The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1892-11-04

ers should lit they do not) receive eco
nomic rent" / e., interest on value Of
land, endeavor to show that such rent
Is not shifted by the various middle
men, grain dealers, millers, ETC., until
at last it is paid by the consumer Of the
finished product.
But it is q matter of grave doubt If
those farmers who occupy and farm the
land of which they are the ostensible
owners, receive any economic rent at
all. The grain crop Of last year was
worth $7S9, 0O0, 900. OF this, the farmer
the producer-got only $500, OOO, 600.
Transportatio4, middlemen and other
charges, after it left the farm, consumed
the other $S39, 0O0, 900. It is very doubt
full if the s4OO, 600, 600 the farmers got paid
the bare cost Of production, putting
labor at a minimum figure, 80 that in
reality they got no economic rent"
which is but scientific term for inter-
est upon the value of the farm.
am not, however, an advocate or de-
PENDANT of land monopoly, nor do pre-
tend to deny that land owners, as land
lords, through the medium of rent,
absorb very large proportion of the
residual increment" or net product Of
the nations workers, but do contend
that the fact that very many men man
age to pay rent for valuable lands and
yet amass enormous fortunes in bust
ness, proves that interest and profit also
are factors that absorb an undue pro-
portion Of labor's product. We have
seen that almost one-half of the value
of the grain crop of the nation is
absorbed by factors other than rent.
I hold that use and occupancy should
be prerequisite conditions to the
legal ownership of land, and
that the rule should be enforced upon
the hypothesis that no one man can by
any possibility occupy more than one
place, at one time, the discriminating
graduated cumulative tax being levied
upon vacant lands and lands occupied
by others than those who claimed it's
ownership: The single tax would
license capital to occupy as many loca-
tions or sites, for wealth accommodating
purpose as it was able to improve, and
the tax, or rent, would be paid by the
whole people as consumers, the capital
istic occupiers or users of locations
simply paying their proportion as con-
sumers ALI taxes and rents levied up
on or collected from income producing
businesses are shifted on to co nsumers,
patrons and customers, and the chang
ing of the name to the ''single taxi
would not change this inexorable and
Immutable law.
A graded income tax would just as
surely and unerringly take fair pro-
portion of economic rent as would the
single tax limited, while it would also
take the same fair proportion of all in
comes derived through the medium of
interest and profit. Being graded and
levied on net incomes it could not be
shifted, and if net income of 81, 900
was exempt from taxation, the incomes
that would be taxed would be ''un-
earned increment"
Our single tax friends should disabuse
their minds of the fallacious idea that
economic rent is the only form of I'M
earned increment ALI interest is un-
earned in-crement-so also are all
profits in excess of ssfair wages"
Interest upon fraudulent bonds
and dividends upon fictitious capt.
talization are not only unearned
but are stolen increment. So much
more powerful are they in their evil
potentially than is economic rent that
the land of the nation, which thirty
years ago was owned in fee simple, free
Of encumbrance by the masses of the
people, is now burdened with billions of
dollars of mortgage Indebtedness, while
an immense quantity of it has been sold
under the sheriff's hammer and is now
the property of those who accumulated
wealth by virtue of the operation of the
factors, interest and profit. George G.
Ward, in Topeka Advocate.