The Motion Picture Director (1925)

July, 1925 VERSUS THE SINGLE TAX By E. P. Clark President Peoples’ Anti-Single Tax League Henry GEORGE, the apostle of Single Tax, said that private ownership of land was a bold, bare, enormous wrong, like that of chattel slavery. This became his text for all he ever wrote on Progress and Poverty. If that were true, it would be a great crime to own land, but it is not true, for our government in its wisdom provided the opportunity for every man who wanted to and was willing to work at farming to secure a farm, a home, and at a price covering the actual cost of surveying and conveyances, and guaranteeing to him its possession and title, and to his heirs and assigns forever. The land laws of our country have made it the richest, the strongest, the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Single Taxers say land values increase as the population increases: Therefore land value belongs to the people, and “We propose to tax it away from the owner.” Let’s see. The land owner bought the land with money. He lives in Riverside. He paid $3000 an acre for forty acres of orange lands, in 1887. The population was less than one hundred families. Twenty years later the same orange lands could be bought for $2000 an acre, and the population of Riverside city alone was over 15,000. So land values are not due entirely to population. The Single Taxer also says everything we possess except land is the product of labor and must not be taxed, as taxing the product of labor causes poverty. Money is the product of labor and must not be taxed, they say. The man in Riverside paid money for his land, which was his inalienable right; hence, logically, it cannot be taxed. But the Single Taxer proposes to tax all that money away; in other words, confiscate all the value of the land without due process of law, where if he had invested his money in bonds or cattle or sheep or manufactures he would pay no tax whatever. Is not that the reasoning of a dishonest mind? Land value is not wholly due to population, but quite as much to productivity, to nearness to markets, to quality of soil, to climate, and to the kind of products. He says that city land and lot value is due alone to population. Let’s see. In Los Angeles twenty years ago lots on Spring street from Third to Temple streets were worth more than twice their market value today. Yet the population of Los Angeles is five times as great. If population only caused lot values, why should not lots east of Santa Fe avenue near Pico be as val uable as Sixth and Olive streets? City lot values are caused by their location in relation to the intense business center, and values increase or decrease as the business center shifts. The southwest corner of Seventh street and Broadway is worth no more today than it was ten years ago, but the population has doubled in that period and has had no influence whatever on values. The man who buys a city lot, paying for it in the product of labor, either stock or bonds or coin, does so knowing that the laws of our country will protect him in his title and possession against the world. No one can take it from him. Yet the Single Taxers propose to destroy all value by taxing all the value away. If that is not dishonest, what would you call it? Henry George, Jr., in the Halls of Congress, June 10, 1911, was asked by Mr. Raker of California, “Who will get the land when it is sold for taxes? The State will get it, will it not?” Mr. George said: “No, the buyer. Somebody will buy it if it has any value at all. The application of Single Tax should not be a 100 per cent application. It should fall short just enough to leave enough value in the land untaxed to make a basis for sales. The basis for sales will become the market basis for valuation and taxation. “Now if a man, we will say, who is a speculator, a monopolist, or who is land poor, cannot or will not pay the tax imposed, he will have his land sold for taxes and will lose it. The land will go into the hands of a new man. That new man will have to pay the tax. “If the value of the land should fall, then the tax would correspondingly diminish. If the value should disappear, then there would be nothing to tax, and the owner would hold his land subject to no tax whatever.” He may be a speculator, a large land owner, and able to pay the higher tax, but to the vast multitude of small land and lot owners he proposes to apply the same severe treatment. He proposes to tax all land until its value reaches the vanishing point, and then the new owner can hold this land subject to no tax whatever. For simon pure dishonesty, can you beat it? Yet the Single Taxers profess to believe what Henry George said was true, and that Single Tax or land tax only, was right. First, do you believe it is a bold, bare, enormous wrong to own your own land or your lot? Chattel slavery consists of the private ownership of a human being, depriving him of the right to his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. He becomes Continued on Page 19 11