The Colfax chronicle., 1890-06-28

loubt own good many acres Of land
but they do not own very much lana
When It comes to measuring land by IL
value, and not by its area.
Consider this for one minute, what l
I'm about to tell you: In Chicago only
short time ago piece of land which
4sx24 feet sold for over $10o,-
200! At the rate Of $4,000, 900 an acre!
There is no humbug about that, no fool
Ing, NO desire to deceive. / saw the lot
and the building going up on it, and my
friend, Ed Crane, real estate
man, pointed it out to me.
Suppose the building going up on that
land costs $50, 900; ten per cent on the
value of the building would be $1,000,
but the rental Of the building will no
doubt be $4,000 or $4,000. and the
value which is not in any way due to
the building, and which no individual
labor could possibly produce, is the
ground value, and that IL just what the
single tax viii rest upon.
The man who builds building should
own that building entirely and alto
gether; and the man who makes any
other improvement, whether it consists
in planting trees, or putting manure on
the land, or ditching the land, or in any
way adding to the improvement OF the
place, should have the entire benefit Of
the improvement value without one
cent of taxation being placed upon it.
But though . man can build good
many houses and make many improve
ments by his own unaided effort, he can
not, to save his 1ife,. create what is
known as ground value. Ground
value is created by the coming together
of number of people; and right here
let me impress it upon you that there is
no need of taxes until population begins
to grow. Would not q farmer living out
in the wilderness cut . fine figure taxing
himself in order to sustain the fire de-
partment, for instance?
Who owns the land value in this coun-
try, which the single tax men propose to
tax2 Just measure the land by value
and see the result.
One acre in Chicago worth $4,000, 900,
is equal to how many acres Of farming
land in Tennessee? Would it be fair to
take farming land at $50 an acre? Ger
tainly 1t is not worth moro. 1t would
take at that rate 60, 900 acres of farming
land to equal the one acre in Chicago.
Court Square in Memphis is piece Of
land laid out as q park and has about
two acres of land in it. If that one
piece o. land were private property and
used for building purposes the ground
value of that very desirable piece of
land would, am willing to say, be equal
to the ground value of the farms
owned by the Una Alliance; or, in other
words, II the taxes were placed upon
land value, the one piece of land in
Memphis would pay as much taxes as
one hundred farms of average size in
Tennessee. 1t may be well to remem-
Der, too, that the value of that piece of
land in Chicago and the value OF the
land here in Memphis is given to it by
the people living around that land. The
farmers in the country and the knights
in the city both add to the value OF any
piece of land in this city.
The value of land is the result Of the
labor of all. When two men 60 into
business they pay the expenses of the
business out of the profits Of the bust
ness. For instance, Mr.. Farmer and
Mr. Knight go into business. At the
end of the month, before they divide
the profits, they must pay their debts.
Again, If two men go into business, and
they owe you money jointly, you would
first have to levy on what they owned
jointly before you could attach the indi-
vidual. Now, whether we like it or not,
the fact remains that all the people of
any country or any community are by
their united efforts increasing the price
Of land, are making certain positions
more valuable, and that value is the
proper subject Of taxation. When that
is exhausted (if that could be) then it
will be time to take from man what he
by his labor has created. Suppose .
man working with spade turns over
one-fourth Of an acre day; with .
horse and plow and the same amount of
labor on his part he will do two acres.
Is not that so? The increased amount
of work Is due to the machinery he
uses. You can call that his capital, and
that capital is usually the result Of his
saving, and no one has any right to tax
his labor or his capital. But here is
something else: A man with $4,000
worth of goods in one location can make
in the course of year thousand dol
lars; but in another location he, with
the same amount Of capital and the
same amount Of labor, can make two
thousand dollars. Now the fact that he
can make in one place twice what he
could make in another is not due to his
increased capital, or his own brains, or
his exertions, or his luck, but due en-
tirely to the men, women and children