The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-08-20
SPLIT IN PROGRESSIVE PARTY
MODERATE FACTION. ROOSEVELT AND OTHERS MAY RETURN TO
 REPUBLICAN FOLD,
Creed of the Radicals Is-Their Conten- ton As to Special PriviIege-Very
 Radical Remedies Proposed.

l seems to De coming Tn New jersey
 A dissension which began at the l Chicago convention at which the party
 was formed, has now grown until the
 differences between the two factions
 seem irreconci1ab1e. The radicals,
 led by Pinchot, Record, Heney and
 Merriam will go one way. The other
 wing, headed by Roosevelt, and in 1 c1uding George W. Perkins, Bill 1 Flynn, the Pittsburg (boss, Dan Han ma. of Cleveland, Frank A. Munsey 1 and others will go in the opposite di-- 1 recion, possibly back to the Repufo- 1 lfcan fold. Such are the signs ] It is known now to be the delfber- 1 ate purpose of the radical wing to
 provoke this split by carrying to the next national convention of the party the astonishing platform on which the Pinchot candidate is running for the progressive nomination for gov ernor of New Jersey. It is believed | this platform if adopted vii drive the 1 Roosevelt faction out of the party The issue is seen in New Jersey, | where the Progressive primaries occur l on September g. The radicals. have | put up as their candidate Edmund 1 Burke Osborne, a wealthy manufac- turer of calendars, a former Iowa
 school teacher who became rich by developing his own invention of
 color printing process. The Roosevelt faction is behind Everett Colby, a
 millionaire lawyer.
 The platform on which Osborne is running is something more than l platform. It is a doctrine, a philos- I ophy. and a revolutionary philosophy at that. Only one other party, the 1 Socialist party, has a revolutionary philosophy for fighting economic wrongs.
 l The Pinchot philosophy grew out of 1 D number of conferences in New York last spring. Its evolution shows the value of such a party revolt as \ split the Republicans last year. That \ revolt set thousands of honest men | thinking about conditions for the first | time in their lives Pinchot, Heney Merriam and the others began get ting together in New York last spring. They began thinking about the mil Iennium, the fundamental reforms I needed to secure absolute equality of opportunity.
 The Roosevelt people were not in vited into these conferences. The split between tn factions had occurred
 over the trust plank in the Progress
 sive platform. The radicals believed | the trust plank was written by George " Perkins, partner in the Morgan I firm That plank declared for reg | ulation of trusts instead Of dissoIu-t ton The Pinchot element was in ia vor of dissolution
 A millennium based on the Roese- welt idea would be socialism,. The |
 posite extreme. complete individual l ism, the ideal state of anarchy, in the | philosophical sense of the word. I Having the individualistie beHefI | the Pinchot group got down to fun l damentaIs as 8 starting point for thought What, in the last analysis
 causes the economic evils of to-day
 Private monopoly, they decided. And why can private monopoly exist? Be-
 cause special privilege exists
 ls Therefore, runs their sylIogism, de-
 stroy privilege and you destroy mo freedom of opportunity.
 l. But what are special privileges?
 asked these political thinkers in their Il conferences. Their analytical minds logued special privileges and they
 found that all of them could be re- \ duced to five forms. In fact, this
 is an axiom in the new doctrine:
 .arhere are five forms of special priv
 e1eges and no other forms"
 1-The franchise prfvi1ege; 2-The privilege of monopoIizing land;
 | s-The privilege of patents;
 4-The credit privilege;
 5-The privilege derived from tn- direct taxation. The remedy for the first, according
 to this new doctrine, is to abolish pri-
 vate ownership of public highways,
 such as the railroads, telegraph and
 telephone lines, and all public utili-
 ties For the second the remedy is
 to exempt from taxation everything but land, and tax the use-va1ue of
 land so heavily that the unearned in-, Increment is confscated by the people.
 A novel remedy is proposed for the
 third. The doctrine recognizes the
 right of the inventor to the full re- ward due him from society for his in | iN11 Tt1- daox- I7.o often gets nothing and the public
 goes without benefit because of the suppression of valuable inventions by
 corporations. The new proposition
 is to abolish n1onopolistic ownership
 of patents and to allow anyone to
 manufacture any patented device by
 payment of a royalty to the inventor.
 It is also proposed that the govern nnent conduct the banking of the
 country, thus taking the control of 1 credit from private hands
 1 Finally, this remarkable propaEan- | da would abolish all forms of ind1- l rect taxation, such as the taPief,- in- Lternal revenue taxes and license tax
 es, on the ground that the effect of such taxation is to farm oEr the col lection of taxes to individuals whose , tendency is to become extortionate r The significant feature of this pro-
 gram lies in Special PhiIivele No. 2
 and the remedy therefor. In other F words, Pinchot and his followers have
 adopted the Single Tax philosophy and s hope to make it the fundanentaI prin- ciple on which the new Progressive
 party will rest.
 s Up to. the present the Single Tax 3 movement has had no party Most ? of the believers of the Henry George
 doctrine, including his own son, are q Dem mocrats. If the Pinchot program ! is adopted by the Progressive party it q will put different complexion on na- r uona1 politics True, such a revo- I lut1onary movement could not hope for any quick success