The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1892-08-20
SINGLE TAX DEPARTMENT.
The Unconscious Drift.

is creating a drift into which men fall
and float along, all unconscious of the
pool toward which they are speeding.
An illustration of this is the democratic
platform of Minnesota, in its demand
for legislation (which shall make COM
merce and industries free" Another is
the report of subcommittee of the
ways and means committee of the Iowa
house of representatives, which had
drafted and recommended the passage
of law requiring all taxable property
to be assessed at its full cash value.
This originated in a single tax agita-
ton there against an abuse which pre-
walls all over the union, that of assess
ing vacant land far below it's value and
letting land nonopolizers off easily,
while correspondingly burdening the
industrious by higher assessments on
improvements. And from New England
comes the report of an unsuccessful
attempt of land owners to fence in the
kcashore. The undulating line of sea-
shore extending north from Boston to
Portsmouth presents a diversity of
headland and beach and wooded land
scape scarcely equaled elsewhere on the
coast, and in these sequestrated re-
treats repose in quiet and elegant leis-
ure throughout the summer the wealth
and aristocracy of cur cities. Among
these places none is more conspicuous
than the town of Swampscott, lying
just north of Lynn. Its natural advant-
ages are broad ocean exposure and a
magnificent beach sweeping in an al
most unbroken circle from headland to
hcadland for many miles. The place
has taken on the air and exclusiveness
| of a Newport, and the spirit of AFRO
gance and monopoly is becoming more
and more aggressive. Heretofore the
| privilege of the beach has been recog-
nized as universal right, and all
classes have enjoyed its attractions.
But now, It seems, the public use of the
beach has become distasteful to the
AUDITORS, who have abridged public
| rights by projecting barbed wire fences
out to low water. A petition against
| the fences was placed before the har-
Dor and land commissioners, who gave
a hearing upon it. Mr.. Benjamin Pot
ter, one of the petitioners, although
| probably little conscious of the logical
Importance of his remarks, made fair
| ly good single tax speech in opposition
to the claim of the landowners, and
the commissioners have just refused to
| allow the fence to remain.
| ADOPTING THE SINGLE TAX IN BRITISH
COLUMBIA.
Nor is the movement limited to the
| United States. In British Columbia,
according to the Vancouver Daily News
| Advertiser, the principles of single tax
men, who until three or four years ago
| were regarded as cranks, have adher-
| ents among all classes of the communi-
] ty, and the tendency now in Vancouver,
| in Westminster, and in Victoria is to
reduce the assessment of improvements
and increase the assessment of land
which is directly in line with the single
tax idea The single tax question, says
| the News-Advertiser, is really before
the people at the present time, and, st
would seem that the councils and the
people of the principal cities of British
| Columbia are setting the matter in a
practical way and with an absence of
! friction or violent methods that would
have appeared impossible only three
years ago."
SPREADING TO JAPAN.
| The agitation has reached even to
Japan, and in most promising form.
Charles E. Garst, lately a missionary to
Japan, writes us of a book, copy of
which has just reached him, published
in Tokyo last year by Japanese
! scholar. Sentaro Jo and which is the
first book on the single tax ever pub
]ished in the Orient. Mr.. Garst says
that when it first came out he wrote to
the author asking him where he learned
| such doctrines. The author replied,
from Herbert Spencers works and also
from Henry Georges books. The rea-
soning, entirely his own, is perfectly
adapted to the Japanese, and Mr.. Garst
believes the new economic doctrine will
soon take definite shape and policy in
that empire.
But it is in England that most pro-
gross is now making, and, perhaps, the
most potent visible factor, after the
London Council elections, has been the
great coal strike. The London Daily
News has had correspondent at the
mines, from whose reports it appears
distinctly that the miners have been
striking in the interest of their employ
crs as well as of themselves In coal
mining there the three factors of pro-
duction are represented by three sepa-
rate sets of men. Landlords own the coal
in its natural condition in the ground,
and receive royalties for allowing it to
be taken out; miners do the mining la
Dor, receiving wages from the employ
ing capitalists, who superintend the
work, handle the product in the mar
ket, and take the risks of trade, for
which they receive what is left after
paying wages to their men and royal
ties to landlords. The miners noticed
that the operators were losing money
in low prices, and, fearing that this