The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1892-08-27
SINGLE TAX DEPARTMENT
What the Newspapers Say.


Courier, of that place, and lively dis
cussion is going on in the Sentinel of
Stoughton, Mass, in the course of
which writer, signing himself, ''Single
Tax" has called the attention of farm
ers to some considerations which are
calculated to secure their favorable at
tentiOn.
The Reading. Pa, Morning Herald in
commenting on statement made at
the New York real estate banquet to
the effect that though the whole of
Manhattan Island was once bought for
twenty -four dollars, some of it has been
recently sold at the rate of twenty.
seven dollars square inch, asks this
pertinent and penetrating question:
"Who made land in New York worth
twenty-scven dollars an inch, and who
has gotten hold of the proceeds"
The Hamilton, (Ont.) Evening Times
knows why men are idle. 1t concludes
a careful editorial on this subject with
this paragraph:
Our whole system of laws is devised
in the interest of those who desire to get
without laboring to produce it. The
system was borrowed in block from
England, where it was perfected by
landlord parliament, working genera
ton after generation with one end in
view-the spoliation of the working
masses by the loafng classes. Cana
dams have tolerated this fraudulent
systems for a century. Those who
couldn't find working ground without
too much effort in old Canada went to
the western states, or in late years to
Manitoba. But ungrabbed land is now
becoming scare all over the continent,
and the necessity of applying the legal
remedy becomes daily more apparent.
A sensible system of taxation, which
parliament will enact when voters in
sist upon it, will send spectators flying
like chaff before the wind. No other
question in Canadian politics approaches
this one in Importance Tax the grab
bers and spectators heavily, and they
will get out and make room for men
who want to work-the only men who
are of any real use to Canada.
The Erie pa Evening Herald, in an
able editorial article on the taxation of
farmers, puts the question in a new
light, and one which is likely to make
the farmers blink. 1t shows that farms
located at any distance from the towns
and cities have no site value; that their
value consists almost, If not entirely,
in the value of improvements, from
which it argues: ''rhat the taxes that
the occupiers of the lands pay on the
ground, exclusive of the taxes on the
improvements, is assessed on valua-
ton which does not exist" and con-
cludes that, under such circumstances,
the farmers as class can not be in
prosperous condition.
At the billion-dollar dinner of the
New York real estate men at Delomoni-
co.'s reverend Mr. Lloyd drew out
great applause and cheering by saying
that the moment you make man the
owner of his own home he ceases to be
an anarchist or socialist, whereupon the
Cincinnati Post asks if he does not
know that ''in Hamilton county, state
of Ohio, for instance, and in the last
ten years." and that thousands in Ohio
who owned their homes ten years ago
are put poor tenants to-day?"
The Northwestern Labor Union, of
Minneapolis. sees through a ladder
much better than does the Knights of
Labor Journal The Journal had
pointed to the late Tory leader, w. II.
Smith, as an example of a monopolist
whose fortune was due to no special
legislation, and as presenting a case
which no tariff reform or land taxation
or free competition could reach. Mr..
Smith made his fortune through a
monopoly of the sale of papers and
books at railway book stalls That he
enjoyed legislative monopoly through
the railways on which such monopoly
was conferred, was plain, and the Union
plainly states it. 1t says:
"a railway company is an Emporium
in imperio,' government within gov
eminent, which is able to and does ex-
crcise the functions of a true govern
ment, and issues special privileges and
creates monopOlies in precisely the
same manner as true governments do.
And this is just how it was that Mr.
Smith was able to amass his enormous
fortune. The English government sur
rendered large part of its sovereignty
to the railway corporations, and they
in turn conferred upon Mr.. Smith. a
small part of the sovereignty they had
received from the government, and by
just this special privilege derived from
government was Mr.. Smith able to &C
cumulate his enormous fortune, and if
the government were to do as the single
tax men ask, and simply abolish the
special privileges it has conferred on the
railway companies, Mr.. Smiths monop-
oily would fall to pieces along with the
railway monopoly which fathered it."
The rush of go, 900 individuals into the
recently opened Indian reservations has
brought the Cincinnati Post, the Meth
odists would say, under conviction"
In a single week, it says, men acquire
there, by mere force of aggregation of
population, about 200 per cent of Mr..
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