with Mexico. All right. We do not imagine that much direct good will come out of the effort, but it will doubtless call forth glowing descriptions of the advantages open to the people of the United States through trade with the Republic to the south of us, and this will give a new impetus to the demand for Free Trade with still another country. Restricted reciprocity is a humbug, and even

p. 6, col. 2 full reciprocity by Congressional consent is a concession to the paternal Socialistic idea that underlies Socialism; but efforts in that direction educate people into an understanding of the fact that trade is a good thing, in the way of which no obstacle ought to be thrown. Blaine is about the last man to whom we should naturally look as an educator of the people in Free Trade ideas; but, then, we must remember the idea suggested by William Lloyd Garrison in his speech at Cooper Union in August, 1888, when he quoted Maria Weston Chapman’s declaration: “The Lord sometimes makes use of instruments that I wouldn’t touch with a boat-hook.”

THE COINAGE BILL KILLED.

—The report of the Coinage Committee of the House of Representatives (adopted by a vote of 8 to 4) against the pending bill for the free coinage of silver, practically disposes of that measure so far as the present Congress is concerned. Of course this will add to the present wrath of the free coinage men, but it will also give time to the people to consider whether or not they intend to arrest the progress they have made towards creating an efficient demand for the reduction of taxation by the substitution of a new issue of minor importance.

SOUTH DAKOTA’S NEW SENATOR.

—James H. Kyle, who was elected United States Senator by the Legislature of South Dakota on the 16th inst., by a combination of Independent and Democratic votes, is a Congregational minister, who, up to the time that he joined the Farmers’ movement, was an ardent Republican. It appears, however, that this fact is not likely to prove comforting to his former party, since he announced that he is an opponent of high tariff, and that he left the Republican party because of its recent attitude on the tariff question. He further says that if this fact had not been known he would never have received the votes of the Democratic members of the Legislature. If this is the case, the South Dakota Democrats showed that they cared more for Democratic principles than for a mere party name when they abandoned their caucus candidate and voted for a low tariff man. A low tariff man is always better than a high tariff man, and a no tariff man is better than either.

MR. GEORGE’S HEALTH.

—Mr. George has been having a most enjoyable time in Bermuda and has, we are told, added bicycling to sailing as one of his amusements. He has so completely recovered his health that he contemplates returning home in about two weeks, though his physician and friends urge him to remain in Bermuda long enough to escape the horrible March weather in New York.

TALMAGE ON RECIPROCITY.

—That curious person, Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, gushed in a characteristic way recently over the reciprocity treaty with Brazil. He called the roll of the republics of South and Central America, and prophesied that all of them would speedily follow in the footsteps of Brazil. He said this would make every dollar now invested in American manufactures worth ten dollars; that it would set going all the mills from Maine to Alabama, day and night, with two sets of hands, and put all men now out of employment at work at good wages. In his own peculiarly Christain^sic way Dr. Talmage rejoiced that we shall take all this trade from Great Britain, and he declared that the Brazil treaty is but the beginning. So it is, and a very poor beginning so far as probable direct results are concerned, but in the end Free Trade, without the aid of treaties, will be established with all the world, and the benefits and blessings of that trade will be enjoyed by all who participate in it. Under such continued on p. 7 →

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“CAPITALISM.”

“I have never had a serious doubt,” writes a friend, “since reading ‘Progress and Poverty,’ ten years or more ago, that George’s policy of taxation would yet be the accepted one among all civilized peoples. Among several great reforms I am free to admit the land reform easily leads them all, and yet I am sometimes quite provoked to hear Single Taxers claim for it the righting of all industrial wrongs.” He has been a constant reader of THE STANDARD since the first volume. Yet, in regard to “capitalism,” he says: “That the Single Tax and Free Trade would have some effect to mitigate the evils of these combines, I could readily admit, but to claim that the small proprietor could enter the lists with fair show of success is quite gratuitous and far-fetched, to say the least.”

The title of the tract giving Henry George’s San Francisco speech is “Justice the Object, Taxation the Means.” As I understand it, the underlying principle of the Single Tax is “equal rights to all: special privileges to none.” A correspondent of THE STANDARD in 1887 wrote: “Let it be remembered that the whole theory of taxing people for the privilege of living under civil government, and for the privilege of pursuing a livelihood for the necessary support of themselves and their children, or for any other natural right, privilege or immunity, is false and iniquitous from its very inception and throughout its entire extent. The one true and only ground and reason for the taxation of a citizen is the simple necessity of running the machinery of Government, and paying for its utilities.”

Taxes are the price of government. I think that Single Taxers will agree with me when I say that the Government—local, State and national—alone has the right to tax, and should never delegate any power of taxation to any one or number of citizens. For to do so is to grant “special” privileges. Then the Single Tax principle is that the power to tax should never be delegated to any one or number of individuals, but should always be reserved to the Government alone, and that it should never be applied to anything but land values.

The power of the railroads “to oppress” is a taxing power coming from the exercise of the right of eminent domain. The true solution is Government ownership of roadbeds, free to the use of all, as are our wagon roads, continued on p. 8 →

[continued on next page]

A SINGLE TAX PROFESSOR.

CHICAGO, Ill., February 18, 1891.—In his speech at Saratoga last Fall, Professor Seligman, of Columbia College, pointed to the supposed fact that no professor of political economy had advocated the Single Tax, as an indication that it must be unsound. But even at that moment there was in print a pamphlet from the pen of James H. Canfield, formerly professor of political economy, and now professor of American history and civics at the Kansas State University, in which the Single Tax is distinctly advocated. The pamphlet is entitled “Taxation; a Plain Talk for Plain People,” and is published by the Putnams. It is well worth a careful study by both Single Tax men and their opponents. Professor Seligman particularly has a capacity for deriving great benefit from it. It may be well to remark of Professor Canfield, lest he might be considered of no particular account (professorially speaking), because he officiates at a college where the scholastic cap and gown are not in use, that he is quite as familiar with the head-spinning school of German [political?] economists, professors of “public finance” included, as is

p. 8, col. 2 Professor Seligman, and more familiar with such common things as arithmetic and practical book-keeping.

In his pamphlet Professor Canfield considers two questions: First. What shall be our method of taxation? Second. What shall we tax?

As to method, he defines direct and indirect taxation as “straight” and “crooked,” and after noticing the significant fact that in all local taxation we have adhered to the straight method, and have adopted crooked taxation only in national affairs, which are so remote from the average citizen as to make general knowledge of its operations impossible, he rejects the latter because it promotes hasty and unwise legislation, and fails to meet any of the four great canons which govern taxation. Turning, then, to his second question: On what shall the “straight” tax fall? he considers in turn the various taxes that have ever been applied or considerately suggested.

Having condemned all forms of individual taxation because they are levied with little or no regard to the ability of the payer, he divides the remaining sources of revenue into “productions” and “accumulations.” Theoretically, that which falls upon productions is the most equitable tax, but in practice it has always been unfair and demoralizing. For this apparent conflict between theory and practice he gives several reasons, which may be summarized in the explanation that productions being generally personal property, a tax upon them is open to all the objections of a personal property tax.

Hence, he is led to consider taxes on accumulations, which likewise fail to meet with favor. It is a penalty on frugality, and punishes a man for wise forethought. It is a recurring tax, the dollar saved to-day being repeatedly taxed until wholly confiscated, unless by investment in some way it is made self-protecting. Besides these objections to a tax on accumulations he finds others that apply also to taxation of incomes and production. The system is very expensive. It involves inquisitorial processes. It duplicates taxation by falling upon both credits and the property which they represent. It fosters inaccuracy, injustice and open dishonesty and perjury, and thereby multiplies the burdens of those who have already been disproportionately taxed—the farmer and the mechanic, the widow and the orphan. It adds to the cost of property in use and increases the burdens of borrowers. It is in conflict with the principle that “of those things which are of value to the State, we should never tax any that we wish to come to us, or any that could or would run away.” And it is impossible to make it a success; though tried from the earliest times and under all possible conditions, it has always failed.

After this conclusion, the only object of taxation left for Professor Canfield’s consideration is land. This, he explains, he holds till the last, “because the arguments in its favor need to be more carefully considered, and because a system of taxation on land alone is as yet untried, and therefore has no precedent from which we may judge of its workings. Every position assumed for it must be judged by the reason alone, and from the weight of argument and illustration must we determine whether it is worth a trial.” The land tax he defines as “a tax laid on land assessed at the value of strictly unimproved lands in the immediate vicinity;” and that he may not be understood as including improvements of any kind, he argues that improvements are enough of the nature of personal property to make all arguments against personal taxation applicable to them.

Entering, then, fully upon a consideration of the land tax as he defines it, he shows to begin with that it “tends to discourage all land speculations.” If it costs as much to own land covered with “cockles as with crops,” the crops will be growing on every foot of wild land or it “will remain on the hands of the State waiting for a home-builder rather than a speculator.” A similar effect will be produced with city lots. “The lots standing at the same figures, it will always be simply a choice between a pigpen or a palace with all the chanoes^sic in favor of the palace.” Furthermore, all land would be at a low price, there would be no investments without improvements; improvements would be stimulated in every direction; and “the vast estates which have been multiplying on every hand, creating a patrician class, and already threatening us with all the evils of absenteeism and with an army of landlords would melt away.” The differences between a land tax and a tax on either production or accumulation, which Professor Canfield selects as most marked, are as follows: Land is always in sight and cannot be hidden, while in a thousand and one ways personal property may conveniently disappear about assessment time; land may be assessed without inquisitorial process, and “as to values it would be almost impossible for any well-informed man to go astray;” the cost of assessment would be lower in the case of land, for “one assessor could do all the work in an agricultural county and find time hang heavy on his hands at that,” and the county force would be reduced to a minimum; the land tax would not hamper production, but quicken it, because every farmer would be interested in placing on his land the largest possible amount of remunerative personal property, and as the tax on accumulations was removed the [line obscured] continued on p. 9 →

THE FADDER.

Every paper I look at, whether it be morning, evening, extra or Sunday, is filled with accounts of the starving poor and the vast fortunes of the rich. Now this has set me thinking. All the poor are useful as laborers and producers of wealth, but the rich appear to have no place in this world, and if we are to trust Scripture their lot in the next is even more unenviable. They won’t work, because labor, except as a director of labor, is disgraceful, but they will kill themselves at polo, and exhibit pluck and endurance in other ways that are of no earthly or heavenly use. It seems, as the laws of this and all other countries now stand, we must support this crop of useless money bags. Why not make use of them! They are easily governed; more easily than any other set of men alive. Let us make a new office in our municipal and State governments. Of course this new officer must be paid more than the president, but even then we will save money by it, for he will be the Fadder—that is, one whose business it is to start the fads for our gilded colonial dames, and other wealthy descendants of Hessians and Tories.

We are now systematically exterminating all animals not found in the barn-yard, stable or coop (except the English sparrow). Many of these creatures are excellent articles of food, many others make good beasts of burden, and still others furnish rare materials for industrial and art work. Now the Fadder starts the fad of domesticating and breeding the moose. He even appears within the park drawn by a pair of these useful, high-stepping and swift-going animals, accompanied by some society leader. Presto! the moose begins to increase. Moose farms start like magic, tandem moose teams or four-in-hand sleighs become the rage, the animal is saved from extinction. There is added another source of food and another beast of burden to the stable and farm.

Next he starts the fad of using rattlesnake skins for belts for ladies and for purses and pocket books, with a fringe of rattles for ornament. In two years’ time the rattlesnake is exterminated and our beautiful, useful little humming birds have a chance by breeding to swell their depleted ranks; our tern no longer fear the dreaded plume hunter’s gun and are again busy with the gulls and other persecuted useful creatures cleaning our harbors and bays of the refuse which pollutes the waters.

The Fadder next starts a buffalo ranch and has a buffalo show at Madison Garden^sic, with prizes for the best team of buffalo oxen, for the finest bull, the fattest buffalo steer. The magic word fad will again save another useful and typical American beast from extermination, and add another useful animal to the farm.

Then we can let our gilded drones get drunk and drive their four-in-hands off the bridges, as is so graphically described by Mr. Ward McAllister. We can laugh when the liveried outriders come swinging home hanging to the horns of their steed, while the coachman, driving a four-in-hand of zebras, sways back and forward upon his seat because these hirelings have taken time by the forelock and swallowed all the wines intended for their master’s over-abused stomach, as in the case so poetically related by the same author. We can laugh because we have made them of use. The Fadder is there, and while he may enter somewhat into these orgies, he so directs them that some new and useful fad will be the outcome of each gathering of the former drones. We can smile as we pay our landlord his princely tax for the privilege of occupying fifteen by ten feet of space in the business portion of town in which to earn our living, because when we pay the enforced tax we know it will be expended in some manner useful to mankind, and we, through the office of the Fadder, have all become philanthropists.

In the end maybe the efforts of the Fadder may have so enlarged the eye of the needle that we may even have the pleasure of seeing some of our rich men’s yachts floating on the Jasper Sea with a swarm of little cherubims blowing to fill the graceful sails.

Flushing, L. I.

DAN BEARD.

THE SERVANT GIRL NO MORE MENIAL.

Apropos of Kenneth Cranford’s recent article, I well remember my good democratic grandmother clapping her hands with glee on hearing that some of her neighbors were without domestic help, their girls having left them. “Good,” said she; “thank God; I hope they will have to work their hands off. They don’t know how to treat girls. They don’t deserve to have any.”

Calling on our Presbyterian pastor in his studio^sic the other evening, I found in session a church council, among whom was a pillar, General P. I was politely requested to stay, and after the business was done I took out of my pocket the masterly speech of Edward Osgood Brown, of Chicago, on Democracy and Equality, in which this question of the servant girl is handled, as in Mr. C.’s article, from the real not sham, from the true and not mock or mawkish, Christian standpoint. By general consent I commenced reading from the speech, and went on without any dissent till I came to this part on the servant girl, when the General broke out, “That man is a crank,” and taking his hat stalked off, tall and sublime.

Verily, as Mr. Cranford says, our reform includes all others. Liberty, equality, fraternity, mean free men, Free Trade, free land continued on p. 10 →

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

Our protectionist friends are strangely averse to discussing the tariff question. Ever since the last election they have tried to push it one side on the ground that it has been settled until the next campaign, despite the fact that people on all sides are talking about nothing else. The last prominent protectionist to take this view is Brother Depew. He was a guest at the annual dinner of the Rochester Chamber of Commerce last Monday evening, and he followed Mr. Tait, who, in speaking to a toast for unrestricted commerce between this country and Canada, made a powerful appeal for unrestricted reciprocity. Depew’s toast—“The Day and the Occasion”—bore no relation to the previous toast, but he saw the enthusiasm the previous speaker’s words evoked, and he attempted, protectionist like, to break the force of what Mr. Tait had said by saying, “The tariff will not be a practical question for two years.” Mr. Depew made his entire speech on this line and never responded to his toast at all. There are none so blind as those who will not see, and the protectionists seem to be especially blind nowadays.

* * * *

A story just started will give Congressman-elect Jere Simpson, of Kansas, a wide reputation for repartee. While he was at the Capitol at Washington Monday a pretty woman thus addressed him: “Is it true that you don’t wear socks, Mr. Simpson? Won’t you let me see, please?” “Madam,” replied Mr. Simpson, gravely, “I’m a believer in reciprocity. Do you wear socks? If you’ll show me yours I’ll show you mine!”

* * * *

A little later in the day Mr. Simpson was introduced to Henry Cabot Lodge, and unexpectedly said to him: “Are you the author of the—the——” “The iniquitous Force bill?” interrupted Mr. Lodge. “That’s it,” said Simpson; “The iniquitous Force bill! I’m agin it!” Mr. Simpson has been in Washington a little over two weeks, and the national legislators are showing an increased respect for him every day.

* * * *

The publishers of Belford’s Magazine will present with each copy of the March edition a cartoon on the tariff question by Dan Beard. The picture represents a fat old fellow seated in a sedan chair. He is carefully protected from the inclemency of the weather by glass windows, and he is carried by two workingmen, who are staggering under the heavy burden. Dan Beard illustrated Mark Twain’s “Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” which is a sufficient guarantee of the excellence of his forthcoming picture. The cartoon is printed by a new French process, which makes it appear like a water-color picture, and is handsome enough to be framed and hung on parlor walls.

* * * *

Henry R. Beekman, ex-corporation counsel, says that a bill will have to be passed, eventually, compelling people to go to the polls and vote on election day.

* * * *

The last mail from Australia brings us the Democrat, published in Sidney, N. S. W. It is out and out Single Tax paper, and each number received contains a first page illustration on the Single Tax. THE STANDARD wishes it success.

* * * *

The American Protective League of this city reports that 140 new members were added to its roll last month. On the other hand, the thousands of men who are being converted to Free Trade by the Single Taxers have no organization to go to. The best they can find is tariff reform clubs.

* * * *

J. T. O’Neile, of Brooklyn, says: “I am delighted with the new shape of THE STANDARD, and wish you and the paper a hearty God-speed in the work in which you are engaged.”

* * * *

The habit of laying the burden of taxes on the small property owners and householders, and letting the great landlords escape, seems to have become a sort of second nature to the legislators and assessors of Great Britain. Under the Small Holdings Acts many moderately circumstanced people in the country districts have recently been induced to purchase small plots of land. No sooner are the great farms cut up into small holdings than the owners of the small holdings are assessed for local expenses at from four to eight times the acre valuation of the large farms. The increase in the assessment has been so great in some cases that the small owners say they will have to give up their allotments.

* * * *

Even the German Emperor is finding that Protection is a nuisance p. 10, col. 2 and against the interests of his people. A cable dispatch to the Staats Zeitung says that in the course of a talk at the Chancellor’s dinner the other day, “the Emperor startled his listeners by declaring that he was out of patience with the attitude assumed by the iron and coal industries. ‘It is naturally the duty of the State,’ he said, ’to protect domestic industries; but special favor to special interests is impossible. Suum cuique!” “Suum cuique” is the principle of absolute Free Trade—“Let each have his own.”

* * * *

English society, according to the London Star, has decided that the word “lady” is to be expunged from its lexicon of polite conversation, and the good, old-fashioned “woman” is to take its place. A sweeping reform, moreover, is to be effected in the manner of addressing young ladies—we should say young women—by correspondence. The prefix, “Miss,” must be rigorously eschewed. If you want to write to Miss Cassandra Lionhunter, you must address her on the cover of your letter as “Cassandra Lionhunter.”

* * * *

In the Baltimore Sun of the 18th inst. Dr. William N. Hill suggests that a compromise be made by the free silver coinageists and the monometalists on the “goloid” basis, which was offered to Congress by William Wheeler Hubbard in 1879. Mr. Hubbard then proposed that a coin dollar, consisting of 76.5 centigrams of pure gold, 11.835 grains of pure silver and 1.4 grams of copper should be adopted as the standard. Alexander H. Stephens was strongly in favor of the plan, and experts said that it was the handsomest and most durable coin that could be made.

* * * *

In answer to the question, “What is the feeling on the tariff question among the Alliance men whom you meet in your travels?” W. E. Brokaw, of South Dakota, has this to say:

You must remember that so far I have done most of my work in this (Minnehaha) county. This is a large county, and contains the largest city in the State—Sioux Falls. The Republicans made a clean sweep here last Fall. Well, the president of the County Alliance, John O. Langness, is a member of the Baltic Single Tax Club. The Secretary of the County Alliance, C. A. Soderberg, is an outspoken Single Tax man—he was formerly Secretary of the Farmers’ Alliance. Henry W. Smith is a large farmer and prominent in the State Alliance. He was prominent before the Independent Convention last Summer as a candidate for Congress. He is opposed to Protection and inclined to the Single Tax. E. J. Tracy is a prominent one in this county, and much impressed by the Single Tax. Since leaving Watertown I have met A. V. Van Doren, J. R. Lowe and Frank Leavitt: all Alliance organizers. The former is a straight Free Trader. Second (1st V. P. of State Alliance) not posted, but is reading “P. & P^sic,” and has ordered “Protection or Free Trade?” and the last, who ran for Congress on Independent ticket last Fall, is a Free Trade, Single Tax, Nationalist. J. W. Harden, who was a candidate for United States Senator, is a Free Trader, and said to me that he could see that the Single Tax would berefit^sic the farmer. His wife is secretary-treasurer of the State Alliance, and he is an organizer. H. L. Loucks, president of the State Association, believes in only the land-value tax and a graduated income tax. Z. D. Scott, State Senator from Grant County, and formerly Treasurer of Territorial Alliance, thinks the Single Tax would benefit farmers, but considers the money question more important. I hear very few talk “tariff reform;” it is either “Protection” or “Free Trade.” Most of the Alliance men appear to be Free Traders. My straight Free Trade arguments and ridicule of “Protection” generally call forth applause everywhere I speak. The “G. O. P.” is tottering into its grave in South Dakota. We will cover it up, and let the grass grow in ’92.

* * * *

Professor Ashley, of the Toronto University, has come out against the Single Tax. The Toronto Labor Advocate does not blame him; it says that “that is what he’s paid for.” “If he were to declare in favor of the Single Tax,” says the Advocate, “he would probably lose his position, and he would find it very difficult to find another equally good. His bread and butter depend upon his teaching such social doctrines as are in the interests of his paymasters, the privileged class.” The Advocate closes an editorial on the matter, saying that the professor is a high-minded man, and that “the mental bondage in which he now finds himself must be even more intolerable than wage slavery.”

* * * *

The United States Senator-elect for South Dakota, Rev. Dr. Kyle, says that in politics he is an “Inde-crat.” He used to be a Republican, but the McKinley Tariff Bill was too much for him and he became a Democrat because he was in favor of tariff reform. The Alliance movement attracted him and he joined it—hence “Inde-crat.”

* * * *

The New York Evening News wants the American flag to again become numerous on the ocean, and says it can be brought about in this way:

Take the duties off raw materials, open the markets of the world to us, remove the miserable restrictions upon our navigation laws, give American industries a fair field with American mechanics in the van, and in less than a generation our shipyards will be humming again and our flag be floating on every sea.

We hereby welcome the News into the true Democratic fold.

CURRENT THOUGHT.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

NEBRASKA DISCUSSING THE LAND VALUE TAX.

A bill has been passed by the Nebraska Legislature making it a punishable offence for any assessor, State or local, to assess any property, real or personal, at less than its “cash” value.

Another bill has been offered by Mr. Schappel, of Pawnee county, which provides that “assessors shall, in estimating the value of land, assess all lands not improved which are lying adjacent to and adjoining improved lands at the same value as improved lands.” This bill was the cause of the most interesting discussion of the session of the House up to that time. There was opposition to it, of course, but a number of the legislators warmly advocated it. Mr. Felker, of Omaha, pronounced it “the most righteous bill presented for our deliberation this session,” because it “reached the speculator and prevented him from fattening upon the fruits of the honest toiler.” Mr. Shrader, of Logan County, said the bill was the most important one that would be offered during the session, in that it offered a plan by which taxes would be equitably levied, and justice done to the producer as well as the land owner. So much interest was manifested in Mr. Schappel’s measure that it was decided to discuss it more fully hereafter.

OPPOSING PERSONAL PROPERTY TAXATION.

The question of taxation is just now attracting more attention among the business men of New York City than has been the case for many years. The real estate assessment has been increased for the two years past between sixty and seventy millions a year, with prospects for another increase next year. Those people who want personal property taxed are using up their brains devising schemes to prevent its escaping the payment of its share of the public burden; while those to whom experience has demonstrated that personal property can escape paying its share, and those who think it should be exempt from taxation altogether, are using their influence to bring about the state of things they desire.

The City Comptroller is one of those who wants to tax personal property, in its various forms, and so far he has prepared and caused to be presented to the Legislature no less than five bills, having for their object the more equitable taxation of personal property, to secure which greater powers—mostly inquisitorial in their nature—are conferred on the taxing officials. Even real estate dealers have ranged themselves in opposition to the personal property tax. The Real Estate Exchange has done so officially. After having had its committee on legislation carefully examine the Comptroller’s bills to tine^sic legislature, they have unanimously rejected them all: because the measures will involve inquisitorial methods, they will be costly in their operation, and they will fail of their purpose.

The Exchange goes farther. It wants the taxes taken off mortgages, and a committee has been instructed to draft a bill to that effect, and it is asserted that if such a bill passes it will be possible to borrow money on real estate at almost as low a rate as that given to the city. The Mail and Express can be considered as in the fore-front of the fight for the abolition of the personal property tax, and it is fighting valiantly. Since its attention was attracted to the subject by Mr. Julian Davies’ lecture on “The Total Abolition of Taxation on Personal Property,” before the Manhattan Single Tax Club, four weeks ago. the Mail^sic has been devoting considerable space to the matter of taxation, and especially to the mistake of taxing personal property. In a special article, printed last week, it goes over the history of taxation in this city for fifty years back. Of course, it

p. 13, col. 2 does not fail to prod the Tammany Hall and Democratic politicians by portraying more or less vividly how our people have been robbed, and it shows that whereas in 1840 we paid only $4.33 per head in taxes, in 1890 we paid $20.75 per head. Then, after a long argument against the injustice of a personal property tax, the Mail concludes its special article thus:

Real estate should bear the entire burden. There are some large owners of realty in this city who would welcome the change, believing, with ex-Mayor Hewitt, “that this city would largely gain by the abolition of all taxes upon personal property: that an advance in the value of real estate would inevitably follow, as the abolition of personal taxes would attract to it the capital of the whole world.”

The Mail does not show how it makes its indorsement of Mayor Hewitt’s utterance to the Board of Aldermen in 1888 square with its advocacy of protectionism—which would do its best to keep out “the capital of the whole world” outside of our own country. But let that pass. We are speaking now of the injustice of taxing personal property, with which THE STANDARD is in accord with the Mail. Speaking of putting all taxes on real estate, the Mail says in its special article:

There is no class of property a tax upon which would be so readily and so uniformly diffused through every other class. A real estate tax is a tax on every other kind of property. The abolition of personal taxation would stimulate business of every description, increase the demand for office buildings and factory property and incidentally result in better wages for factory hands. The slight increase in the tax rate would be temporary and soon be overcome by the increased value of real estate.

In its editorial columns the Mail is most pronounced, and states its position in the matter of taxation so clearly that were it not covered all over with the protective delusion, we could almost welcome it into our Single Tax ranks. Hear it:

The land owner eventually pays the whole tax indirectly in an increased rate of interest, and it would simplify the situation if he should pay it directly. Real estate is the only species of property which is easily discoverable, whose value is evident and which cannot be removed from the State, and on real estate should rest the burden of State taxation.

ALARMING THE ARISTOCRATS.

Professor Bryce has introduced a resolution in the English House of Commons which, if adopted, will give the public free access to uncultivated mountain and moor land. The resolution is a menace to the pleasures of rich hunters and sportsmen, and land-owners, especially in Scotland, are much alarmed at the favor with which it has been received in the Commons. Notwithstanding his radical views, Professor Bryce has always been liked in what is known as British society; but, since his introduction of his resolution, all his former friends among the Tories have cut him off of their dinner lists. However, his measure has made him immensely popular with the English and Scottish common people.

WHAT THE FARMERS WANT.

Southern Alliance Farmer.

We are hewers and delvers who toil^sic for another’s gain, The common clod and rabble, stunted of brow and brain, What do we want, the gleaners, of the harvest we have reaped?

We want the drones to be driven away from our golden hoard; We want to share in the harvest, we want to sit at the board; We want what sword or suffrage has never yet won for man, The fruits of his toil God promised when the curse of toil began.

Ye have tried the sword and scepter, the cross and the sacred word, In all the years, and the kingdom is not here yet of the Lord, We are tired of useless waiting; we are tired of fruitless prayers, Soldier and churchman and lawyer—the failure is not theirs.

What gain is it to the people that a God laid down His life, If twenty centuries after His world be a world of strife? If the serried ranks be facing each other with ruthless eyes, And steel in their hands, what profits a Savior’s sacrifice?

Ye have tried and failed to rule us; in vain to direct us have tried, Not wholly the fault of the ruler, not utterly blind the guide, Mayhap there needs not a ruler, mayhap we can find the way, At least ye have ruled to ruin; at least ye have led astray.

What matter if king or council or president holds the rein, If crime and poverty ever be links in the bondman’s chain? What careth the burden bearer that Liberty packed his load, If hunger presses behind him with a sharp and ready goad?

There’s a Serf whose chains are of paper; there’s a king with a parchment crown: There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field and town. But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage and rent, And the baron’s toil is Shylock’s, with a flesh and blood per cent.

The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a narrow room. The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at the loom. The soul must starve, for the body can barely on husks be fed; And the loaded dice of the gambier^sic settles the loaf of bread.

Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed him of learning’s light, But his sluggish brain is moving; his sinews have all their might. Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege pride and caste, The giant is blind, but thinking, and his locks are growing fast^sic,

SINGLE TAX NEWS.

SINGLE TAX WOMEN’S ENROLLMENT COMMITTEE.

MAUCH CHUNK, Pa., February 20.—We can now add California, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to the list of states containing Single Tax women, whose names are on our roll. We heartily thank our Single Tax brothers who have sent us names and otherwise encouraged us in our work for the cause that is dear to us all. We also thank those who have sent us papers that print Single Tax matter. We quote the following from a cordial letter received from Mrs. Frances M. Milne in reply to a letter from our secretary, as we think other active Single Tax workers may also have misunderstood our call. Mrs. Milne writes:

Believe me, I would have written sooner but I had the impression that your call was addressed especially to women who, while believing in the Single Tax, had yet taken no part in helping it forward. My Single Tax correspondence has so grown upon my hands that I feel almost afraid to add to it, but after reading your letter and understanding your idea more clearly, I see plainly that no Single Tax woman, however busy, should refuse to join your forces.

Let those who have their hands almost too full of work write to us; and some of us who are not so busy will be glad to aid them in any way we can. Suggestions or advice from successful Single Tax workers will be thankfully received. Please address our Secretary, C. Estella Bachman, Mauch Chunk, Pa.

SINGLE TAX LETTER WRITERS.

Below are the names of some real estate assessors. Brief, pointed letters are in order, calling their attention to the impolicy, injustice and illegality of the present method of discriminating against the land user, in favor of the land speculator. In most localities it is a greater crime to build a chicken house than to steal chickens. The latter is punishable by one fine, but the former offence involves the payment of a penalty every year.

New York City Assessors.—Edward Gilon, No. 4 Abingdon square; Edward Cahill, 127 Lexington avenue; Patrick M. Haverty, 358 West Twentieth street; Charles E. Wendt, 1,186 Lexington avenue; William H. Jasper, 200 East Sixty-ninth street.

Akron, Ohio, Assessors.—Aaron Wagener, 215 Perkins street; William Rowley, 1,044 East Market street; Hon. George W. Crouse, 707 East Mill street; David L. King, 966 East Market street; A. M. Armstrong, 515 West Market street; T. M. Gauyard, 125 South Maple street.

Albany, N. Y. Assessors.—William J. Weaver, 121 Hamilton street; William J. Flynn, 58 High street; Nelson H. Chase, 746 Broadway.

Letter writers wishing to enclose Extra tract, No. 36, will be gladly supplied free on application to

42 University Place, New York.

W. J. ATKINSON.

p. 15, col. 2

NEW YORK CITY.

Last Thursday evening Mr. Robert W. Hanington showed the Manhattan Single Tax Club how easy it was to paint a picture in oil. In less than an hour he put on a canvas, eighteen by twenty-four inches, in black and white, a beautiful view on Lake George, which, after finishing, he presented to the club with his compliments. While he was working at his picture, Mr. Hanington entertained his audience with stories and amusing little “skits,” and concluded with a recitation. The members of the club are delighted with him. His picture will be framed and hung in a conspicuous place on the walls of the rooms.

On Sunday evening Congressman-elect John De Witt Warner addressed the club on “The Free Coinage Bill.” In his speech, which took him two hours and a half to deliver, he gave, in detail, his reasons why he was opposed to the bill now in Congress. The debate which followed was very interesting, so interesting that even after the meeting had adjourned discussion was kept up until after 1 o’clock in the morning.

On Friday evening the managing board will meet to discuss the amendments to the constitution proposed by the committee appointed at the last regular meeting of the club, and at the monthly meeting, which takes place Thursday evening, March 5, the whole matter will be discussed by the club.

There will be the usual lecture next Sunday evening.

The house committee of the club has put the photographs of the delegates to the conference, so far received, into three large albums. It was intended to make a large album, which could have been fastened to the walls of the club room, but there has not as yet been a sufficiently large response to the request of the house committee for photographs. There were 409 delegates to the conference, and only 124 have so far responded. Since the last report on the photographs, the following have sent their pictures: New York State—George White, Brooklyn; C. W. H. Desbon, Staten Island; M. W. Norwalk and Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Roshert, Albany; George E. Bedell, Herkimer. Massachusetts—Dr. Charles K. Cutter, Charlestown. Connecticut—Lawrence Dunham, Sharon. New Jersey—Rev. Wm. P. George, Ernest Nobis, Jersey City; E. W. Nellis, James Taylor, Paterson; John K. Esler, Camden. Pennsylvania—Daniel S. Brown, Philadelphia. Maryland—W. J. Ogden, Baltimore. Ohio—W. K. Field, Cleveland. Illinois—Edward Osgood Brown, Chicago. Iowa—A. O. Pitcher, Mount Pleasant. Minnesota—C. J. Buell, Minneapolis.

BROOKLYN.

G. W. Thompson.—The discussion at the Brooklyn Single Tax Club on Wednesday evening last on the relations between labor and capital was fairly well attended and participated in. On Wednesday evening, February 25, we will have quite a literary and musical entertainment. A dramatic dialogue, being a discussion between various reformers, will be the feature of the evening. The Protectionist, the Free Trader, the Prohibitionist, the Socialist and the Anarchist will each have a say, and the Single Taxers will come in with frequent raps and finally emerge triumphant. The dialogue is in verse and was written by Mr. J. Hickling. Besides this, music and other forms of entertainment will be provided.

James A. Herne is playing at the Grand Opera House in the city in Wilson Barrett’s “A Four-Legged Fortune.” On Sunday evening next March 1, Mr. Herne will give a dramatic reading and address at Avon Hall, Bedford avenue, near Fulton street.

Woman’s Single Tax Club.—Many articles have appeared in THE STANDARD, the theme of which has been women and the Single Tax. During the National Conference and in many other ways, earnest appeals have been made for women to aid in the new abolition. But whether the best results could be attained by the united efforts of both sexes, or by each forming separate organizations, has been left for experience to determine. Last October a meeting was called for all Brooklyn women interested in the Single Tax. At the first meeting nineteen were present, temporary officers were chosen and it was decided that for a time at each meeting a chapter from some good economic work should be read and discussed. In due time a constitution and bye-laws were adopted and officers elected. The meetings are held in the parlors of the Brooklyn Single Tax Club, and for some social and educational purposes the two clubs meet as one. The Brooklyn Woman’s Single Tax Club has been the first to become a member of the National League. If the experience gained in the formation of this club will be of assistance to any who are about to form such an organization a letter addressed to the corresponding secretary will be promptly answered. We sincerely hope to soon hear of many similar clubs having joined the ranks against tyranny and oppression. And when success has crowned our efforts, as it surely will, we will have the pleasure of knowing that we have done our part in the great social reform.

Joseph McGuinness, Eastern District.—It surprises many of us to find how far economic questions are absorbing public attention. The Single Tax crops up for discussion in most unexpected places. Believing it possible to increase and intensify this interest, our club intends to resume public meetings (which were abandoned more than a year ago), and to distribute literature (including “Protection or Free Trade?”) with a liberal hand. Our first public meeting will be held at Eureka Hall, Bedford avenue, on the second Tuesday in March.

NEW YORK STATE.

Charles H. Sutton, Middletown.—Fifteen signatures. It seems to me from the amount of work being done through the country generally for the petition, that this part of the committee’s work will be fully accomplished when the 100,000 mark is reached.

MASSACHUSETTS.

S. T., Boston.—Levi H. Turner lectured before an interested audience at St. Stephen’s Hall, Wells Memorial Building, Saturday evening, February 21. His subject was “Rent: its Origin, its Effect on the Distribution of Wealth, its Relation to the Law of Wages.” Mr. Turner is a known Single Tax man and advocated the abolition of the present system of taxation. After an continued on p. 16 →

[continued on page 16]

CONNECTICUT.

Edwin E. Baldwin, Branford.—Thirty-three petitions. I got them signed on the Elm City. We left New York City on the way to New Haven, but the fog was so heavy that the Elm City had to anchor in the East River over night. The passengers whiled away the hours by singing, story-telling, etc., but by the time my turn came they had got tired of such amusement, and when they asked me to do something I told them I couldn’t dance, sing or tell stories, but if they were willing I would make a speech. The passengers enthusiastically pressed me to make one, and I gave them a straight Single Tax talk: that is, as straight as I knew how, for I never made a speech before in my life. They were much interested, and the rest of the evening was spent in an interesting discussion of the views I had presented to them. All but one—a New York stock broker—were in a friendly frame of mind. The broker said he had heard such stuff all his life. There was but one way to help poor people, and that was by going down in your pockets and pulling out a couple of dollars and giving it to the party in need. I had an opportunity to test the sincerity of the broker later in the evening by taking to him a Connecticut boy who had gone to New York to make his fortune, but who had failed and had spent his last cent for a passage back to his home. He said he had not slept in a bed for two nights, and was hungry. Anchoring in the fog meant another night without a bed, and more hunger. I told the boy’s story to the broker, but he didn’t “go down into his pocket and pull out a couple of dollars.” On the contrary, he told the boy that he “ought to work and save his money.” I distributed a number of blank petitions among the passengers, who were all interested and promised to get their friends to sign.

Martin M. Coleman, New Haven.—Seven petitions. Some two years ago I lost a good job on account of talking politics—Free Trade, Single Tax, etc.—and I have been badly off ever since. I am not earning over six dollars per week now. If I can get my head a little above water I will try to do more for the cause, if it is not too late.

MARYLAND.

S. T., Reister’s Town.—The Rev. R. Whittingham delivered the first of a course of lectures before the Hannah More Academy, last Tuesday morning, February 17. The course is to be upon political economy, and the first lecture was on the duties of “Government and the Governed.” He sketched the differences in the terms employed in dealing with this subject, political and social economy, showing how they were derived; described the different existing forms of government—military, monarchical and republican—and their origins; showed that government of any kind must possess two marked characteristics—protection and provision—protection from harm and wrong and violence; provision for convenience and comfort and domestic association. He took occasion to contrast true and false protection by exposing the fallacy of protective tariffs or taxes, compared with true protection of the community at large, as one. His lecture was attentively listened to by some seventy individuals, including three reverend gentlemen.

GEORGIA.

J. A. Leslie, Lumber City.—Enclosed find petitions. If I had the time I believe I could get a majority of the voters of the place to sign it.

p. 16, col. 2

KENTUCKY.

Ivy H. Teal, Bowling Green.—Allow me to congratulate you on the new form and material of THE STANDARD. The schools of this city contain a large number of common school teachers from all over the Union. I never fail to make them acquainted with the Single Tax and supply them with an appropriate tract; I find much among them to encourage propaganda. In our class in Political Economy Mr. George’s ideas are widely discussed, and the verdict is generally unanimous that the Single Tax should receive the support of all justice-loving men.

OHIO.

H. M. Scott, Miamisburg.—Charles F. Bealle, first president of the Miamisburg Single Tax Club, died February 17. We, his co-laborers, wil^sic miss his sincere and intelligent counsel and assistance in the cause of justice and humanity. May his memory prompt us to more earnest and energetic work.

C. S. Malone, Granville.—Fifty-three petitions, which three of us have secured during the past week. We are are meeting^sic with much better success than we had anticipated. The only serious opposition comes from the “old liners.” There being only three of us here, we have formed no regular organization but have weekly meetings, anyhow. We have invited three, who seem to be considerably interested in the subject, to attend our next meeting, and we will endeavor to show them the beauty of the “cat.” We also have an appointment with the vice-president of the local organization of the Farmers’ Alliance to discuss the Single Tax. On the whole the outlook is quite bright for us.

Buckthorn, Cincinnati. Eighteen^sic petitions. The Post and Times-Star published copies of our petition last week.

ILLINOIS.

Warren Worth Bailey, Chicago, February 20.—Our joint meeting with the Equal Suffrage Association on Tuesday evening was a most gratifying success in every particular, the attendance being very large and the interest keen and intelligent. The Equal Suffragists turned out in force, nearly a hundred of the most prominent women in the local movement being present, attended, in many instances, by their husbands, fathers and brothers. The Single Tax Club was also well represented, and our people were unmistakably delighted with the way in which Mr. Louis F. Post, who was the principal speaker, showed the relation of the Single Tax to Equal Suffrage. Mr. Post was as happy in matter and manner, and there was no break in the thread of his masterly argument which, strong as it was, was still remarkably simple and plain. Mr. Marshall Beck followed in a complimentary strain, and then Mr. Edward Osgood Brown spoke for a few minutes with an earnestness, force and clearness that called out the most generous applause, after which Mr. John Z. White closed the discussion in a characteristic speech that fairly bristled with good points. The ladies tendered us a hearty vote of thanks and Mrs. McKinney, the president, said that she felt, after hear ing our case, that the claims of the Single Tax were good. It was then arranged that the Equal Suffragists should meet with us, the invitation being formally extended on behalf of the Single Tax Club by President Bailey, and formally accepted by the Equal Suffrage Association, the date being fixed for Thursday, March 19, when Mrs. Ahrends, the accomplished attorney, will deliver the principal address, followed by other members of the organization. It will be a ladies’ night, the arrangement being that Miss Leonora Beck, vice-president of our club, shall preside, and that other Single Tax ladies shall do whatever talking on our behalf that may be required.

Miss Leonora Beck was quite ill last night, and was unable to fulfill her engagement to address us on “A Single Tax Woman,” thus disappointing a large audience that had gathered in spite of tempestuous weather. After the transaction of some business, which included the appointment of a committee to arrange for the celebration of Jefferson’s birthday, the evening was devoted to a general discussion, which was participated in by Messrs. Beck, White, Bartholemew, Hornstein, Kellett and two or three strangers. So interesting did the debate become, that by common consent, adjournment was delayed for half an hour, in order that Mr. John Z. White might give an exposition of the Single Tax for the benefit of the numerous visitors. It is needless to say that he acquitted himself most admirably, and to the entire satisfaction of the audience.

Messrs. John Z. White and Secretary Frank W. Irwin will go to Jefferson City next Wednesday to participate in H. Martin William’s^sic Single Tax conference.

The semi-annual election of officers will take place Thursday evening March 5.

A robust Single Tax Club has just been organized at Peoria, the second city of Illinois.

Announcements.—February 26, W. F. Kellett, “The Crime of Poverty;” March 12, Miss Leonora Beck, “A Single Tax Woman;” March 19, the Equal Suffragists.

C. F. Perry, Quincy.—The election of mayor and the council in April will turn upon the question of establishing the city water works. In the meantime, the press turns with opinion^sic on almost every phase of the subject. In yesterday’s Daily Journal is a two column interview on the subject with Mr. R. F. Schermerhorn, a manufacturer, and who is secretary of our club. Some time ago our club adopted resolutions indorsing those of the Illinois State Federation of Labor asking our Legislature now in session to appoint, each branch, a special committee to inquire into the expediency of submitting a constitutional amendment exempting improvements and personal property from taxation. And the resolution will, I am told, be introduced soon. Mr. Warren Worth Bailey informed me previously to our action that the Chicago club had arranged to have a similar resolution introduced, and if the committee be appointed we hope to see Messrs. Bailey, Brown, Malcom, Ripley and others go down and make an argument.

There is a society here named the Conversation Club from its informal methods of discussing questions which have this Winter been mostly on the economic order. Last Tuesday evening the topic was “Labor Troubles—Their Causes and Cure,” with introduction by Mr. R. F. Schermerhorn. continued on p. 17 →

[continued on page 17]

IOWA.

D. N. Johnson, Marion.—Quietly many of my fellow-townsmen are saying: “I believe Henry George is right,” “I agree with you that the Single Tax is the only adequate remedy.” Another, shaking hands with me, said: “I want to surprise you.” “Well?” “I am a Single Taxer.” And so “it goes” How happy^sic we all feel. How like brothers of one family! On the evening of February 10 last I spoke at North Star Hall, nine miles northeast of this city. Although unexpected by me, and arriving late, I consented by request to divide time with the house, led by Mr. Charles Houston, of Waubeek. Having first made a brief statement of our principles and method, Mr. Houston, Mr. Bell and others present thereafter made it very interesting and pleasant to still further elucidate the “theory,” as they insisted on calling it. The many questions asked by the house brought out most of the oftentimes unpalatable truths connected with a radical reform. At the close of the meeting tracts and petitions were distributed, being eagerly sought, and there can be no doubt they will be thoughtfully read, and many of the latter signed and returned to me. I intend to present to the hall ten copies of “Protection or Free Trade?” for sale or circulation, as is by them deemed best. The banner of the Single Tax has been planted at North Star Hall, and I know that many are looking hopefully up to it.

Richard Spencer, Bnrlington^sic.—We had a good and interesting meeting of our little local club on Saturday evening, February 7, at my house, and have made arrangements with a local bookseller to handle 100 copies of “Protection or Free Trade?” We all watch with intense interest the columns of THE STANDARD for any news from Mr. George, and are rejoiced to hear that his rest in the Bermudas is tending to full and complete recovery.

MINNESOTA.

W. A. Carpenter, Minneapolis.—Last night, 16th inst., our league had a treat in an address on “A National System of Taxation,” by President C. J. Buell, Vice-President Russell occupying the chair. At the close of Mr. Buell’s most interesting paper, Mr. J. A. Sawyer paid the speaker a well-deserved compliment, and then spoke briefly but effectively on the reign of law in the national and spiritual worlds^sic, claiming that in the politico-economic department, as in all others, the same reign of law is found. Among others who spoke was Mr. Sheets, member of the Legislature from Brainerd, who stated that he came up from St. Paul to see how a Single Tax meeting was conducted, in order that he might be able to profit by what he learned, if he could get together enough of his fellow-townsmen to make it an object. He then showed quite forcibly the tendency of the present system as exhibited in his county, which is largely agricultural, resulting in the separation of the farmers by large tracts of vacant land lying between them, thus making it difficult to establish schools and hampering industry in numberless ways. It was voted at the conclusion of Mr. Sheets’ remarks, to stock up his carpet sacks with Single Tax literature, for distribution among his benighted fellow-farmers. Next Monday evening Prof. W. W. Pendegast^sic of the State University, will address us on “How the Single Tax will Affect the Farmer.”

KANSAS.

E. Z. Bulcher, Solomon City.—Nine petitions, eight of which I got at an Alliance meeting, after Mr. Reddick and myself had spoke on the Single Tax. They requested to hear us again soon; thus the good work goes on.

COLORADO.

H. C. Niles, Denver.—Twenty-six petitions, the second installment of an open meeting of a K. of L. Assembly. A member of the Colorado Legislature addressed that meeting, and he was asked the reason so many were out of employment in this city and country. He said it was because too many were looking for work; and further that the reason workingmen were not more prosperous was because they were too extravagant and would smoke more cigars than they could afford. He failed to explain how cigarmakers would prosper were the workingmen to stop smoking cigars.

NEBRASKA.

Charles Stevenson, Omaha.—The Single Tax has broken out in the Nebraska legislature, and they have got it pretty bad. What the Omaha World called “A Single Tax Bill” (mentioned in another part of THE STANDARD), was presented to the House on the 17th. Immediately an attempt was made to strike out the enacting clause, but it was almost unanimously defeated. Then Mr. Dobson, of Filmore, took the floor in support of the bill-and^sic among other things, said:

We claim that all taxes come from the land and through the productive energies employed thereon. We claim also that it is the concentration of population which makes land values. Therefore it is right that all lands which owe their value to the concentration of population should bear their

p. 17, col. 2

just share of taxation. It is through labor that all wealth is produced. If you tax the productive energies of a people you add still greater burdens to labor. You cannot add a dollar to the wealth of a nation but through land and labor. All taxes which are placed upon industries tend to retard their prosperity. We don’t believe in the policy of allowing men to hold large bodies of land for the purpose of renting the same to tenants, and thereby establish a landlord system. We want to see the American farmers own the land they cultivate, and not to have a tenant system established on the American continent. Let not America become a prey to the landlord system. Let us cling to the original intent of the formation of this Government, which was equality and exact justice to all. Let us not be afraid of adopting new measures because they seem startling, if, upon careful and considerate investigation, they offer relief to the masses and only exact justice of the monopolist^sic. The natural property for taxation is land. The unnatural is the personality which can be hid at pleasure and the value of which is neither staple^sic nor easily determined. I am in favor of this measure, because it affords a good remedy for a great evil, and brings out strongly and practically the cardinal principles of our country strongly and strangely in harmony with the laws of nature.

Judge Felker, one of the members from Omaha, a Democrat, spoke in favor of the proposed bill. One thing noticeable in most of the speeches for and against the measure is a lack of thorough acquaintance with Single Tax principles. The action of the House, on a motion to strike out the enacting clause, showed that the infection is pretty general among the Independents and has caught some Democrats. Nebraska has the honor, I believe, of being the first State to attempt the putting of the Single Tax into force. Whatever comes of it the attempt will spread the light, and that is what we want.

WYOMING.

F. W. Williams, Sundance.—Two petitions. Our crops have failed two years running. Many of our farmers do not know where the next sack of flour is coming from. Two years ago a Farmers’ Alliance was unknown in this State; to-day there are alliances everywhere. The mighty uprising of the producing masses which now thrills the whole land is headed directly towards third party independent political action in 1892.

SOUTH DAKOTA.

T. J. Questad, Baltic.—On January 14 we organized the Baltic Single Tax Club, with T. T. Vreune, president, and T. J. Questad, secretary and treasurer. We are only a few yet, as Single Tax is new to nearly everybody here. Mr. W. E. Brokaw, of Watertown, S. D., has just broken the ice, lecturing in nearly every school house in this county, and we hear the subject discussed now on every hand.

CALIFORNIA.

D. Stuart, Oakland.—Forty-nine petitions. I see by the reports from Sacramento that Judge Maguire has persuaded the legislative Committee on Elections to report favorably the Australian ballot law as prepared by him, and it will undoubtedly be passed before the Legislature adjourns.

WASHINGTON.

Owen Duffy, Seattle.—Mr. Heme^sic will be glad to learn that there are now more than a hundred Single Taxers here. Real estate men have advertised this place so extensively that the town is crowded with labor, and there are a great many idle men. I find it much easier to talk Single Tax to them than when they were working. I never talk to a man or woman fifteen minutes without telling them what I know of the Single Tax, and I find that the majority take kindly to it.

OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.

Isaac McClasky, Pawnee Agency.—Seven petitions. The under consumption idea should be kept constantly before farmers and farmers’ alliances, as one of the main causes of their depression^sic.. If there were no enforced idleness nor underpaid labor, there would be less under consumption and more produced to give in exchange. So he that produceth much would get much in exchange, because others would have much to give. It is upon these lines that I try to reason with farmers, and I find it sets them to thinking.

THE HAND-TO-HAND CLUB EDITION OF “PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?”

Sidney M. Owen, of Minneapolis, has accepted a vice-presidency of the Hand-to-Hand Club. He is an absolute Free Trader, is said to be the most popular man in Minnesota, and polled over 58,000 votes last Fail^sic as the Farmers’ Alliance candidate for governor. The printers are being pushed to the utmost to get out the first 100,000 by March 1, and we are assured that it will be issued by that time. Advance subscriptions for the other 400,000 (or 900,000) will be received at ten cents a copy for some months yet, but all orders should be sent in with the cash as rapidly as received.

L. W. Hoch, Adrian, Mich.—Enclosed is check^sic for $113. Will continue remitting as cash is received. I believe you will be perfectly safe in charging me with 15,000 to 25,000 of the first 100,000. That number will probably last till your second lot is ready for delivery. I still feel that 50,000 can be placed in Michigan. It takes well and money comes quite easily when the plan is fully presented.

F. A. Herwig, Philadelphia, Pa.—I enclose $50 for first 500 copies for the Kensington Reform Club. Am sure the publication and distribution of this edition will give the cause of reform a great boost.

J. P. Cranford, Brooklyn, N. Y.—Enclosed is $10 for 100 copies.

R. G. Brown, Memphis, Tenn.—Expect to have some time for this work next week, and intend to work my native and acquired gall for all it is worth to raise $500.

Henry J. O’Neill, Allentown, Pa.—Find enclosed $3 for 30 copies. No better method of propogating^sic the doctrine of Free Trade could be devised. The distribution of the edition so much in advance of the campaign of 1892 must give to the undertaking much greater results than could follow were it left to a later day, for people must hear truth for some time before they realize that it is truth.

Geo. H. Phelps, Denver, Col.—Enclosed find $30 in part payment for 500 copies for Charles Ford, Charles N. Monaghan and myself; balance soon. continued on p. 18 →

MICHIGAN SUBSCRIPTIONS.

The wonderful work L. W. Hoch is doing is having its effect, and subscriptions are beginning to pour in from Michigan. The paid subscriptions are coming in so rapidly that we are “snowed under,” and can at present only report subscriptions accompanied by cash. Mr. Hoch wants 25,000 of the first 100,000 reserved for him, and this will be done if possible. L. W. Hoch, Adrian, 1,459 copies; George Lemke, 500; H. P. Whinnery, Adrian, 250; B. F. Snyder, Tecumseh, 136; C. Puddefoot, 100; A. Fyfe, Grand Rapids, 89; Nelson Markle, Detroit, 70; Edw. Leedom, Montague, 30; H. M. Holmes, Detroit, 20; W. O. George, Marseilles, 10; George Rebee, Ann Harbor^sic, 5; George Robins. Jackson^sic, 1.

Tract No. 36 will be freely sent to any address or list of addresses furnished.

42 University Place, New York. W. J. ATKINSON.

“THE UNEARNED INCREMENT.”

London Weekly Bulletin, January 24.

“House rent, which is a test of prosperity, has gone up largely in recent years, because the working classes can afford to give themselves better accommodation.” These are the words of Mr. Chamberlain, speaking recently at Birmingham at the jubilee celebration of a large friendly society. The proposition he enunciates is, as we believe, so directly at variance with the real truth that it ought not to pass unchallenged. We propose to adduce for this purpose a few facts and figures, which even Mr. Chamberlain cannot very well controvert or deny, showing that house rent has risen, not because the working classes—or any class at all, for that matter—can “afford to give themselves better accommodation,” but because the increase in the value of land, followed, as a matter of course, by an increase in the rent of the houses built upon it, is diverted systematically into the pockets of the landowners, who do, in most instances, absolutely nothing to “earn” the “increment,” which is growing at a far greater rate than that at which wages are increasing, or the necessaries of life are decreasing in cost.

We have shown in former articles some of the reasons for the prevailing “hard times” from which nearly every class, and more especially the laboring classes, are suffering. We propose to adduce to-day another reason, and that is the license permitted to the lord of the soil to swallow up practically the whole of the enormous increase which is going on in the value of land in large towns, and especially in London. It is notorious that he does so, therefore it would be mere waste of time to offer proof of the fact. Instance only the Dukes of Westminster and Bedford, and Lord Portman, who own so large a part of the soil on which London stands. They either let this land for a term of years at a high ground-rent or they build on it themselves. The land keeps going up in value, and the leaseholder strings up the rents in proportion. At the end of the usual ninety-nine years’ term the land and buildings revert to the landlord. As for the landlord who lets his land and houses together, he usually grants a very short lease of the premises, compels the tenant to put them in complete decorative repair at the end of his term, when he invariably raises the rent, and exacts a heavy fine for renewal.

Now, who created the increased value? Not the landlord, certainly—he does, as a rule, nothing—but the public who settle thickly upon it, and make the improvements of all kinds which constitute value. Per se, an acre of land in the city of London is of no more value than an acre on the Sussex Downs. But instead of the public getting anything out of this “unearned increment,” they have, rich and poor alike, to pay higher and ever higher rents for the right to live and carry on their business on the spots their own energy and enterprise have made so valuable. The agricultural rental of the land on which London stands would be about a quarter of a million sterlirg^sic, but, without the buildings, it is worth three hundred millions sterling. The land for two miles round St. Paul’s has increased during the last one hundred and fifty years a thousandfold. The people whose shops and

p. 18, col. 2 other buildings stand on that land pay this enormous appreciation in value in almost impossible rents, and in rates and taxes growing with those rents every year. To whom? Why, to the ground landlord of course. And yet Mr. Chamberlain has the sublime audacity to say that rents have gone up “because people can afford to give themselves better ‘accommodation^sic.” And this assertion is made, be it remembered, as to the laboring classes. Now the following evidence was adduced before the Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes: that in Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, St. Giles’, Marylebone, and other poor quarters of London, 88 per cent. of the population pay more than one-fifth of their income for rent.”Rents in the congested districts of London are getting gradually higher, and wages are not rising, and there is a prospect, therefore, of the disproportion between rent and wages growing still greater.” So much for Mr. Chamberlain’s “rise in wages.” He says that bread, sugar, and tea have gone down enormously; but what about beef and mutton? Clothing, we admit, is going down in price; but taken all together the reductions he mentions nothing like equal the^sic increase in rent. But Mr. Chamberlain would perhaps say, Look at the cheap railway fares from which the poor man benefits all over the country. We reply, They are not cheap, but dear. Only last week we mentioned that railway fares in Austro-Hungary are, under the zone system, a farthing per mile. They are not above a halfpenny per mile in Belgium. Why the difference? For one reason, because the landed interest of England is estimated to have received the sum of £100,000,000 from railway companies alone, over and above the market value of the land thus sold!

This sounds all very well, some reader may reply, but you can no more prevent a man buying land and holding it for the rise than you can prevent the same operation in stocks and shares. But there is just this difference: land is a fixed quantity. We cannot make the metropolitan area one single inch bigger than it is. Land, again, is as much a necessity of human existence as air or water, and infinitely more limited. The present system raises it in such places as London to a fancy price, and that fancy price is paid by the many who, combined, have created it, to the one who does nothing towards causing the enhanced value. It would, of course, be absurd to say that land will not rise in value as population and business settle upon it. But, say we, distribute the “increment” unearned by the landlord among those who earn it. Come upon each individual estate, and lay hold of so much of the increase as might be found to have taken place in rental value over a given period as was not due to outlay by the landlord. How this may be effected is far too wide a question to go into here. But if a building, say in Lombard street, were found to have increased in letting value in ten or twenty years by 20 per cent., confiscate for the public benefit of the district so much of it as had not been due to landlord’s outlay. Rents would still rise, but they would obviously rise much less rapidly. The “increment” would then be devoted to reducing the burden of rates on the tenant, in itself a reduction of rental equal to the increase in the value of the land from natural causes. Urban land would change hands much more freely on more moderate terms. The landlord’s claws would be effectually pared, and the public cease to be rack-rented beyond endurance.

The brief space of a newspaper article is of course too narrow to allow of more than a mere glance at so wide a subject as the just distribution of the “unearned increment” in land. But we may depend upon it that when a Radical Government comes into power this will be one of the first questions to which it will address itself. What a party cry in the place of poor Home Rule! Tell every working man with a vote that you offer a simple scheme by which his rent would go down, instead of rising, but that if in some cases it did rise, then his taxes would be lowered just in proportion. Such a platform would carry the country, for it would appeal to the pocket of everybody, the landowning class only excepted.

PERSONAL.

A reporter of the Brooklyn Eagle, in his summnry^sic of a lecture by Dr. Meredith on land ownership, said that up to a certain point the doctor gave out what sounded like “remarkably good Henry Georgeism,” but that he suddenly switched off and denounced the national ownership of land in favor of God’s ownership, after the manner of the Jewish theocracy,” leading his readers to believe that the doctor was opposed to the George theory. S. D. Guion thereupon wrote to the Eagle a letter in which he showed the mistake made by the reporter, and said that if the doctor “switched” at all it was in the direction of “Henry Georgeism,” and not away from it. The reporter will be more careful next time, especially as he knows now that Mr. Guion is around taking notes.

* * *

In Topeka, Kansas, last week, while delivering an address, T. V. Powderly was seized with a sudden attack of heart disease. Mr. Powderly has been troubled with heart disease for several years, and his recent trip and speech making has fatigued him considerably. He has cancelled all his engagements to speak for some time to come.

* * *

A late number of the Herkimer County Herald has a letter from George E. Bedell, showing how farmers can be helped by the adoption of the Single Tax.

SHE IS UNANIMOUS AGAINST THE TARIFF.

Chicago American Farmer.

Not only does the prudent housewife find an increased tax on food when she goes to market, but the towels and table linen have also suffered an increased tax along with almost all articles she has occasion to purchase. The American housewife, when unanimous, is invincible; and she has become very unanimous indeed in her indignation at McKinley prices, or rather McKinley taxes.

THAT’S SO.

New York Telegram.

Cleveland has done probably more than any man of the time to smash the high tariff swindle—excepting Major McKinley.

A LYING ANSWER.

Chicago Tribune.

CHICAGO, January 13.—Editor of the Tribune: What is the meaning of the Single Tax? I see it argued in the papers, and spoken of by ministers and professors of all kinds, and even by Gladstone, in a speech at Manchester, England. Kindly let me have the full meaning of the term Single Tax.

MARSHALL GRAY.

[The Single Tax as advocated by Henry George and the land nationalizers means a tax on land, lots in towns as well as farms, to the amount of its full rental value. The product of such a tax, in George’s opinion, would be sufficient to meet all the expenses of Covernment^sic—National, State, county and municipal. There would be no occasion for any other form of taxation. Hence the name Single Tax. The imposition of the tax would in the towns mean confiscation of real estate values and in the country district the beggary of the farmers. It would convert all present owners of realty into tenants of the State land, serfs to be taxed at the pleasure and for the profit of an office-holding oligarchy. It would leave the town and city lot owner nothing but his improvements, and, indeed, not all his improvements, because, as George himself says, some improvements become indistinguishable from the lands. Sewerage and drainage probably would be included in such improvements. To the farmer the Single Tax plan would leave nothing that he could call his own but his house, his barns and his agricultural implements. The scheme, as might be expected, is only advocated by cranks and visionaries. It is ofttimes shifted, qualified and softened down by sophists like George and revolutionary theorists like Michael Davitt to meet the unanswerable and logical objections urged against it. But to the extent that it is thus qualified it ceases to be a Single Tax plan. The vicious principle is maintained, however. It is opposed by all owners of realty, all the farmers of the country, all the owners of lots in the towns and cities, representing 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 families. It is as impracticable and visionavy^sic as most of the cranks who advocate it and who are, as a rule, landless and propertyless. It has been tried in India and in Egypt. The result is that there is not a more pitiably miserable people in the world than the Indian ryots and the Egyptian felaheen—the land serfs of both^sic countries.]

GETTING READY FOR BLAINE AND ’92.

Altoona, Pa., Tribune.

There is a vast difference between reciprocity and Free Trade, although some of our revenue reform contemporaries seem unable to see it. Free Trade means the opening of our ports to the unrestricted commerce of the world. Reciprocity means a mutual arrangement between two nations for the free exchange of certain specified products to the advantage of both- Free Trade is a dangerous experiment; reciprocity is a beneficial business arrangement.

ANYTHING TO DESTROY CLEVELAND.

Kansas City Star.

For the first time in many years the New York Sun has quoted from the New York World. The clippirg^sic was in reference to the “matchless ability of Senator Gorman, whom the Sun is grooming as an opponent of Cleveland.” In his anxiety to destroy Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Dana is willing to concede something even to Joe Pulitzer.

MAINE WILL “TUMBLE” SOME DAY.

Boston Globe.

Maine is now about to try the experiment that many other States have tried without success, taxing its capital and industry to death to make the State prosperous. Lighter taxes, not heavier, are what Maine needs.

“A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME,” ETC.

New York Herald.

“Free Trade is an abominable humbug,” say the Republicans. Then they dress up Free Trade in the décolleté garments of reciprocity and remark, “How beautiful!”

THE PLATFORM OF THE CANADIAN PREMIER.

Montreal Witness.

Sir John MacDonald’s platform can be expressed in one word, “Prorecil procitection^sic.”

HE SEES THE SHELLS, AND GUESSES EGGS.

New York World.

Mr. Blaine is the only Republican of any consequence who sees what the people want. They want Democracy, and Mr. Blaine is getting as close to it as he can.

“BODIES AND SOULS ARE NOT IN OUR LINE.”

Edward E. Kidder in The People’s Press.

Let them strike as much as they like. To us ’tis a perfect boon. Merrily high the prices fly In monopoly’s big balloon. Though they starve by bits in the inky pits, Though their children cry for bread, The end of the game must be the same— King Capital keeps ahead.

Good pay? Absurd! Upon my word, What more can the men require? You speak of the poor—what they endure, Deprived of their bit of fire. If we who control the price of coal Reduced it at this time of year, Our dividends, my worthy friends, Would rapidly disappear!

I’m willing to add that the work is bad, And dangerous too, to face; But when one stops and reels and drops There’s another to take his place. “Supply and demand,” throughout the land, By that we stand or fall. We’re dealing in coals, but bodies and souls Are not in our line at all.

p. 19, col. 2

CARDINAL McKINLEY’S FAREWELL.

Henry Guy Carleton in Chicago News.

“Nay, then—farewell: I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from this razzle-dazzle of the late election I haste now up Salt River. I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no Congress sees me more. Farewell—a long farewell to my soft snaplet. This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth His little McKinley Bill; to-morrow scatters His noble floaters all in blocks of five, And puts his chunk of faith in grandpop’s hat; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And, when he thinks—poor, silly chump!—full sure His ticket is a winner, something drops In Indiana with a sickening thud, And then he falls as I do. I have ventured With Lodge and Tom Platt and the other boys These many summers on a sea of tariff, But, far beyond my depth, my high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Busted and very tired, in that soup— That scalding soup that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of the G. O. P.—I hate ye! I feel my heart new opened; oh, how wretched Is that poor man who monkeys with the tariff! There is betwixt the silver bill and surplus, The pension grab and all the other jobs, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Ollie Teall— Never to hope again. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away the tariff! ‘Tis pizen to the mugwumps; how can we then, Who must corral the mugwumps, hope to win by’t? Tone down the whole durned thing; let niggers vote Without the Lodge Bill; try it once, for iuck^sic! Still in the right hand carry some small ’boodle’ To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Jim Blaine and ’92. Then if thou fall’st Thou fall’st a blessed martyr. Lead me in: There, put me in my little trundle-bed; That durn bill warnt no good! O Cromwell, Cromwell, Had I but served Jim Blaine with half the zeal I served Tom Reed, he would not, in mine age, Have left me naked to these hoosiers and These tariff cranks from Tammany!”

FREE LAND FOR A FREE PEOPLE.

By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D., Honorary Member of the Society.

Air—“Hearts of Oak.”

(Reprinted from the “Christian Commonwealth” of January 15, 18[9?]1.)

Thank God for the sunshine, the air, and the sea, For the rain and the dew, ever free to the free, No landlords can parcel them out or conspire Tc^sic sell them, or tax them or let them on hire, And close up with barriers what nature design’d In mercy and love for the needs of mankind! In mercy and love for the needs of mankind!

* Chorus.

Hearts of love are our means, Truth and justice our end, The land, boys, the land Let that be our stand, And vote for the man Who’ll restore us our land.

There’s a break in the clouds, there’s a gleam in the sky, There’s a beautiful star, brightly shining on high, That heralds the dawn of the long-promised day, When right shall be Might, and shall flourish for aye; When man on the strength of his manhood shall stand To enjoy and possess and replenish the Land To enjoy and possess and replenish the Land!

Chorus.

With our faces to heaven and our feet on the sod We swear by the Faith that we cherish in God, By the breeze of the sky, by the light of the sun, That the land shall be ours and that Right shall be done. Hear it, ye tyrants, that hold us in thrall! God, the Great Giver, gives freely to all! God, the Great Giver, gives freely to all!

Chorus.

It has been suggested that the above song should be sung on the van platform, with the chorus, as a means of educating the rural mind as to the right use of the popnlar^sic vote, the only weapon for working a peaceful revolution.

*Chorus by T. Briggs.

THE CASE PLAINLY STATED.

Hamilton, Ont., Times.

When the rich protected manufacturers and the recipients of large Government salaries talk to the workingmen about the good the high tariff does to the wage-earners, let the latter figure it out in this way:

Some men have goods to sell; some men sell labor and buy goods. It is a matter of self-interest to get as much as possible for what one has to sell, and to pay as little as possible for what one has to buy. The man who sells goods and buys labor wants to have goods dear and labor cheap; the other man (the workingman, as he is called,) wants to have goods cheap and labor dear.

The workingman wants to have labor dear, so that he can have plenty to spend. He wants to have goods cheap, so that his money will go a long way, as the saying is, in paying for goods. Then he has a secondary interest. When goods are cheap the people buy them freely: then lots of goods have to be made in the factories: then employment is plentiful; then labor is in demand; then wages rise.

A REGULAR “SNAP” FOR WANAMAKER.

Knights of Honor Journal.

Hon. John Wanamaker, Postmaster-General and wholesale merchant, is a thorough believer in life insurance, of which he is reported to carry about half a million. What is good for himself he considers of advantage to his many employees, for whose special benefit he has formed a life association in connection with his general business, to which all are required to contribute. According to the constitution thereof the imperative conditions connected therewith are briefly enumerated:

All persons, employees of John Wanamaker, directly connected with his business house, shall be members of this association, which membership shall continue during the entire period of their employment by the said John Wanamaker. But upon the termination or ending of such service or employment, be it by resignation, discharge or otherwise, their membership in this association shall cease and end, and they shall forfeit all rights or benefits therein accruing by reason of such membership.

p. 20, col. 1

SINGLE TAX LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Single Tax Library.

(Entered at Post Office, New York, as second-class mail matter.)

A Set of Tracts (exclusive of Books), from Nos. 1 to 36, will be sent for 40 cents. The price will increase with the addition of new Tracts.

Cents. 1. A Syllabus of Progress and Poverty. Louis F. Post. 8 pages ….. 3 2. Out of print. 3. First Principles. Henry George. 4 pages ….. 2 4. The Right to the Use of the Earth. Herbert Spencer. 4 pages….. 2 5. Farmers and the Single Tax. Thomas G. Shearman. 8 Pages ….. 3 6. The Canons of Taxation. Henry George. 4 pages….. 2 7. A Lawyer’s Reply to Criticisms. Samuel B. Clark. 16 pages….. 4 8. Out of print 9. The Single Tax. Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages. ….. 3 10. The American Farmer. Henry George. 4 pages….. 2 11. Unemployed Labor. Henry George. 4 pages ….. 2 12. The Case Plainly Stated. H. F. Ring. 8 pages….. 3 13. Social Problems. 342 pages. 12mo. Paper….. 35 14. Objections to the Land Tax. Thomas G. Shearman. 4 pages ….. 2 15. Land Taxation. A Conversation Between David Dudley Field and Henry George. 4 pages ….. 2 16. How to Increase Profits. A. J. Steers. 2 pages ….. 1 17. The New Political Economy. E. O. Brown. 4 pages ….. 2 18. Thy Kingdom Come. Henry George. 4 pages. ….. 2 19. The Functions of Government. Henry George. 8 pages ….. 3 20. The Menace of Plutocracy. Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages….. 3 21. Tenement House Morality. J. O. S. Huntington. 4 pages….. 2 22, 23, 24, out of print. 25. Taxing Land Values. Henry George. 8 pages….. 3 26. Henry George’s Mistakes. Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages ….. 3 27. The Democratic Principle. Henry George 8 pages ….. 3 28. Progress and Poverty. Henry George. 512 pages ….. 35 29. Out of print. 30. Property in Land. Henry George. 77 pages ….. 15 31 and 32, out of print. 32. Out of print^sic 34. Single Tax Platform. By Henry George. 2 pages….. 1 35. Justice the Object—Taxation the Means. Henry George. 8 pages….. 3 36. Out of print.

TARIFF TRACTS.

A Set of Tariff Tracts will be sent to any address for 10 cents.

57. Protection as a Universal Need. Henry George. 4 pages.
58. The Tariff Question. Henry George. 4 pages.
59. Protection and Wages. Henry George. 8 pages.
60. The Common Sense of the Tariff Question Thomas^sic G. Shearman. 8 pages
61. Protection the Friend of Labor? Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages. 75 A Short Tariff History. Thomas G. Shearman. 2 pages. 67^sic. Plain Talk to Protectionists. Thomas G. Shearman. 4 pages.

Address THE STANDARD, 42 University Place, New York City.

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THE SINGLE TAX PLATFORM.

ADOPTED BY THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE SINGLE TAX LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES AT COOPER UNION, NEW YORK, SEPT. 3, 1890.

We assert as our fundamental principle the self-evident truth enunciated in the Declaration of American Independence, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

We hold that all men are equally entitled to the use and enjoyment of what God has created and of what is gained by the general growth and improvement of the community of which they are a part. Therefore, no one should be permitted to hold natural opportunities without a fair return to all for any special privilege thus accorded to him, and that value which the growth and improvement of the community attach to land should be taken for the use of the community.

We hold that each man is entitled to all that his labor produces. Therefore no tax should be levied on the products of labor.

To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and indirect taxation.

Since in all our states we now levy some tax on the value of land, the single tax can be instituted by the simple and easy way of abolishing, one after another, all other taxes now levied, and commensurately increasing the tax on land values, until we draw upon that one source for all expenses of government, the revenue being divided between local governments, state governments and the general government, as the revenue from direct taxes is now divided between the local and state governments; or, a direct assessment being made by the general government upon the states and paid by them from revenues collected in this manner.

The single tax we propose is not a tax on land, and therefore would not fall on the use of land and become a tax on labor.

It is a tax, not on land, but on the value of land. Thus it would not fall on all land, but only on valuable land, and on that not in proportion to the use made of it, but in proportion to its value—the premium which the user of land must pay to the owner, either in purchase money or rent, for permission to use valuable land. It would thus be a tax, not on the use or improvement of land, but on the ownership of land, taking what would otherwise go to the owner as owner, and not as user.

In assessments under the single tax all values created by individual use or improvement would be excluded, and the only value taken into consideration would be the value attaching to the bare land by reason of neighborhood, etc., to be determined by impartial periodical assessments. Thus the farmer would have no more taxes to pay than the speculator who held a similar piece of land idle, and the man who on a city lot erected a valuable building would be taxed no more than the man who held a similar lot vacant.

The single tax, in short, would call upon men to contribute to the public revenues, not in proportion to what they produce or accumulate, but in proportion to the value of the natural opportunities they hold. It would compel them to pay just as much for holding land idle as for putting it to its fullest use.

The single tax, therefore, would—

1. Take the weight of taxation off of the agricultural districts where land has little or no value irrespective of improvements, and put it on towns and cities where bare land rises to a value of millions of dollars per acre.

2. Dispense with a multiplicity of taxes and a horde of taxgatherers, simplify government and greatly reduce its cost.

3. Do away with the fraud, corruption and gross inequality inseparable from our present methods of taxation, which allow the rich to escape while they grind the poor. Land cannot be hid or carried off, and its value can be ascertained with greater ease and certainty than any other.

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CONSUMPTION,

SCROFULA, BRONCHITIS and CHRONIC COUGH or SEVERE COLD.

All Druggists sell it, but be sure you get the genuine, as there are poor imitations.

RECRUIT SUBSCRIPTION BOOKS AT THE OLD PRICES.

For the convenience of persons wishing to send THE STANDARD ON TRIAL TO THEIR FRIENDS, we have prepared recruit subscription books. They are handsomely bound in heavy alligator paper, and sold at prices regulated by the number of blanks in each book.

These blanks are each an order on THE STANDARD to SEND THE PAPER to the person designated, and they save all trouble of remittance, as they are paid for in advance. As soon as one of the blanks reaches our business office a postal card is sent to the person designated, informing him tha^sic at the request of the sender THE STANDARD will be sent to him FOR FOUR WEEKS, beginning with the next issue, and that in case he does not wish to continue it IT WILL BE SıOPPED^sic AT THE END OF THAT TIME. This attracts more attention to it than is given to a sample copy sent out directly from the office.

EVERY ACTIVE WORKER FOR THE SINGLE TAX should have in his pocket a recruit subscription book, in order that he may be able to tear out the blanks and order the paper sent to anyone with whom he has been having an argument on the subject. If our friends will USE THE STUBS IN THE BOOKS and keep a record of those to whom they order the paper seut^sic they will be able to follow the matter up and probably make converts.

PRICES.

Five subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . $1 00

Twelve subscriptions . . . . . . . . . 2 00

Thirty-five subscriptions . . . . . . . . 5 00

THE STANDARD,

No. 42 University place, New York City.

LEGAL NOTICES.

IN PURSUANCE OF AN ORDER MADE BY HON. ROGER A. PRYOR, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas for the City and County of New York, on the 2d day of February, 1891, notice is hereby given to all creditors and persons having claims against Elisha T. Weymouth, lately doing business at No. 5 Howard street, in the City and County of New York, that they are required to present their claims with the vouchers therefor duly verified, to the subscriber, the duly appointed assignee of the said Elisha T. Weymouth, for the benefit of creditors, at his office, No. 234 Broadway, New York City, on or before the 28th day of April, 1891.

Dated New York, February 13th, 1891.

FRANK E HIPPLE^sic, Assignee.

H. B. WHITBECK, Attorney for Assignee, 234 Broadway, New York.

IN PURSUANCE OF AN ORDER MADE BY THE HON. ROGER A. PRYOR, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, on the 12th day of February, 1891, notice is hereby given to all the creditors and persons having claims against Edward H. Ammidown, lately doing business in the City of New York, that they are required to present their claims with the vouchers therefor duly verefied^sic, to the subscriber, the duly appointed assignee of the said Edward H. Ammidown, for the benefit of his creditors, at his place of transacting business, No. 58 Worth street, in the City of New York, on or before the 1st day of May, 1891.

New York, February 14th, 1891.

ALBERT D. SMITH, Assignee.

IN PURSUANCE OF AN ORDER MADE BY THE HON ROGER A. PRYOR, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in and for the City and County of New York, on the 19th day of February, 1891, notice is hereby given to all the creditors and persons having claims against Patrick J. MacKeon, lately doing business at Nos. 210 and 212 Sixth avenue, New York City, that they are required to present their said claims with the vouchers therefor, duly verified, to the subscriber, the duly qualified and appointed assignee of the said Patrick J. MacKeon, for the benefit of his creditors, at his place of transacting business, No. 120 Broadway, in the City of New York, on or before the 14th day of May, 1891.

Dated, New York, February 24, 1891.

JAMES DUANE SQUIRES, Assignee.

E. V. THOMALL, Attorney for Assignee, No. 120 Broadway, New York City.

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