Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-07-30
siNlt!..; AN DEPARTMENT.


1. Lowering the margin of produc-
ton, other things being equal, raises
rent and lowers wages, besides lessen
ing production.
. Holding valuable land out of use
lowers the margin of production, other
things being equal.
3. Land speculation involves the hold
ing of valuable land out of use.
4. Land speculation is unavoidable SO
long as land owners receive the in
crease in value created by the commu-
nifty.
5. The single tax would make the
holding out of use of valuable land IN
profitable, and would thus throw open
for use that which is now SO held,
] either from speculative motives or from
no motive,
6. The single tax would thus raise
wages. thereby being help to labor
ers. 1t would also help capitalists, by
relieving capital from taxation. 1t
would hurt no one but landowners, and
them only in so far as they were neither
laborers nor capitalists
| Z. The landowner, as such, is of no
use to the community.
| s. All men have originally an equal
natural right to land.
o. There exists theoretically no way
in which this right can possibly be
alienated.
10. A landowner can require another
| to pay him any price he asks; if this
other must use his land.
IL. Every man must use some land.
II. Therefore 90 and ~, where all
land is in the hands of owners, they
can force the landless to give up q GER
ain amount of property to them. (And
they do it,
13. There is no sufficient reason for
| giving the increase in value created by
the community to the landowner. 1t
belongs to the community, and no one
| suffers hardship when the community
| takes it.
IA. Movable or producible property
| tends to go from a place where it is
| heavily taxed to place where it is
| lightly taxed, or is permitted to escape
| taxation. Therefore the abolition of
| taxes on such property ia any nation,
| state or town would be a means of at
| tracing such property, while the strict
! and impartial enforcement of laws for
| its taxation is a means of driving it
| away.
| Is. Income and succession taxes like
wise tend to drive away the rich.
16. A tax on property which is the re-
| suit of labor, or which has been saved
| by thrift, lessons the inducement to
such labor and thrift.
Il. A tax which increases the cost of
owning or using any implement or car
| rying on any process of production or
| trade, hinders such production or trade;
except that sometimes such tax con-
| centrateS the business in the form of a
monopoly, whose power may be a
superior advantage.
49, Such a tax always tends to mo-
| nopoly and to the crushing out of small
producers by increasing the amount of
| capital necessary for carrying ON a
! given amount of business.
| 10. Such tax, entering into the cost
of the goods, is paid by the consumer in
his purchase, and falls on consumers in
proportion to their purchases. But in
general, the larger mans income is
the smaller is the proportion of it which
| he spends for his own consumption.
| Therefore, among those who pay any
such tax it falls heaviest on the poorest.
90 Such a tax takes from the con-
sumner an unnecessary amount beyond
what it gives to the government, be-
cause the tax enters into the cost of the
goods, and thus the trader must charge
a profit on the tax as well as on the
other cost in order to get the us ual
profit on his whole capital. The effect
of the tax in encouraging monopolies
may make production cheaper, and thus
neutralize this, but the monopoly is
more likely to involve an additional tax
on the consumer.
81. Such a tax, by it's interference
with private business, give private
parties a direct pecuniary interest in
having it laid or removed, not neccsSari-
ly coinciding with the interest they
have in the well-being of the commune
ty as a whole, and thus increases the
inducement to corruption in govern
ment. This is especially true where it
falls on one particular industry, as with
each of the multitudinous special taxes
which make up our tariff.
%. The increase in the price of land,
occasioned by land speculation (see
Nos. 1-5), is in effect such a tax on the
holding and use of land, and as such is
especially obnoxious to the objections
of Nos. 1910.
%. A tax laid on land by the State
would not increase the cost of holding
or using land unless the tax were great
err than the present rent of the land, be-
cause whatever is added to the tax is
subtracted from the rent or purchase
price.
"a The advantage given to an Amer
lean manufacturer by a tariff on his
product, enabling him to sell it at
higher price, is in the nature of boun-
ty paid by an indirect tax (see Nos. IT.
2) collected by the private manufac
turer from the consumer. Granting,
for the sake of argument, that pro-
tective tariff is an effectual encourage
ment to American industry, and suppos-
ing that the abolition of taxation on
capital under the single tax would not
be sufficient equivalent for any bene
fit which the tariff can be supposed to
confer. it would yet be every way more
desirable to pay bounty from direct
tax collected by the government
25. The imposition of a tax for the
purpose of restricting a business sup
posed to be harmful to the public is an
ineffective makeshift. as has been strik-
ingly shown in the experiment of high
license.
20. The single tax could be collected
more easily and at less expense to the
government than any other tax from
which it is seriously proposed to raise a