Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1890-12-25
SINGLE TAX DEPARTMENT.
TAXING LAND VALUES.
Henry George, in N. Y. Standard
TcoNTISUED FROM LAST ISSUE.

single item OF land values Tor all the
various taxes now imposed would se an
enormous governmental and social
economy. We should save the salaries
and perquisites and official expenses of
the horde of functionaries, national,
State and municipal, who are now en-
gagged in assessing and collecting all
these other taxes, or in doing things di-
rectly or Indirectly necessitated by the
cumbrous system. We should get rid of
them all, from those fee-paid local Of
ficials who in a single term expect a
fortune, and those federal collectors
whose places are deemed of more i'm
portance than the governorship of sover-
eign States, down to the officials
who are busted in seeing whether cigar
boxes are stamped and peddlers are pro-
vided with licenses, or in searching the
trunks and persons of passengers as
they land. We should save the cost of
trying and imprisoning offenders; we
should save, too the cost of all the de-
vices-some of them very expensive
that are resorted to for evadlng the
revenue laws, for it is obvious that all
these expenses must ultimately be
borne by consumers.
The tax upon land values is of all
taxes that which combines the maxi
mum of certainty with the maximum of
expense. Land lies out of doors;' it can
not be hid or disguised, and it's value is
easily ascertained. Any competent real
estate dealer can tell to a nicely the
value per front foot of any lot on Broad
way. But, to ascertain the value of the
building on it, it will be necessary to
get an expert to make an examination;
while, if that building be filled with
goods, it is impossible for any outsider
to get at their value. A tax upon the
value of land can be collected to the
last cent by tax collector sitting in his
office. Deducting the very small per-
centage, which would be all that would
be required to pay the expenses of the
periodical assessment and the receipt of
taxes, the people in their collective ca
pacity would thus get the benefit of all
that was paid in as taxes by the people
as individuals.
But tho saving that would result is by
no means to be estimated by the reduc-
ton in the cost and direct incidents of
collecting revenues. 1t is the great
vice of taxes that distribute themselves
in added prices that, beyond the official
tax gatherers, they create long line Of
virtual tax gatherers, and that each
man in the line not only takes the tax,
but his profit on the tax, and in many
cases is enable to take a great deal more.
How strongly the whisky ring" OPP
posed the reduction of the whisky tax
and the match manufacturers the aboli-
ton of the tax on matches is we'll
known. And SO with all indirect taxes.
The difficulty is not usually in imposing
them, but in abolishing them. Leta bill
be introduced in Congress to abolish the
tax on any of the long list of things
taxed, and strigh tway there will appear
in the lobby some one to protest and log
roll against it, sure proof that some
body besides the Government is making
money from the taX-that is to say, that
the tax is taking from the people at
large good deal more than the Govern
ment is getting from it. That this sys-
tenn, which engages great private inter-
ests in keeping up rather than in put
ting down taxation, fosters govern
mental extravaganza and corruption is
clear.
Now, by abolishing all other taxes in
favor of the tax upon land values we
should not only save very largely in the
ways thus pointed out, but by the great
er simplicity that would be given to
government, we should save the politi-
cal Generalization which the present
system entails. 1t is 1.-The money in
politics" that makes our politics so cor
rupt, that puts honesty and patriotism
at disadvantage, and gives us traders
and jobbers where we ought to have
statesmen. That there is so much
money in politics arises principally from
the great number of officers which our
present system of taxation necessitates,
and from the great number of pecuniary
interests which it concerns in the rum
ing of government. And beyond all this
is the effect upon morals. Nearly all
the taxes which we propose to abolish
become, in one way or another, taxes
upon conscience, and by setting a pre-
MUM on bribery, forgery and fraud,
foster political corruption and social de-
moralization.
Now, in view of the great economies
which in all these various ways would
result from the substitution of tax on
land values for all other taxes, is it not
clear that the change would be of the
greatest benefit, and would conduce
largely to the general prosperity. Be-
side such civil service reform" as this,
the little picayune measure, good
though it may be in itself, on which
men like George William Curtis have
been spending SO much time and talent,
is as minnow to a whale.
The present system, which taxes build
ings and improvements, capital in all
it's forms, and in most of our States in
all it's shadows. is a system of direct
encouragement to production, system
which fines the man who creates wealth
just in proportion as he creates wealth.
Instead of acting on the principle that
the man who makes two blades of grass
grow where one grew before is public
benefactor, our system of taxation treats
him as public enemy. If man clothe
a barren waste with grain and fruit
trees, if he drain a swamp or open a
mine. if he put up house where none
stood before, or erect factory, or turn
wood or iron into ship: if he get him
a library with which to store and exer-
else his mind, or telescope with which
to sweep the heavens, or laboratory in
which to seek out the laws of natures
combinations; if out of his savings he
lay by provision for his declining days;
if by his energy and thrift he accum-
late capital with which to assist and or
ganizc aud provide the tools for indus
bn toy L. TO