There would be no inequality, of course, as between landowners. There would be inequality between land-owners and— say-bondholders. But such inequality, too, is inherent in every tax-system. If, in time of war, we put a stamp tax on bank cheques, we are not bound thereby to put a stamp tax, as Mexico does, upon bills. It is unequal that a man who presents a bill and receives a cheque for it should not pay for a tax stamp, when the man who receives the bill and presents a cheque must pay for a tax stamp; but because we annoy people who draw cheques by making them put tax stamps upon them, it does not follow that in order to be just we must annoy people who present bills by making them buy tax stamps, too. Equality, like universality, tends to convince by its very sound. It sounds selfevident. But there are so many exceptions to the rule that the rule does not hold good. No tax system is ever, in its results, either universal or equal.

Under this same heading, our professor pleads that land values do not always increase and that many other values have unearned increments.

Land values as a whole tend to increase constantly. The occasional individual exceptions to this rule would be cared for by my single-tax system. As the rental value fell, the tax would fall. But it is to be remembered that while certain lots in New York City are worth less in 1913 than they were in 1907, every one of them is worth a great deal more now than it was in 1807.

It is true that there are other unearned increments, but most of them fall under the rule of de minimis and the few that do not cannot be reached by any tax-gatherer. Professor Seligman cites an investment of $100,000 in Sugar Trust stock, which suddenly becomes worth $170,000 by a market advance. There will be fewer such rapid advances in the future. The profits of the Sugar Trust came partly from good management, but largely from the fact that it could buy by campaign subscriptions the power to write the sugar tariff and could also buy the Government weighers.

This high authority, who writes with an assured desire to state the truth, thinks there are three economic defects in the single tax.

First: Its yield would not suffice for the expenses of poor communities. This can be met by changing the unit-area of taxation; by assessing real estate at its full value; and by applying the doctrine he himself states in his chapter on Separation of State and Local Revenues: "Many of the expenditures of local communities ought to be defrayed by the State Government.” The slums of New York do not yield in taxes enough to cover the city expenditures on the slum population. If each slum area were treated as an independent unit of taxation, this objection as to the single tax in poor communities would apply to any tax in this particular area. We make it part of a unit which embraces all classes of population and so raise money for its needs. Enlarge, then, the "poor community" unit of taxation, if necessary. I need not enlarge upon the other two points: assessment of real estate at full value and dividing expenditures properly between local and State Governments.

Second: The single tax would injure farmers. The proof offered of this is a comparison between land and other assessments in sundry communities. The flaw in this proof is the almost universal custom of assessing land below its real value. This is particularly true of unimproved land. An assessor who lists an improved lot at 60 per cent. of its value will often list an unimproved one as low as 10 per cent. of its value. The Manhattan Single Tax Club laid before Mayor Strong proof that Astor holdings on the Harlem River were assessed at onetenth of their value, while improved small lots in that neighborhood were assessed at 60 per cent. This tendency is general throughout the country. If corrected, the figures cited would certainly be radically changed. If, after such change, they still failed to show that the single tax would lighten the farmers' burden, I would then make its adoption a practical question by exempting land holdings up to $3,000 apiece from any taxation, basing such exemption upon (1) the homestead theory; (2) the de minimis theory, which in every country with an income tax exempts incomes below a certain figure; and (3) upon the frank statement that the great public benefits from the single tax would justify whatever reasonable small exemptions were necessary to obtain a majority for it.

Third: The single tax would not benefit rich urban communities, because the exemption of improvements from taxation would not (1) cause increased building; (2) lower rents; (3) increase wages; and (4) cause general prosperity.

The vital point is No. 1. If there is increased building, there will be more buildings for rent and therefore lower rents; there will be more opportunities for work and therefore higher wages; and the combination of lower rents and higher wages will, in any normal period, tend to general prosperity.

The question is, then: "Will the exemption of improvements increase building?"

Professor Seligman's first point is that capital cannot be found for the new buildings; that "what is put into new houses will, therefore, simply be so much taken away from other productive employments." This objection, if valid, would have prevented the construction of railroads and the development of electric power and light. Whenever an opportunity of great profit is offered, capital comes. It comes from three sources:

(1) other productive, but less productive, employments; (2) unemployed wealth; (3) new capital, created by thrift (partly due to the reward of thrift offered by the new opportunity) and by the abundant returns of the new opportunity so far as it has been utilized.

The second point made is that a house tax falls wholly upon the renter only when houses alone are taxed; that when land, personal property, corporations and incomes are taxed, "the tendency for [the house tax] to be shifted [upon the renter] will be diminished." If diminished, which I doubt, it would not be cancelled. Probably no building has ever been built for rent without the owner's being convinced that after paying taxes out of his net rents, the remainder would yield him a good return on his investment. If a man decided in 1912 to put $100,000 into a building for rent on Manhattan Island and expected the building to be assessed at its full value, he figured that, after paying a building tax of $1,830, the residue of his rents would yield him a fair return on $100,000. Is it not clear, too, that if the supply of three-room apartments in any city were to be materially increased within a year, their rental would fall?

Our author doubts whether much unoccupied land is held for

speculative purposes in large cities. He cites the official figures showing only 467 vacant lots in 1911 south of Fourteenth Street, on Manhattan Island, out of 24,203 parcels. But here he overlooks the large number of lots inefficiently improved or improved only with "tax-payers." The majority of lots in the whole city to-day are unimproved. The single tax would force their improvement. The professor thinks that the "rents in the slums would not be "affected," because the slum-dwellers like the "social opportunities of contact" and the toiler must be "near his work." In January, 1913, there were 78,115 dark rooms, including 23,788 without windows, in New York City, in which people lived,-if such rotting existence can be called living. Did anybody ever deliberately choose to mildew in such a room on account of its "social opportunities of contact "? The single tax would provide funds for the construction of transit systems at much lower fares than those of to-day. The new sets of homes would give the "social opportunities of contact"; the new transit facilities would put the workman, wherever he lived, near his work." Would not, then, the “ rents in the slums " be "affected"?

Western Canada is of course of much interest to us just now. It is the scene of a "boom," which is bound to collapse, and this collapse will hereafter be cited (unjustly) as due to the single tax. The rate of taxation there has been far too low to check land speculation. The official figures of new buildings in Seattle and Vancouver, however, for the last twelve years, * Population, 1901, Seattle, 96,000; Vancouver, 26,000; 1912, Seattle, 250,000; Vancouver, 150,000. Here are the comparative figures of new buildings:

*

*

would seem to prove, after deducting the probable results of all other causes, that exempting buildings from taxation causes a great increase in building. And as this is a priori true, this a posteriori proof seems conclusive of our claim that the exemption of improvements will increase building.

In summing up his view of what could properly be done now, our antagonist-it would perhaps be more fitting to call him our judge, for except in one instance his attitude is that of the judge, highly resolved to discover the truth—our judge, then, marches part way with us on the path of progress. He says: "By enforcing the [land] tax laws as they exist to-day, by extending the law of special assessments to all the cases which are properly referable to the principle of benefits, by levying a special tax on unbuilt city lots and by adding to the existing code of taxation some form of increment-value land-taxes, we shall in all probability do as much as is under existing conditions either practicable or equitable." This, excellent as far as it goes, is but a student's saying, a bit of cloistered wisdom, timidly peering beyond the cloister's rim into the great world, but shrinking back from its splendid hurly-burly. Hear Emerson on cloistered minds: "The luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see,—how you can see; 'it must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, millioncolored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning."

Professor Seligman is honest and will do well. His face is set toward the light. Presently the cloister will be too small for him and he will see "the immortal light" that will shine over a world that has come forth from the chill darkness of poverty.

Let none think that the single tax is still but an academic question. It has beaten upon the barred doors of every legislature the world over until many of those doors have half-opened to it. It is in part the law of the greatest two empires, Great