Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1895-09-14
CORRESPONDENTS.

NUKKA1VILLE, Ill, sept. ,, $50.
To the MINING JOURNAL.

MuRRAYvILLE, Ill, Sept 8, 1895
To the MINING JOURNAL.
Mr.. Livesey says we single takers
contradict ourselves, and he quotes
from Progress and Poverty as well
as from my last, to show the con
tradictions. | fail to see any sense in
his argument, as it is mostly hair
splitting and distorting the meaning
of words.
To confiscate means to put in
public treasury, and taxing land up to
its full rental value, though 1t would
destroy private property in land in the
sense that it would prevent any in
dlvidual from appropriating the value
of land, and hence would destroy land
lordism, it would by no means put
land into the public treasury, nor in
crease the power of the State over it.
1t would destroy speculation in it, but
as unused land would be taxed as
much as used land of the same
quantity and in the same situation,
hence the tax could not fall upon the
product of the land.
Mr.. l.. should have quoted still
further from Mr.. George, where he
says the present landlords might keep
their paper titles, might call it their
land if they would, the State, the
people as a whole would have quoted
what Mr.. G. says about the world be-
ing the tomb of dead States, dead
empires, and dead civilizations, as
well as of dead men, and have told us
that the reason was that no people
had yet been found who could answer
the riddle of the Sphinx. The Sphinx
has given us a riddle, as it has every
people aud this is ours-a question in
ethics-does that oalue aohich attaches to
land By reason Of the groaoth of population,
and the Improvements IN arts, belong to the
community thai produces 1t, or to tile in
d1gidunt aoh0 does not produce 1t? Upon
the correctness of our answer depends
the life of our civilization as well as
OF country. If II neglect to answer
the interrogation correctly brings us
to revolution and Violence is it not
Gear that the single-tax will follow
We fear not, and hence are the more
anxious to anticipate and avert such a
disaster What we say is Just what
those men said who tried to prevent
the Reign of Terror by means similar
to that we propose to-day-the men to
the memory of whom Mr.. George
dedicates one of his books. But the
revolution came, and the remedy re-
commended by Quesnay, Dupont, and
others, have yet to be adopted in
France.
Mr.. l.. still has that string in his
brain about single takers giving up
their land to preserve their consist
ency. He very ingeniously lodges
my question as to whether he ever
heard of a single taXer refusing to
take his own medicine. Suppose |
had one thousand acres and should
give 1t all to ten men would COM
munity as whole be better off Nay
worse, for in the place of one land
lord who was willing to make the soil
free there would be ten Ian llords who
would vote against all such reforms.
Instead of one large landlord, who
could afford to be generous to his
tenants, there would be ten petty
landlords who could not. If the State
would relieve me of all taxes on my
labor and tax me on y on my land at
such valuation as it would stand at
should the adoption of the single tax be
general, then | should be inconsistent
to refuse. But such a thing is I'M
practicable if not impossible.
Now, Mr.. L., don't wobble and
grobble so! Honest Injun did
you ever hear of single taxer who
was not willing to have his land
confiscated by the single tax
You do not seem to have studied the
effect of the Licinian code, of the
Hortensian code, nor the futility of
the code Napoleon, or you would not
propose so thin scheme as farm re-
form.
By the way you seem to be
anxious, or at least interested about
Delaware-why did you not accept
Harold Sudell's invitation to speak
there? The average single tax
stumper would be delighted to have
such supercrltical double tax buffer
to run against. VIM. CAMM.
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