Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1892-09-01
As to Eels and Other Folks.

Perhaps most men who have grown
up in the country have somewhere in
the rearward of memory a dim recollec-
ton of the boyish theory that cells turn
raw after cooking unless promptly
eaten. The only parallel in the intel
lectual world to this curious physical
property attributed to eels is the case
of some persons with whom single tax
ers are compelled to wrestle. AS cells
| will not stay cooked so some men will
not stay convinced. Argument, how
ever effective for the time being, has
| really no permanent value where these
men are concerned, for, once the man
who has silenced them is out of sight,
they wilfully return to their intellectual
error.
1t is this consideration that makes it
seem hardly worth while for The Stand
ard to attend to the suggestion of a cor
respondent that we reply to recent
absurd assertion in the Knights of La
Dor Journal. That particular eel has
been cooked great many times, but it
turns raw with each new issue. Here
is the latest evidence of our contem-
porary's intellectual rawness:
''The single tax" says the Knights OF
Labor Journal, whatever beneficial
effects it might have, would do little il
anything to lessen competition among
city workers"
If there is any one proposition that
has been clearly established to the satis-
faction of those who can see anything
in the single tax, it is that it would af-
feet city workers just as it would af-
feet other workers. Nothing so con-
l., - ~
misapprehension as the common asser-
ton that, whatever benefit access to
land might have for rural workers, it
could not benefit urban workers since
they do not earn their living from the
soil! We can't all be farmers, says the
intellectual eel, that has never been
cooked over the single tax fire; then he
keeps on saying it after he has been
cooked fifty times, because he has the
unenviable property of turning raw.
Once for all, if the single tax will
open natural opportunities to working
men it will relieve not only the COM
petition among the farmers and farm
laborers, but the competition among
laborers of all classes. There is COM
petition of two sorts, both of which act
under our present system of Landlords
ing. The competitions between men Of
varied physical and intellectual powers
is an entirely wholesome competition,
whereby men fit themselves into their
peculiar inches, and do the work in which
they are most effective. This is COM
petition that would not disappear under
the influence of the single tax. There
is another competition-the desperate
of disinherited men for tho
privilege of making living; the COM
petition for work made artificially
scarce by an Ubiquitous system of land
holding. This species of competition
under the influence of the single tax
would disappear, not only in rural dis
tricts but in the country. 1t is the
pressure of this competition under tho
existing system that drives men from
villages and rural districts to the cities,
and creates the hideous conditions that
we see in the tenement-house region OF
New York and other great towns. Open
natural opportunities, and you lose the
outer band that presses upon society
and makes its pressure felt at all
points. Loosen this band and relief Ia
felt everywhere. The city worker will
not turn farmer under the single tax
but some thousands or millions OF work.
ers on the outer edge of that restrictive
band will turn to natural opportunities
and the relief will be felt in the tene-
ment-house region in Network - in
the distant rural districts. The compe-
tition of varied powers and qualitiess
physical and intellectual, will NOT
cease: the mere competition for place
for the right to earn living will cease.
The Standard
curnovder WA discovered from tho