The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1894-07-13
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
Single Tax Letter.
Baltimore, June 3Oth, Is

w III y yoe RSAAhhAO nv ~
say a few words on the relative i'm
portance of the question of taxation
and what is known as the money
question ? | hold that the kind
and amount of circulating medium
is an altogether secondary consid-
GRAFTON alongside of the matter OF
the way, and amount of taxes that
are levied for the reason that a
State can be maintained and has
actually existed with high degree
of civilization for many centuries
without any kind of official govern
ment money, but no State, ancient
or modern, has ever got along with
out taxation. In primitive times
taxes were paid in kind long before
the existence of official money. In
colonial days in Maryland taxes
were levied and salaries paid in
tobacco.
Today the relative importance OF
the volume of currency and taxa
ton can best be shown by an illus
tration of case in point. Such a
case we find in the establishment OF
Sparrows Point Works, near Balti-
more. A visit to these works will
show them to be probably without
a rival in the facilities they afford
for steel ship building. This COM
pany of capitalists came to Mary
land with abundance of money and
credit and could at any time have
obtained any needed amount of the
circulating medium, but instead OF
making ships the works are idle ;
men who sought their bread by
working for this enterprise have
been on the verge of starvation
during the last winter, and the
company has been receiving $1,000
per day to keep the works shut
down-said payment presumably
from the steel trust.
The company were forced into
closing from the fact that they could
not make ships in competition with
foreign builders and pay duty on
iron ore and coal. The Creator of
the world failed to understand the
beauties of the protective system
and placed deposits of different
kinds of iron ore in the islands of
Elba, Cuba and elsewhere, which
modern chemistry has shown to be
necessary to steel making. Protec-
ton makes no allowance for this
error of the Almighty and levies a
tariff on the ores imported, thus in
the end preventing the use of
American ores. Our local system
of taxation has also laid a heavy
hand on the Spalrows Point enter
prise. Instead of holding out a
welcoming hand to such gigantic
development of our natural re-
sources, our county officials, as is
their bounden duty under existing
laws, have made the company stand
and deliver to heavy amount.
The land the company took when
it first came was comparatively
valueless. The company made its
own roads, built school houses, etc.,
at its own expense almonst if not
entirely the county not rendering
any great amount of service in re-
turn for taxes paid to it, yet the
Improvements have been increased
in assessment very nearly to theil
full value. Thus we see this great
enterprise, which was described by
a distinguished gentleman at its
Inauguration as an "anti-poverty
society worth all the theories O.
: Henry George" crushed between
the upper and neither mill stones o.
our national and state systems O.
taxation.
To return to the money question
: In the system of checks commonly
used by banks we have a means O
: increasing or diminishing the vol
ume of money as the demands o
!. business require. A good check is
!. for the time being, as much money
= as any issue of the U. S. Treasury
whether gold, silver or paper. L
one has deposit of say 800 il
bank by the check system thi,
amount may be indefinitely multi
piled to serve in the payments O
debts and without any cost t.
either debtor or creditor. The de
positOr may owe 100 or 1000 per
sons 500 each; 100 or 1000 othel