fear stocks, bonds, railroads, mines, and the like. They prefer security for old age, or for their widows and children, to be in the form of land and they save for this purpose. It is our national inducement to thrift. Consequently it is this majority middle class, not the rich speculator, which will have its all wiped out by any plan which reduces land values-a fatal blow to national prosperity.

KNOWN POLITICAL ECONOMISTS

The foregoing address by Mr. Allen presents in condensed form the unanswerable evidence against the single tax which is given by political economists the world over. For citations and elaboration the student is referred to the following digest of statements by such authorities, all of international and impeachable standing.

Alvin Saunders Johnson, Professor of Economics, Cornell University. Students are especially referred to his article in "Atlantic Monthly" for January, 1914.

Johnson concurs with political economists generally and adds some peculiarly convincing arguments. Perhaps the most striking is his demonstration that single tax would bear ruinously on the middle class, which constitutes the most useful portion of society. He shows that of all land in the United States, about four-fifths is owned by the poor and middle classes. While occasional large land fortunes can be cited, few rich men, after all, have the bulk of their fortunes in land. On the other hand, land is the one investment that the middle class can hold against the encroachment of the rich. It is the poor man's inducement to thrift and safeguard against distress. It is where his savings lie. Single tax will destroy this opportunity and confiscate these savings. To the claim that it will bring compensating relief from other forms of taxation, Johnson replies that since taxes other than on land aggregate less than half the land rent enjoyed by the middle class, and not more than a third of them now fall on middle class land-owners, obviously this class cannot recover by relief from other taxation more than a sixth of the loss imposed upon it by single tax.

Johnson emphasizes the certain injury of rural single tax to farmers, already underpaid and tending in the younger generation to seek the cities. He holds boldly that the "unearned increment" is now all that renders agriculture tolerable in a large number of instances and that its abolition will certainly make the most enterprising of the agricultural population cease to be food producers for city laborers and send them into competition with the latter for their jobs. Finally, he denies the claims of single taxers regarding urban values, holding them to be theoretical and that single tax cannot produce conditions so favorable to building as now exist wherever land is rising rapidly enough to promise protection of the investment.

Francis A. Walker, President Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Political Economy, Discussions in Economics and Statistics, The Wages Question, International Bimetallism, Land and Its Rent, etc.

In "Political Economy" treats the subject with brevity but great clearness, showing that if the state allows and encourages one to purchase land with his earnings, perhaps even selling him the land itself and putting the money in its treasury, and then by Henry George's proposed process takes away without compensation either the land or the right to its full rental, “it becomes simply a robber, neither more nor less." He also traces the growth of private ownership out of the original primitive tribal tenure of land and shows that, notwithstanding the abuse of power by which private ownership has frequently

been established, the chief reason was that communal use is unproductive and unprofitable. He says common ownership has two fundamental evils: (a) The amount of political machinery required and the tremendous power for favoritism and corruption; (b) Abuse of the soil when cultivated by those without enduring interest in its development and preserved fertility, thus affecting the community's very subsistence. Gives excellent illustrations of this last point.

Richard T. Ely, Director School of Economics, Political Science and History, University of Wisconsin, and author of Taxation in American States and Cities, Outlines of Economics, Introduction to Political Economy, Labor Movement in America, French and German Socialism, etc.

Has a brief but telling reply in the book first mentioned above to George's assertion that what the individual produces by his own labor is his, therefore not justly taxable. Summarized, Ely's reply is this: "There is in modern society no such individual production as George assumes. What have I produced alone and unaided? Nothing. All modern production is social and the independence of the individual is felt in a thousand ways. Consequently society has a claim upon each and all."

W. M. Daniels, Professor of Political Economy in Princeton University, author of Elements of Public Finance.

Daniels points out that whatever be the fundamental justification of private property of any kind, there is no reason a priori why private ownership of land may not be as justifiable as private ownership of material chattels. Human labor is not the cause of the matter of any material product, only of its form, therefore if a man is to have the right of property in the product, he must have been allowed to appropriate the material which was as much a gift of God to humanity as land was. He disposes of the purely utilitarian side of the single tax theory (as distinguished from its ethical basis discussed above) by saying there is no historical or theoretical ground for assuming that the community's increase of productive power and consequent demand for factors of production applies in any fixed measure more to land than to capital or labor. Daniels also holds that private property (and he admits no difference in forms of private property) is the most efficacious method society has devised to minimize the suffering involved in the struggle for existence. It secures possibility for the greatest self-realization of the rational persons who constitute society. In his opinion, this is sufficient moral justification. His arguments are logical and scholarly, but not quite simple enough for the largest class of readers.

Carl C. Plehn, University of California, author of Introduction to Public Finance.

Plehn reminds us that the growth of taxation, based upon experience, has been toward greater complication rather than toward simplicity. The complexity of civilization requires this in the interest of both justice and

expediency. No nation ever found any single tax feasible as a source of income; none at all advanced in civilization attempts to conduct its government entirely from the earnings of its domains or industries. Perfection lies in the way of a mixed system that combines benefit and faculty to pay with the greatest possible simplicity and universal justice. He says a single tax on incomes might be made satisfactory from a fiscal point of view but would fail to answer the simplest requirements of justice, and that single tax on land would not only be unjust and inexpedient but would also fail to raise the necessary revenue. He gives a few of the common arguments as to its injustice, but dwells chiefly upon its fiscal unsoundness, with figures to prove that no tax on land alone, sufficiently large to pay the entire cost of government, could be appropriated without quickly defeating its own end by ruining the user of the land and prohibiting its cultivation.

Edward Sherwood Meade, Professor of Finance, University of Pennsylvania, author of Economics, Trust Finance, The Story of Gold, etc.

In "Economics," Meade shows that pecuniary needs of government rise and fall, while rents do not change with the same rapidity, consequently that single tax would alternate between surplus and deficit. Also that it could not be collected. Much of land value is due to improvements. The returns from capital and labor thus invested could not be segregated, hence such a tax could not be fairly applied, especially to agricultural land.

Poverty is rapidly diminishing in every civilized country, which contradicts the assumption upon which the single tax theory is erected. Wages are paid by an employing class, and the larger the amount of capital seeking investment the greater the demand for land and labor, which explains the general rise of wages all over the world. A large amount of this increased demand for labor comes from landlords who do not consume all their income from rents but who save and invest a large portion in producing capital. Land is not the only monopoly; there are other unearned increments besides rent. The abolition of one form of monopoly without attacking another is inconsistent. Single tax strikes at the foundation of society by attacking the institution of private property. If the landowner may be deprived of his land, owners of all other forms of property may well feel insecure.

A. T. Hadley, President of Yale University, formerly Professor of Political Economy, sometime Labor Commissioner of Connecticut, and one of the most prominent living experts on social and economic problems; author of Railroad Transportation, Its History and Laws; Economics, etc.

His discussion of single tax in "Economics" is notable for common-sense business-like treatment instead of theoretical argument. He shows the impossibility of making any such sharp distinction between rent and profits as the single tax theory contemplates. They shade into each other by insensible gradations. Rent cannot be regarded as enduring for all time, for land may lose value as well as gain it. Though rent is chiefly due to growth of popu

lation rather than to the controlling hand of an individual, a speculator without special skill in serving the public is more apt to lose than gain. With exceptions, of course, it is a general rule that large returns on real estate have been made by men who used their capital or earnings, rather than kept it idle, and who developed the property at considerable risk instead of waiting for others to do it. There are plenty of failures. Single tax proposes to deprive the investor of any surplus above the current rate of interest. Would it also guarantee him against loss? Loss and bad management of real estate are large now, they would be greater if shifted to society as a whole.

It is not a legal possibility to overturn recognized rights without compensation. The existence of law depends upon the continuity of its application. It is an axiom of political science that private property, whether unearned increment or anything else, must not be taken without compensation. If for this reason the fiscal success of single tax is questionable when applied to past unearned increment, how much more so if we deal with the future only, without knowing what land values will be?

Charles Gide, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Montpelier, France, a recognized European authority.

Gide's attitude toward single tax is more clearly expressed by his advocacy of wholly different principles than by his direct discussion of it, but he says this emphatically enough:

"The great practical objection to this plan is that there are usually two elements in the surplus value of land: one arises from the social and extrinsic causes already set forth, but the other may result from the owner's labor and from the advances he has made. Were we to establish such a tax, we should have to be careful to abstain from touching this second element; nor only for fear of violating the principles of equity-for this portion of the increment is the product of labor-but also for fear of discouraging all initiative and all progress in agricultural operations, which, we are aware, even now go too much by way of routine. Now it is impossible to follow out such a plan.”

Henry Carter Adams, Professor of Political Economy and Finance, University of Michigan, author of The Science of Finance and one of the best known American students of public expenditures and revenues.

In "The Science of Finance," Adams first discusses single tax in its relation to land policies, rather than as a source of revenue, and points out that by removing motive for land owning except in connection with occupancy, its logical result is a tenant system with the state as landlord. The acceptance of this as beneficial would be a reversal of eight centuries of the history of English-speaking people. He shows that at least as a proposition for solving the labor problem, and hence effecting social reform, it does not bear the test of analysis. The question at issue is whether transfer of ownership to the state will make "free land" in the sense that the labor will always have the opportunity to create his own wages by working on land instead of working for an employer at wages offered. Adams says this has but one answer. Land is no more accessible by the landless when its full rental value is demanded by the state than when the interest for its purchase money is demanded by