ALFRED BISHOP MASON

HE lack of money is the root of all evil.

TH

There is a wise saying: "All general statements are untrue, including this one." There are evils which are not rooted in poverty, but they are as a rule easier to bear than those that are so rooted. They are also not so continuous. This is one reason why they are easier to bear. Thackeray's 'Time, that grey anodyne " either heals or dulls the sharpest grief. It neither heals nor dulls the wound of the wolf outside the door. That dweller on the threshold is a more monstrous thing than ever Rosicrucian fancy framed. There is no agony that can compare with that of the riven soul of a man with wife and children who sees them suffer because his willing hands cannot find work.

Involuntary poverty is the chief curse of mankind to-day. Condescending charity, even on the colossal scale of the present time, cannot grapple with it. About four thousand charitable agencies are actively at work in New York City to-day. The four thousand agencies and the forty million dollars they spend each year give practically no let to the swollen stream of poverty that flows steadily on, filling jail, brothel, bar-room and potter's field, wrecking bodies, breaking hearts and ruining souls. The Church has done nothing in nearly twenty centuries to abolish involuntary poverty. It has long dealt in futures. It is now beginning to deal in presents. The hope of the future may sometimes stay a sick soul. The gift of the present may sometimes heal a stricken body. Neither touches the cause of the curse. No other agency than charity and the Church even tries to grapple with involuntary poverty, except, here and there, the voice of the reformer, the scorned, abused, hated, crucified reformer, the welcomed, glorified reformer.

The strongest and the weakest thing on earth is the Law,weakest when it goes against human nature, strongest when it goes with it. It is the Law which the reformer would reform, in order to abolish involuntary poverty.

Two preventives of poverty, just two, are even suggested. They are Socialism and the Single Tax. Unless another can be found, we are morally bound to try one of these two. It cannot be that poverty is to be the general lot forever. If God has decreed that, let us "curse God and die." This Moloch who thus decrees the destruction of our children shall have no praise or reverence or belief from us. We will not dishonor God by believing in this god. Even the dull, grey level of Socialism would be better than the vast abysses, rarely reached by pale sunbeams, in which most of us dwell now. Even for individualism, sacred as it is and should be, the poverty of the mass is too great a price to pay.

The Single Tax remains to be tried, simple, straightforward, right. It will abolish involuntary poverty, without laying the weight of a finger upon the free development of the individual.

We single-taxers are fortunate in that at last we have a foeman worthy of our steel. Every idea that is to help mankind runs a gauntlet that is a gamut. First it is ignored; then it is abused; then it is discussed; then it triumphs. The gospel of Henry George can no longer be ignored. The princes and proletariat of Privilege have found that abuse would not kill it. It has reached the stage of being a practical question. It is being discussed. It is being homeopathically applied. We dread argument now as little as we have dreaded anger in the past. We welcome the fact that the chief American authority on taxation, Professor E. R. A. Seligman, devotes thirty-two pages of the eighth edition of his Essays in Taxation to a reasoned rejection of the single tax. Herewith we take issue with him, we who believe that poverty can be abolished, as slavery has been. It will be abolished, whenever Christendom is converted to Christianity, and perhaps a very long time before that GreekKalends' date ripens.

Professor Seligman says that the social utility theory is the acid test by which the single tax must abide. We welcome that test. The social utility theory is that the public convenience, as part of the salus populi, is the supreme law. He says that the difference between property in land and property in other things is one of degree. That is partly true. Land gains value in a

great city by the pressure of population. So do cabbages grown near a great city. But cabbages have a limit of price. There are many substitutes for them. Land-values seem to have no final limit. Year by year they increase. There is no substitute for land. And there is a marked difference in kind between land and other things. Bare land-value owes nothing to labor. All other taxable things owe their chief value to labor. The distinction is deep. In the Inheritance Tax chapter of his book, our courteous foe says: "It is now commonly recognized that incomes from property should pay a higher rate than incomes from labor."

The social-utility theory bids us derive the whole income of the State from the taxation of land-values, if this is for the public good. If not, not. This is true, whether the ideal basis of taxation is the theory of benefit or the theory of ability to pay. No system of taxation can make everybody pay in exact accordance with either the benefit he receives or the ability to pay which he possesses. Whatever tax-system favors most, or hinders least, the public well-being is the one to adopt.

Our antagonist says there are two fiscal defects of the single tax, viz.: it is inelastic and it intensifies the inequality of unjust

assessments.

My variety of the single tax would not be inelastic. I would leave every land-owner of to-day still the owner of his land. I would let him fix, subject to revision by the courts, his own valuation of his land. I would levy upon this valuation an annual tax (at first substantially the amount he pays now) but I would take, every year hereafter, the full rental value of his land, less its rental value to-day. This form of the single tax, which avoids all confiscation in its introduction, does not appeal to many faithful followers of Henry George. They make a fetish of "Progress and Poverty." That great man is best served by correcting his few mistakes. A variation of the first named tax would increase or decrease revenue, as might be desired. At a time of sudden stress, such as war, I would levy, if needed, first an income-tax. If this did not suffice, I would supplement it with stamp-taxes. If still more money were needed, I would levy revenue-duties. These three expedients, however,

should be regarded strictly as temporary and extraordinary expedients, to be cancelled as soon as the temporary and extraordinary folly of our killing foreigners could be stopped. These things would avoid a deficit. I see no danger in having a surplus, as long as the State has outstanding debts to pay, railroads to build, canals to dig, water-power to develop, or slums to replace with model tenements. If, however, a surplus becomes inadvisable, it can be avoided by lowering the tax on the landvalues of to-day.

Intensifying the inequality of unjust assessments would not be an unmixed evil, for it would tend to correct their injustice. Surely it is not beyond the power of man to make just assessments. In any city a stringent requirement that every real-estate deed should state the actual consideration paid would make the average assessment just within very few years. Under my singletax plan, the definite test of selling-value would remain.

Professor Seligman suggests three political defects of the single tax.

First: It abolishes a protective tariff. It does, and this is a merit, not a defect.

Second: It prevents the use of the taxing power (outside of itself) as a political or social power. It does, and this is also a merit. If Governments think it wise to regulate or destroy, they should do so by direct law and not by an evasive use of the taxing power. Is there any argument for a license-tax on a barroom which does not sustain a license-fee for a house of illfame?

Third: It is dangerous in a democracy to have a small class of tax-payers, because there would be no need of a budget, and the mass of citizens would have no sense of obligation to the Government and no common economic interests with it.

A budget is a statement of estimated receipts and expenditures. The necessity of it would not be diminished because the receipts would come from two forms of taxes on land-values, instead of from many forms of taxes on many things.

The average citizen would probably have a greater sense of obligation to government and a keener feeling of joint economic interest with it than he has now. If a city were to increase its

activities in providing parks, playgrounds, hospitals and schools and in preventing disease, and were to add to these a persistent activity in feeding school-children, in taking over urban transit, gas and electricity, and in substituting model-tenements for slums, would not the average citizen feel more obliged, more interested, than he does now? He now feels an alien to a Government controlled by Big Business. He would then feel himself part of a Government controlled by the people. Of course all this means many activities outside of the single tax, but the latter would give the means to pursue them, and the average citizen would be heartened to pursue them if he knew that he and his kind, now the prey of monopoly and privilege, had mastered their chief master, land-monopoly and land-privilege. Our opponent declares the single tax is unethical because it is not universal and because it is unequal.

No tax and no set of taxes can be universal. Exempt classes of objects appear in practically every law, such as household furniture and incomes below a certain amount. Professor Seligman would himself abolish the tax on personal property, save in so far as that property is levied upon by income-taxes, corporation-taxes, or franchise-taxes. All owe a duty to support the State, but there are other ways of supporting the State besides paying direct taxes, such as jury-duty, militia-service, schoolattendance, answering the call of police officers for help, exemplifying law and order in one's own life and teaching that doctrine to others by precept and example. The Minnesota school fund, thanks wholly to the public ownership of the increment-value of school lands, is or soon will be sufficient to support the Minnesota schools. None would claim that in that event a school tax should be levied because taxes should be "universal." Now we believe that the public owns the whole increment-value of all land. Personally, I propose to take only part of it, because I think we are morally estopped from taking it all, if we can get along on part of it, as we can. This increment-value is like the Minnesota school fund. If it will pay all our expenses, why levy other taxes? Since universality cannot possibly be attained, under any system, why condemn the single tax because universality is not attained under it?