LVTFan's Blog

The milk in our coconut

This is an editorial from the Leavenworth (KS) Labor News of February 10, 1893.  This newspaper is available on Newspapers.com, and it, along with the Fairhope (AL) Courier, is a wonderful resource.

The Galveston News has an editorial on the “Public Landlord” in which it attempts to show that the figures used by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman as to the total annual land values of the United States are incorrect, and then it proceeds to demolish the single tax idea. That’s the trouble with figure-mongers. What difference does it make whether Mr. Shearman’s figures are correct or not? The milk in our cocoanut lies in the statement that land does not possess in itself those qualities which enable it to be owned by an individual. It is not property, any more than the air, sunlight, or winds of heaven are property and subject to individual ownership.

Mr. Shearman is one of the most valued adherents to the single tax cause. We call him a “Single Taxer Limited.” He favors the single tax because of its simplicity as a fiscal measure.

We have all kinds of people in our camp; one highly valued Single Taxer is Billy Radcliff of Ohio, who goes around with a banjo singing our doctrine. Another is Rabbi Samuel Sale, of St. Louis, an orator whose words and figures of speech remind one of the lofty imagery of the prophet Isaiah. Then there is “Uncle Tom,” the poor workman, who writes with the eloquence, which, as Webster said, “was not taught in schools, but belongs to tho cause, the time and the occasion.”

Henry George, the philosopher; Judge Maguire and Louis F. Post, the lawyers; Dr. McGlynn, the religious teacher, and a countless number of professional men, artisans and common laborers make up our following, and run the entire gamut of human thought and endeavor.

If Thomas G. Shearman, the fiscal advocate of single tax, or Dr. McGlynn, the ethical advocate, or Louis F. Post, the legal advocate, or any other special pleader for our cause raises questions which, to men uninitiated in their special branches of learning seem to be untenable, what matters it?

The men who stand firmly upon the statement that individual ownership in land is the breeder of poverty, of sin and crime, and all the brood of evils which spring from an unjust and unrighteous act, care little whether the annual land values of the United States are seven hundred millions a year, or one million a year, or seven billions a year.

The point is that the annual value of land belongs to the creators of it, namely, to society in the aggregate—to the generation of men now living. The men who are dead have no part or lot in it; neither they nor their heirs who base their claims upon the fact that their ancestors claimed to own the land. When we die our interest in the land ceases and we do not believe that we can pass our title to our children as against the children of landless men who are living in the same generation with us.

If the annual land value be more or less than enough to support the state, what matters it? The value of land, be it great or small, belongs to all men who live on the land. That’s all there is to it.

If this contention can be sustained we need have no fears about other truths not being in harmony with our position. The first thing to do is to establish the truth that land cannot be owned by an individual — is not of a nature which permits it to be owned. After this is done, then the fiscal, ethical, legal, sentimental and utilitarian phases of the situation may be profitably considered and worked out. If our contention can be sustained, then there is a way to harmonize the details. This must be true, or else truth itself is a lie.

If you have time available, consider digging into those two newspapers.  They have a wealth of fascinating material and wisdom.

James Maguire's speech in the House of Representatives: 1894-01-31 Direct Taxation of Land Values

Search this on "Santa Marguerita" and on Salinas River.

 

DIRECT TAXATION OF LAND VALUES,

Speech of HON. JAMES G. MAGUIRE, of California.
In the House of Representatives, Wednesday, January 31, 1894.

The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 4864) to reduce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for other purposes, and the question being upon an amendment thereto offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. McMillan), providing for a tax on incomes, etc., the following proceedings were had:

MR. MAGUIRE. Mr. Chairman, I offer the amendment which I send to the desk. The amendment was read, as follows:

Amend the amendment by striking out sections 1 to 18 thereof, both inclusive, and inserting in lieu thereof the following:

"And be it further enacted, That a direct tax of $31,311,125 be, and is hereby, annually laid upon land values in the United States, and the same shall be, and is hereby, apportioned to the States and Territories and District of Columbia, respectively, in proportion to population as ascertained by the census enumeration of the year 1890.

"Sec. 2. That the said direct tax laid by this act shall be assessed and laid on the value of all land exclusive and irrespective of the improvements thereon; Provided, That all lands belonging to the United States, or to any State, county, or municipality, shall be exempted from assessment and taxation under this act; And provided further, That all land subject to taxation under this act shall be valued and assessed, for the purpose of taxation, at its full market value, on the first Monday in March of each year, the valuation for the fiscal year commencing on the 1st day of June, 1894, to relate to the first Monday of March, 1894.

"That, for the purpose of assessing said tax and collecting the same, sections 9 to 12, both inclusive; sections 14 to 48, both inclusive, and sections 53 to 58, both inclusive, of that certain act entitled 'An act to provide increased revenue from imports to pay interest on the public debt, and for other purposes,' approved August 5, 1861, are hereby re-enacted and made of full force and effect hi so far as they provide for the assessment and collection of direct taxes on lands and lots of ground, and for any and all methods and procedure in the levying, collection, and enforcement of such taxes."

Mr. MAGUIRE (continuing) said:

Mr. Chairman: The arguments in support of the pending amendment have all proceeded upon the theory that the proposed tax upon incomes, above $4,000 per annum, will compel the rich to bear a fairer proportion of the expenses of the Government than they now bear, and that the people will be satisfied with the accomplishment of that result. The people do, indeed, very much desire the establishment of such a system of taxation, and their claim for a more equitable distribution of the burdens of taxation is unquestionably just. But they are really desirous of substantial relief from the present power of the rich to use their wealth for the oppression of the poor; and they expert some measure of that relief to come to them through the income tax.

Such relief will not come from the income tax, nor will that change in our system of taxation even tend to curb the oppressive power of wealth. It simply puts a 2 percent tax mainly on the results of useful investments and of personal effort. The control of labor by wealth, in certain forms of investment, and the consequent unfairness in the distribution of the products of labor is a matter of infinitely greater importance to the people than the equalization of the burdens of government, which is sought to be accomplished by the income tax. I am in favor of the income tax, as proposed by the Committee on Ways and Means, because it is better than the system of taxation now prevailing; because the burdens which are laid by the income tax, wherever they may ultimately fall, are all for public uses, while under the tariff system three parts of the burden are laid for the enrichment of private individuals to every one part that is collected for public use.

As a choice between the income tax and any extension of tariff taxation, beyond that provided for in the "Wilson" bill, I will unhesitatingly vote for the income tax.

UNDUE POWER OF WEALTH.

But, sir, I seek by the amendment which I have just submitted to establish a system of taxation by which the revenues necessary for the support of this Government can be raised without any burden whatever upon either industry or commerce, and by which, at the same time, the power of accumulated wealth over labor will be destroyed. The power of wealth to oppress labor results almost entirely from the present investment of wealth in the control of the natural resources, from which alone labor can produce wealth.

Land is the storehouse in which the Creator has placed the raw materials of all wealth, and labor is the means by which those raw materials are changed into forms of usefulness for the satisfaction of human wants. Wealth is the result of labor applied to land, or to the products of land, and land furnishes not only this raw material for all wealth, but it constitutes also the home and the working place of all labor. All of these things the Creator freely provided for the use and sustenance and shelter and comfort of mankind by giving the land of the world, with its abundant resources, as an equal heritage to the whole human race. The same Creator made man a land animal. He must live upon the land, and from the fruits of the land, if he shall live at all. All of his food and clothing and shelter, and every other thing that will tend to satisfy his wants, natural and acquired, come from the land. Indeed, his whole physical body comes from the land, and goes back to the land again at the close of his life.

Separated from the land, man must perish, just as a fish would perish on being separated from the water, which is his element. Therefore, if man has a natural and inalienable right to life and to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, he must have a natural and equally inalienable right to the means which the Creator, who gave him life, has freely and abundantly provided for his support. There can be no right to life more sacred than the right to the means of sustaining life. "You take my life when you do take the means by which I live." Liberty is impossible to one man so long as another man controls his means of living.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 2 -- Jefferies

That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed.  Each human being by mere birth has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper," oh, inexpressibly wicked word! — it is the well-to-do who are the criminal classes.

— RICHARD JEFFERIES, The Story of My Heart, Chap. X., p. 122.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: October 1 -- Emerson

Of course, whilst another man has no land, my title to mine, your title to yours, is at once vitiated.

— R. W. EMERSON, Man, the Reformer, Miscellanies, p. 190.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 29 -- Froude

Land is not, and cannot be, property in the sense in which movable things are property.  Every human being born into this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all.  He did not ask to be born, and, being born, room must be found for him. The land in any country is really the property of the nation which occupies it.

— J. A. FROUDE, Ireland, Nineteenth Century, September, 1880, p. 362.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 20 -- Wagner

See, there they troop from fields and farmyards; they've tilled the earth and turned it to a smiling garden, and fruits in plenty, enough for all who live, have paid their pains — yet poor are they and naked, starving; for not to them, or others who are needy, belongs earth's blessing, but solely to the rich and mighty one who calls men and the earth his own.

— RICHARD WAGNER, The Revolution, Prose Works, Vol. VIII, Chap. 14, p. 235.  (Translation of W. A. Ellis).

The Earth-for-All Calendar: September 2 -- Gerrit Smith and Thomas Paine

The vacant land belongs to the landless.  The simple fact that the one is vacant and the other landless is of itself the highest proof that they should be allowed to come together.  Alas, what a crime against nature that they should be kept apart.

— GERRIT SMITH, Smith's Speeches in the U. S. Congress, p. 247 (1854). 

The earth in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.

—THOMAS PAINE, Agrarian Justice (1797),  Paine's Writings, Vol. III,, p. 329.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: August 19 -- Adam Smith and Jefferson

Entails are founded upon the most absurd of all propositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and to all that it possesses.

— ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations, Book III., Chap. 2.

I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither power nor rights over it.

— THOMAS JEFFERSON,  Works (edited by Washington), Vol. III., p. 103 (1789)

The Earth-for-All Calendar: May 22 -- Black Hawk

My reason teaches me that the land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as is necessary for their subsistence; and so to as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil. . . . Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.

— BLACK HAWK, in his Life, dictated by himself (edited by Patterson), (1834), p. 88.

The Earth-for-All Calendar: May 11 -- Gibbon

But the colony multiplies, while the space still continues the same, the common rights, the equal inheritance of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master. . . . In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice the steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason.

— EDWARD GIBBON, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

Chap. XLIV., Sec. 2.

 

The Earth-for-All Calendar: April 13 -- Jefferson

Wherever there is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.

— THOMAS JEFFERSON (1785), Ford's Writings of Jefferson, Vol. VII., 36.

In Arden Town (1914)

I stumbled across this one by accident, and thought some might enjoy it.  Arden is a community on the north side of Wilmington, Delaware, USA, near the Pennsylvania border.  In more ways than one, it is the high point of Delaware.  (For a more contemporary look at Arden, check out the 2007 article in Delaware Today with the tongue-in-cheek title, "Hey, Where are All the Nudists?") Mike Curtis, whose essay, Taxes Kill Jobs, appears a few items below this one, lives in Arden.

The quote about "the land belongs in usufruct to the living" is from Thomas Jefferson.  You can read more about the idea here.

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19140509.2.122

1914-05-09

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 109, page 10

In Arden Town
Bird and Bush Life Sacred
Single Tax in Practice

Florence A. Burleigh contributed to that staidest of American journals, the Springfield Republican, a most interesting article on the Town of Arden, which is in Delaware.  In May, 1900, Frank Stephens and Will Price, artists, who had long dreamed of a village colony where love and justice should take the place of strife and injustice, found a piece of land near Wilmington, Delaware, which they immediately secured and started what is now a busy little village of 120 leaseholders, about 60 dwellings and 250 residents, 80 of whom remain all winter.

These two men had for many years believed that "the earth belongs in usufruct to the living," and with Henry George that the only way to secure this was for landholders to pay to the community annually the value of the land they held.  They also believed that art, music, and the drama were a very important -- indeed, the most important -- part of life and they agreed with William Morris in his "News from Nowhere" when he said, "We like these pieces of wild Nature and can afford them, so we have them. . . Go and have a look -- and tell me if you think we waste the land by not covering it with factories for making things that nobody wants, which was the chief business of the 19th century."  So they set apart a green in the centre of the 160 acres -- a part of which was for sports and an outdoor theatre -- and much of the woodland.

For a few years Arden remained scarcely more than a dream; but one by one little picturesque bungalows appeared and soon an inn or "guest-house" was found necessary in order that visitors might find an over-night shelter and a simple meal.  Next came a club house, planned and made by the Ardenites out of an old but substantial barn standing on the place.

Various industries -- carpet weaving, leaded glass, cabinet-making, etc. -- are carried on and many of the leaseholders have little gardens.  There are at present a craftsmen's guild, having in charge the village industries, a folk guild, having in charge matters concerning hospitality and entertainment; players' guild, having charge of the dramatics; gardeners' guild, "including tillers of the soil and those who tell others how to"; a housewives' guild, scholars' guild, educational  work, and several other guilds.

The woods are kept free from underbrush but otherwise are left untouched and no one is allowed "to hunt or fish on any of the lands of Arden, or cut timber or fence in woodland or keep the land in such disorder as shall in the opinion of the majority of the residents of the community be injurious to the rights of others."

A clearing the form of an ampitheatre with evidence of numerous fires in the centre of it is the place where, every Sunday evening throughout the warm season, the Ardenfolk and their guests go with lanterns and rugs to watch the big fire which is built by some of the young men and boys, and sing from the Arden song book or listen to readings from Uncle Remus or other books for an hour.  As the fire dies down, the ghostly folk file slowly back with their lanterns through the dark wood and soon there is no sound but the crickets or an occasional owl.

Saturday night is devoted to the open-air theatre, which is in the centre of the green and has a grassy stage about 20ft long, with a large rock at the back, and exits made by openings in the shrubbery. At each end of the state, which is footlighted by large oil lamps with reflectors, is a white column which gives dignity to the place.  The seats are built in a semi-circle -- or, more strictly speaking, the long bench, for everything is quite primitive -- and the "front row" is cut out of the earth and grass-covered.  The players file to the theatre and across the stage, already costumed, and the play begins.  "Julius Caesar," "The Merchant of Venice," and "Romeo and Juliet" are the favorites; and if this might seem ambitious, the reply would be that the object is not so much the entertainment of the audience as the education of the actors.  When the play is over -- and as it begins early it ends early -- those who care to adjourn to the clubhouse to dance.  The plays, the sports, the pageants, and the campfire -- all are as much a part of Arden as the industries, and "the spirit of Arden pervades everything."

One of the dreams which has not yet been realized but which is surely going to be is a church on a sunny slope which shall be open at all times for anyone, no matter what his creed, who cares to enter in.  The design is already chosen, square-towered and of stone, early English.

ONLY LAND IS COMMON.

But there must be a business side to every such undertaking and Arden is no exception.  It is not a community in the sense in which the word is often used, for nothing is held in common except the land, and one of the strongest beliefs is that of individual freedom so far as it is consistent with the equal freedom of everyone else.  Even one's time is his own, for it is an unwritten law that no one shall interrupt another in his own domain when the warning white flag is at the door.

One enters Arden from the country road, by means of steps over a stone wall under a rustic arch upon which is cut in graceful letters, "You are welcome hither."  The path winds under large oak and chestnut trees past blackberry bushes and, in the fall, goldenrod and asters.  The visitor usually arrives in Arden later than the resident, because he has been obliged to stop on the way to pick flowers or admire the beautiful surrounding country.

The visitor passes one or two little cottages right up to the shop, which often is called "the red house," and he has his first view of Arden.  He sees the green with the wood at the rear, but otherwise surrounded by "the Admiral Benbow," "the lodge," "the monastery," the picturesque rough-plastered inn, "the Homestead," and other cottages of varying size and architecture.

THE LAND LAWS

Land cannot be bought in Arden, but all lots are assessed to "equal as nearly as possible the full rental value of the land, excluding improvements, and the rentals so collected shall be expended in the payment of all taxes, so far as said rentals will suffice, so that the leaseholders shall be exempt and free of all direct taxation to that extent, and thereafter for such communal purposes as are properly public in that they cannot be left to individuals without giving them an advantage over others."

Although Arden is a single tax colony in the sense that no one pays any direct tax except that on land values, among the residents are Socialists as well as Single Taxers, and people of no definite economic belief who go there to enjoy the freedom from conventionality. All the sites are taken for 1914, the rents amounting to £400.  Besides the little homes, the inn and the guild-house, are a laundry, a summer school, and the craftsmen's show, which has a dozen rooms for bakery, store, studios, and for rug and furniture making.

EDUCATION SYSTEM

The "organic school" is unique in that no desks were used, only tables and chairs, and that the children have to be sent home instead of being sent to school.  Occupations take the place of lessons, on the principle that the conscious reasoning into which the children are plunged upon entering school retards the development of the reasoning power for some years.  If occupations were substituted for 'lessons' the reasoning power would develop unconsciously and naturally, thus insuring a stronger fine mentality.  Children should not consciously strive to know any more than they consciously strive to grow.  Singing, dramatisation, stories of literature and history, field geography, and Nature study in the form of walks -- observation and investigation, gardening, creative handwork, art work, and fundamental conceptions of numbers, may occupy the children from six to nine years of age, without the use of books, excepting where the child really desires to learn to read.  At nine or ten the child may come into the use of books, not by having 'lessons' assigned, but for the pleasure of finding out what the books can tell with the assistance of the teacher.

The affairs of the town are managed by three men, one of whom is chairman.

The Evening Post was founded by Henry Blundell and began publication as a daily in Wellington on 8 February 1865. Blundell was born in Dublin in 1813 and worked for nearly 30 years at the Dublin Evening Mail. In 1860 he migrated with his family to Melbourne. Blundell moved to New Zealand in 1863 and worked on the Otago Daily Times.