The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1907-11-20
SPECULATION IN LAND
Cause Of Financial Depression,
Says Henry George, Jr.

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Lift All Tax Burdens From Labor
and Production and Pile Them on
Land values-Price of Land Would
Not Mount to Eat Out Prosperity.
New York, Nov. 19.-Henry George,
Jr., was the principal speaker at the
evening session of the Single Tax
conference at Murray Hill Lyceum
fast night. Others who spoke were
Mayor Brand Whislock of Toledo, o.;
Raymond Robbins of Chicago and
William Lloyd Garrison.
Mr.. George prefaced his remarks
with discussion of the late financial
npheaval, and as a remedy for cur
rency strinscncy advocated the postal
savings banks system. Even this,
however, or any other elastic currency
plan would not preventbusiness depres-
sions, he said, because "the cause of
such depressions goes to the root Of
production, the land"
"The two fundamental, primary fac
tors in production" continued Mr..
George, "are the natural factor land
and the human factor labor; and
whatever touches either of these goes
to the seat of business activity, be-
cause it reaches the foundation of all
production.
I'm all times of prosperity specula-
tion Is afoot; and of all forms of spec
ulation that which is most far-reaching
and important is in land. Witness
the recent era of great prosperity and,
as consequence, behold over the
country today land speculation ram
pant. In the greater and lesser cit
les, in the towns and villages, in the
farming and timber and mineral re-
eions, In the East, the West, the
North, the South, and all through the
great valley of the Mississippi, there
has been marked increase in specula-
tive rent.
This means that land, the natural
factor in production, Is made increas-
ingly harder to get. 1t demands and
obtains as the price of its uses larger
and larger share of the fruits of pro-
duction. Labor and capital-which is
form of labor being stored labor
must be content to divide between
them less and less share of produc-
ton, until suddenly somewhere in the
chain of exchanges. this circumstance
or that, trifing at another time, snaps
the strained general credit and banks
call in and refuse loans. Loans are
the breath of industrial life, and being
cut off, mills and factories stop, COM
mercial enterprises fail, multitudes of
workers are thrown into idleness and
the country sinks in the grip of an in
dustrial depression.
"On the one hand are large stocks
OF commodities of all kinds, and the
cry is that there has been an over.
production; but this seems to be true
only because on the other hand a large
mass OF workers suffer enforced idle
ness and hence are unable to buv.
Land speculation has produced the idle
workman and the overstocked mer.
chant.
This is what We see enacting about
us at this hour. The currency panic
was only the small thing at the TOP
that snapped general credit. At the
base of all production monopoly has
been making land, the general factor
artificially scarce, until the starting of
pebble at the mountain crest was all
that was needed to precipitate an ava.
lanche into the valley below.
How prevent these depressions?
By preventing land speculation. How
prevent land speculation? BY taxa.
ton. Lift all the tax burdens from la.
Dor and the fruits of production and
pile them on land values regardless of
improvement-on ground or economic
rent. That would destroy land specU.
lation-kill land monopoly. The price
OF land would not then mount to eat
out industrial prosperity; and an in
dustrial depression in what should be
a country of plenty for all would
thenceforward be thing of the past "