Pointers on the Single Tax

POINTERS ON THE SINGLE TAX.

The San Jose Letter, February 15, 1896

A landless man is an unfreeman. — Saxon Proverb.

He who has no clear, inherent right to live somewhere has no right to live at all. — Horace Greeley.

The land of every country is the common property of the people of that country. — Bishop McNulty.

The greatest discovery of my life is that the men who do the work never get rich. — Andrew Carnegie.

Let the great landlords beware; if once they believe that they have no need of the people, the people may in their turn think they have no need of them. — Sismondi.

All the sufferings, against which civilized nations have to struggle, may be referred to the exclusive right of property in the soil, as their source. — Professor Zachraie.

Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the principle of those things which are not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or exchangeable property. — John Ruskin.

The foreign goods that compete with the goods of our manufacturers and trusts are heavily taxed at the Custom House, but foreign laborers are admited free of duty. — Hon. Tom L. Johnson.

The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner;'a perfumed Seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil de Boeuf hath an alchemy whereby he will extract from her every third nettle—and call it rent. — Carlyle.

The English landlord system, so far from having any moral basis, is founded upon a supercilious contempt of the only moral principal that can afford any justification for private property in land. — Professor A. W. Hunter, M. A., L. L. B.

Under the feudal system the proprietor was the Crown, as representing the nation; while the subordinate tenures were held with duties attached to them and were liable, upon nonfulfilment, to forfeiture. — J. A. Froude.

Those who make private property of the gift of God (land) pretend in vain to be innocent. For in thus retaining the substance of the poor they are the murderers of those who die every day for the want of it. — St. Gregory the Great.

I should myself deny that the mineral treasures under the soil of a country belong to a handful of surface proprietors in the sense that this gentleman appeared to think they did (i. e., to do with as he pleased). — Lord Coleridge.

While the tax on the land values promotes industry and therefore increases private wealth, taxes upon industry act like a fine or a punishment inflicted upon industry; they impede and restrain and finally strangle it. — Dr. McGlynn.

Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road, every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption, raises rent. The land owner sleeps, but thrives. — Thorold Rogers.

This bull, the very type of massive strength, who, because he has not wit enough to see how he might be free, suffers want in sight of plenty, and is helplessly preyed upon by weaker creatures, seems to me no fit emblem of the working classes. — Henry George.

Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held for him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing for which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth's surface may be so held; and eventually the whole of the earth's surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands. — Herbert Spencer.

We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country with no legal rights of existence on the soil to the vast majority who do not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into a forest or hunting ground, and expel every human being who has hitherto lived upon it.  In a thickly populated country like England, where almost every acre has its owner and occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his fellow creatures; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that as regards true social science, we are still in a state of barbarism. — Alfred Russell Wallace.