The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1893-04-08
THIS MAN

1 THIS MAN
urges That All Taxation he Placed O.
Land and Improvements.
Editor of The Voice.-We OUGHT tc
have the single tax upon land yalues
universal temperance and the Kingdom
OF Tod upon earth; but we may not ge,
any OF these for a long time to come.
Let us take, to begin with, what we can
get now,
The taxation of all visible and touch.
able lands and improvements. real
estate alone requires no constitutional
amendment, no complicated laws, no
doubtful experiment.; 1t needs only the
1ull enforcement of one of uur present
good laws and the repeal of one of
our present uncnforcible and silly
ones. The law of nearly every state
requires that all real estate shall be
assessed for taxation at It's full and true
value, as it would be valued In paw
nient OF just debt from solvent debt
or, or at the price which willing buy-
er would pay willing seller. The as
SCISSORS mike oath to assess Il 40, and
unused speculative land at from one
quarter to one-fiftieth of that value,
the little home at its full value, and
other real estate at from two-thirds
down to one-third of its value. The re.
suit is that the governments interest
In unimproved land is, in practice, a
merely nominal one. Let us~enforcc
the law.
Inc farmers, who eventually get to
thinking on all great Questions, will
not long object to this If it will not
relieve them of their intolerable bur-
dens, as 1t Is claimed the single tax
would do, at least it will not increase
these burdens by lessening the cost
OF collection and increasing the con-
scious interest of every taxpayer in hon.
est and economical government, it will
decrease the total amount of taxation.
"A less proportion of this total will
fall upon the farmers shoulders, since
block of land in city is worth as
much as county in the country. The
farmers will be able to make the rail-
roads contribute to the county ex-
penses, as the railroads are said to own
over one-ninth of all the land in the
United States Silver mines, oil fields,
coal beds, all are land. Tax that land,
tax it at its real value. Let personal
property go-most of it will go anyhow
the farmer can not transfer or kill his |
personal property, but the banker or
the merchant can hide his bonds. his
jewels, his accounts, and can arrange to |
have little stock on hand at taxing day.
he can not hide his house. Tax that
house. You may check the building of |
houses, but that is comparatively a
small evil
Both clergyman and moralist are an
xious to stop the annual perjury forced
upon business men by the competition
OF few bad men under a bad law
Men do not wish to swear falsely; most
OF them wish to be honest citizens and
to pay their share of taxes.
Merchants who advertise for custom
ers give them attention, comfort, enter
tainment; do not want to brighten them
away from town by taxes, even when
they come to stay. Owners of real es-
tate, the value of which depends on the
amount of personal property on and
"~Suo ~ w NV WdHt W QTlVe tQdL
away by taxing it when it
comes
All are ready for this plan. Associa-
lions, not Missionaries, but of intelligent
practical, responsible owners of real
estate are springing up all over the
country, in Buffalo, in New York, in
Tenn, in Portland, Ore,
in Canada and in other places All aim
to exempt chattels from taxation, and
all meet with hearty support Stop all
the unfairness. all the spying. all the
Encouragement to production, all the ,
dishonesty, all the perjury, all the op-
preston of the poor connected with ,
taxing what men make, and tax only
what every one can see, what any one
can value.
Theories are very good, many of them :
some of them true, but this ,
IS no theory. This is common, hard
sense, which would give us to-day two
thirds of the benefits which Henry
George in his "Social Problems" claims
Tor single tax. Bolton HALL
"a L. IL