St. Paul daily globe., 1888-07-30
If You Would Move Men to
Action Appeal to Their
Patriotism.
In Loyalty to Higher Impulses
Men Will Give Even
Life.
Congress Is But a Gathering
Of Local Figure
Heads.
Men Needed Who Can Repre-
sent National Thought
and Feeling,

Every once in while some one,
thinking only of the opposition, writes
me that he deems it a mistake that in
Progress and Poverty I should have said
anything at all about the right of indi-
Vldual ownership of land; and that it
would have proved far more effective if
L had contented myself with pointing
out the economic benefits of concentrate
ing taxation on land values. 1 know
that this is not so. l know that the
feeling that induced me to write
that book is the feeling to which
it has appealed. The success it has had
and the forces it has set in motion are
to me proofs of the truth OF what wrote
in it when | said:
II you would move men to action, to what
snail you appeal? Not 10 their pockets, but
TO their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to
sympathy. Self interest is, as it were, a me-
chanlcal torce-potent, it is true; capable of
large and wide results. But there is in hu-
man nature what may be likened to a chemi-
cal force; which melts and fuses and over
~ All that man hath will he give for his
l1fe'-that is self interest. But in loyalty to
higher impulses men will give even life.
In the long list of men whom 1 know
as having since then given money, time,
influence, toll, to the spreading of the
doctrines that book sets forth, know
OF no single case in which the moving
motive was any individual benefit, or
even the idea of great and beneficial re-
form. In every case of which l know,
the moving motive was the idea of over
throwing mOnStrOuS wrong, the idea
OF making life better, brighter and fuller
Tor those worse off than themselves, and
for those yet to be born. l have known
many who have recognized the fiscal
SIDE OF the reform alone; but l have
never known of any efficient aid from
them. The men who have worked, the
men who will work. the men wEO can
be counted on everywhere, and every
time, till death closes their eyes, are
those to whom this reform appeals from
the moral, the religious, side; those who
see In 1t not mere Improvement in tax
alton, but conforming of our most
important social adjustment to the law
OF justice, to the will of God; restora-
ton to the disinherited of the bounte-
Gus provision which the intelligence
that laid the foundations of the world
and brought them upon it has provided
for them.
This is good as far as it goes, and is
all that can be done to prevent at this
election the success of any such protec-
zionist scheme. But is it not worth the
COurler-JOurnal'S while to look beyond
the next election and to suggest to the
consideration of its readers reforms
that would make such schemes futile?
The Australian voting system, which
has been adopted in Massachusetts, and
which. would have been adopted in New
York but for Gov. Hills veto, would
etfectually end all possibility of either
electing or defeating candidate by the
purchase of votes. 1t would thus not
only put an end to the direct evils of
bribery; it would put an end to the III
direct evils. By making bribery impos-
sible, and by vastly lessening the power
of money in elections, even when ex-
pended in what are now considered
legitimate ways, it would largely rid
representatives and other officials of
their fear of corporations and moneyed
combines, and tend to make ability and
character count for more at the polls
than they do now.