I like that expression!
It comes from a 1914 report of a Washington State taxation symposium, in a section about taxing forests. Here's a section of it, a comment from someone representing the state Grange:
Mr. Kegley of the state grange requested me to express to this conference as the representative of the grange the purport of the resolution that we have been adopting for the past five years, and with the permission of the chairman I will do so. He cautioned me particularly not to "let them put anything over on us," and I will try not to do so. Our particular grievance lies against the speculators. We have adopted resolutions for the past five years at every session of the state grange, county granges, and by a great many subordinates, for the reform of our system of revenue so as to abolish speculation in land. When I was a small boy I purchased a pig. It spent most of its time rubbing itself against the pen, but did not seem to grow. Finally I asked my father what was the trouble. He teased me for awhile and then stated, using big words, that it was "supporting too many parasites." I asked him what a parasite was, and he said, "Your pig is lousy." The speculator is a louse on the body politic. He is absolutely useless, a mere parasite. He takes what does not belong to him. We farmers clear up our land and more than half the values we create goes to speculators. That ought to stop. We ought to collect from the speculator all that he gets that he does not earn. There ought to be taken from the speculator a special economic rent, not a tax, not a burden upon industry, not a burden on anything he is doing except his stealing.
We believe that the speculator ought to be relieved of that which he has unjustly acquired, to which he has no more right than the slave-holder or pirate to his ill-gotten wealth. These are strong terms, but it is the language of the grange. They have adopted resolutions again and again, unanimously and with great enthusiasm, and we submit that the principal thing this conference can do is to so reform our system of taxation, of public revenue, as to prevent the speculator getting a single dollar he has not earned.
Just a word considering what the speculator is doing in the community. If I went over on the other side of the mountains and dug a ditch, and a man should take water from that ditch, say half of it, he would be stealing. Yet every farmer who goes out on the stump land on the West coast, cultivates a farm and opens it up, has most of his value stolen from him by speculators — absolutely stolen. If a man were to come to my farm and drive off half my stock he would not be robbing me of a bit more, directly or morally, of what I had created, than he does when he takes the value I have created by clearing my farm. An Italian went to Bellingham and bought a lot from a speculator in the suburbs for $200. After awhile he thought he wanted to buy another lot, and tried to buy it for $200 — a lot next to the one he had already bought. But the speculator said, "No, you have added $100 to the lot adjoining your house." He did not get that $100. The speculator stole it. It is absolute stealing. Now we go further than that; we say the special curse of our whole system of taxation is the speculator. If we take from the speculator anything like what he is stealing from us we would not need any taxes. We could absolutely abolish all taxes and have a vast fund left over for a dividend to every stockholder.
Our timber is increasing tremendously. Our fisheries are increasing. The value of land on Second Avenue has increased, not because of what has been done by the owner, but because there are something like 80,000 people more in Seattle now than there were 10 years ago. The people that come in create but don't get that value. The speculator gets it all. The speculator is the sole cause of unemployment. Every man who wishes to control any natural resource should be made to pay to the public an annual rent of 4% or 5%, whatever is right, on the population value of the natural resources he is controlling, and we would have in this state more than $100,000,000 a year over and above our expenses, and that is a very conservative estimate. Timber increased in the State of Minnesota in 8 years more than $7 per thousand. You and I have built the Panama Canal by the increase in the price of sugar, $1.50 a sack, a few dollars on a suit of clothes, 50 cents to a dollar on a pair of shoes. The Panama Canal will add to the price of the billions of feet of timber in this state perhaps a dollar or two dollars per thousand, how much nobody knows yet, but something. Who is going to get that? If any man living thinks the timber barons are going to get that he is badly fooled. The state grange, the state federation of labor, and other organizations in this state propose to collect for the people every dollar of population-made value, or a fair rental on the values which our people have added to these natural resources, giving to the timber men merely what they have created, but keeping for the people all the values they have created. We propose to give the individually-made value to the individual who creates it. That is all we claim, all that we want. It is considerable to be sure, but it is all that we want. We want that every individual should have all that he creates, absolutely free of taxes. That is the position of the grange, asserted again and again in resolutions as clear as language can be made, to give to each individual all that he creates; to abolish all penalizing fines upon any industry and not fine a man for doing what he ought to do, what we want him to do. Up in Whatcom County every man who keeps a cow is fined 60 cents a year. If he keeps a good horse he is fined $8 a year. If he paints his house or takes out a stump he is taxed (fined). In the state in which I was born and raised, they paid a man for planting trees; but here we tax a man who blows out a stump. We should fine the man who keeps the stump in, and reward the man who takes it out. We want to tax the stump and exempt the cow. That, we think, is the only system. As representative of the grange I will have to make my report to the grange — they want to know what the attitude of every speaker is and what he thinks concerning the speculators. I think we of the grange do not care a continental about anything else. Are you going to help us to rid ourselves of the parasites (the speculators), or are you not? Are you going to help us to free ourselves from the men who are robbing as of the values we create, or are you going to fool away your time in a sham fight in putting upon property a lying tax which ultimately will fall upon the farmer and the wage-worker?
Pretty well covers it.