The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1896-02-14
Land Rent and Honey Rent.

1uG SluSlC-tdA uSd0CAo NOAtLhuC "
put up lively and aggressive fight in
Delaware for the single-tax system of
taxation, and appear to be causing the
slow going blue hens chickens to think.
1t is great work that compels people to
get out of old ruts and do little indie
pendent thinking. 1t gives them conf
dence in themselves, like the child when
it lets go of the chair and walks across
the room alone.
But the apostles of single-tax have
something to learn in economics before
they can make their work effective or
"tel1." The single-tax is a one legged
theory or system. The land is firm leg
to stand on but no being, material or
moral, can walk on one leg. Two legs at
least are Indispensable Civilization is a
moving condition of the race. Money is
the vitalizing spirit which gives it power
to move. Money is fully as much the
property of the whole people as the land,
and rent or interest paid for its use,
should be taken to defray the public ex-
pense, or the money should be freed from
interest. The land was found by man in
its crude state for his improvement and
use, and for any portion of the human
family to appropriate it, hold land out of
use, and exclude all others from its use
unless they paid the select few who
monopolized it, rent for the privilege, is
steadily forcing itself on the public mind
as principle resting on injustice.
Money is as necessary for the ascent of
man from his low estate as the land is for
his existence. Money is not, and cannot
be made by the individual. The govern
ment of every nation, which is the col
lective power of the people, makes the
money of the nation, endows it with its
proper and necessary functions; and for
any select portion of that people to cor
ner this national utility and exact tribute,
rent or interest, (all one and the same,) is
as contrary to true political economy as
the monopoly of land. The rental value
of the land is created by the community
and should be used in the interest of the
whole people in place of burthensom in
discriminate taxation of the property.
To distribute and divide the products of la
Dor applied to land, is the object for which
money is created. Without this conven-
lent and rapid distribution and division,
the products of labor applied to land
would remain in large part unused, re-
sulting in idleness and inactivity. Look
at the present condition ofthe people, the
result of cornering money, holding it out
of use and exacting high rates of interest
or rent for its use. Tens of thousands who
have the freest access to land, on account
of this monopoly of money are kept abso-
lutely poor.
The government could claim and take
the rental of land and apply it to defray-
ing the public expense, and it could as
readily take charge of the money of the
community that is in constant use by the
industrial, producing and trading portion
of it, and protect them in the free, legit-
innate use of it without the heavy rent in
the form of interest they are now paying
to the usurer or interest drawer, who COM
pels the users of money to pay him rent
or increment which he does not earn, as
truly and also as unjustly as the landlord
appropriates rents.
Until the single-taxers broaden their
views on the economic question Of rent
they will not make practical advance.
Could their system be pushed to prac-
tical test, they would find that while the
moving leg remained chained by the
usurer, the freed leg resting on the land
would be incapable of advancing society
to prosperity. The money lords who hold
for rent the tool of progress would take
all that had been wrested from the land
lord, leaving the worker poor as ever.
While Henry George continues to tell his
disciples that money is no more than
poker chips in the great problem of eco
Monies, the cause will not advance much.
He has laid down the principle that
ground rent is fund which belongs to
government because it is the creation of
the community, and when transferred
from private to public use all the ills of
society resulting from forced idleness
would be at an end, and is loath to con-
TESS or see that he is only partially right.
While the indispensable tool of the work
err is taxed and controlled by another, the
worker and the land he labors OH will be
exploited by the man who controls the
tool. The manipulators of money have
an advantage which the manipulators or
exploiters of land have not. The former,
by the destruction of money can increase
its value, its purchasing power. The mo-
nopolizers of land, while they cannot
destroy, can and do hold out of use large
portions of land in order to increase the
rental value of that part which Is In use.
If land was in complete control of the
government, which it would be if it claim
ed the rental value, it could not be cor
nered and held out of use as it is under
the present private absolute ownership.
This is the same with money, which is
a public utility. The present monope.
lizers of money are endeavoring to take
from government its undoubted prerog-
alive to create money, and have almost
succeeded. They have reduced it to the