The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-19
THE S|NCLE-TAX SOCIETY.
Address by Joseph Leggett on
Where We Are and Whittier
Tending.
THE CAUSES OF PAUPERIsM.
Drawing a Parallel Between the
Times of Henry VIII and the
Present.

A meeting of the Single-tax Society
OF this City was held last evening in one
of the halls of the Ancient Order of For
esters' building at 102 O'Farrell street.
President Dessau was in the chair and in
troduced J. M. Reynolds, who made a
brief address on the single-tax movement
in this City.
Joseph Leggett was the next speaker.
His address was on Where We Are and
Whittier We Are Tending" In the outset
the speaker paid a high tribute to the
worth OF the late Professor James Edwin
Ihorold Rogers, the scholar and writer in
the interest of mankind. He quoted from
numerous works of the writer and said:
vi all the facts ascertained by Professor
Rogers through his indefatigab BILE investiga-
uons the one that most surprised the world
ana most alarmed the privileged class of Eng
land was the fact that during the three CEN
turtles preceding the middle of the sixteenth
century, the condition OF the masses of the
Engllsh people, that is OF the laboring and
producing classes, was more comfortable and
prosperous than it has ever since been. We
moderns are inclined to regard skeptically the
accounts OF ancient golden ages. but he has
clearly shown that prior TO the reign of Henry
VII there was veritable golden age for Eng
l1sh labor.
During the last half of the reign of Henry
VII an ominous change in the condition of the
Engllsn masses began. Migrants and beggars
swarmed through the land and the
most harsh and cruel statutes were en-
acted Tor their punishment and suppression
In the twenty-second year of the reign of
Henry VIII an act was passed providing that
any person being whole and mighty in body
and able TO labor, found begging or being
vagrant, might be arrested by constable and
justice might, in his discretion, cause every
such idle person to be taken to the nearest
town and there tied to the end of a cart,
naked, and TO be beaten with whips throughout
the town "tll his body be bloody by reason of
SUCH whipping" And this whipping was to be
repeated as often as he made default In the
twenty-seventh of Henry VIII an act was passed
providing that If the vagrant persisted in his
course after being whipped, he should have the
upper part OF the gristle of his right ear clean
cut OFT; and if he still persisted he was to be
tried and executed as felon.
The speaker then spoke at length on the
condition of the laborer at various stages,
and then said:
American labor has its golden age, too. Men
still living remember well the time when the
tramp" had no existence in this country and
industrial armies" were never dreamed of:
when the possibilities of millions of men be-
ing permanently unemployed in this country
seemed lnconceivable; when the means of
lie were more abundant than they had
ever before been in any other age or country,
and when the standard of living was higher
than was ever enjoyed by the workers of the
world at any time or place. Within the pres
ent generation we have had the tramps and
Migrants and industrial armies, and the in
Vulnerable hosts of the unemployed swarm
upon US as they swarmed upon the people of
England in the reigns of Henry VIII and his
immediate successors. On the statute books
of every state in the Union are now to be found
laws passed for the punishment and suppress
sion OF vagrants tramps and beggers as harsh
and cruel for our time as were those of Henry
VIII, Edward vi and Elizabeth for their times
The speaker devoted some time to the
reign of Henry the Eighth and the man
ner in which he had lands confiscated to
the Crown, and different methods of deal
ing with the lands of the country and the
expressions the owners had to bear, and
how they were driven to pauperism. He
then said:
A few years after Henry. VIII began to sell
the confiscated lands of the church, England
swarmed with Migrants and sturdy beggars
and Green tells us that England for the first
time saw distinct criminal class in the organ
lied gangs of robbers which began to infest the
roads, and were always ready TO gather round
the standard OF revolt. The gallows did their
work in vain.
If 1 have succeeded, as believe have in
proving that the efficient cause of these evils
was and is the exclusion of men from the land,
is it not clear that the only effective remedy or
preventive must be to restore them again to
that essential element from which they have
been excluded?
have said that have been unable to find
any modern writer who has assigned any ade-
quate or sufficient cause for the origin. and
growth of English pauperism. Professor
Rogers has assigned four causes, and they are
DeGge Of bese
money. 2. Confscating of the guild lands
and the loss of the Benefit Society's funds. 3.
Rise in prices. A.. The enactment of the
Statute of Laborers of that year.
Now, in conclusion, let me ask you to con-
slider the question:: Where we are and whittier
we are tending? If am correct in the infer
ence draw from the facts l have presented in
the foregoing we are entering upon the descent
to an abyss of misery and degradation, poverty
than that down which the English people
passed after the middle of the sixteenth CEN
fury. A descent into conditions that will be
the more 1ntolerable by reason of the memories
of our past prosperity and happiness, and of
the superior intelligence and greater refine
ment OF the masses of our people. And the
worst of it is that this downward movement is
the necessary result of the operation of natural
laws-that is, of the law that impels the land
lord to take all he can get as q condition pre-
cedent to his permitting labor to have access to
his land and OF the law that compels laborers to
bid against each other in their efforts to gain
access to the landlords land without which
they must perish
And is this awful fate inevitable? Must we
and our posterity drink to the dregs the bitter
cup of misery that has been held to the lips of
the English people for the last three and
half centuries? Must poorhouses rise in every
township OF this broad republic as they have
risen in every parish of England? Must our
CnllUren ana cn1luren'S cn1lQren De driven In
to exile from the land of their birth as mil
lions upon millions of the people of
England, Ireland and Scotland have been
during the past three centuries? Shall
the blowers forever plow the backs of
class condemned to toll in this once
free and happy land? The Single Takers say
these things must not. shall not be. They are
setting the ak to the root of the deadly tree
which produces these evil fruits. and their
brave and sturdy blows beginning to tell
With hope that inspires TO high endeavor,
and a faith that falters not, they are pressing
forward i'll ever increasing numbers to the
goal where equal opportunity shall be secured
to all, where all men shall be not nominally, but
really free.
And the Truth shall ever come uppermost
And Justice shall be done.
| Before the meeting adjourned the fol-
! lowing resolutions were unanimously
adopted:
| WHEREAS The San Francisco CALL, under
| the present management, is steadily pursuing
| the policy of giving impartial reports OF all
| public movements and has habitually pub
| lished good reports OF single-tax meetings and
| lectures, therefore
| Resolved That we heartily thank THE CALL
| and Mr.. G.. M. Shortridge, its editor and pro-
| prietor, for the liberal and uniform courtesy
| thus extended.
| RESOLVED That we commend The CALL to the
| attention and support of all those who believe
| in the doctrine of the single tax, equal oppo-