Vanishing Landmarks

The present force should be permitted to complete the tenor of their natural lives in the service. The new rule if adopted should apply only to those taken on after the enactment of the law limiting the period of service to five years. Exceptions would have to be made in cases requiring technical, professional or scientific knowledge. Provision would also have to be made whereby by executive order, on the recommendation of heads of departments, the specially competent could be retained.

CHAPTER XXV

PROPERTY BY COMMON CONSENT

The desire that the government shall enlarge its functions so as to prevent large accumulations, has led to the verge of confiscation of property. Several proposed methods of partial or total confiscation are discussed.

Originally no one held property by common consent, and in the very early history of the race I suppose no one gave a thought to what we now call “property rights.” Even now savages seldom claim ownership to anything beyond a dog, weapons of the chase, possibly a horse or a canoe. Gradually the divinely implanted desire for ownership, sovereignty, independence, led the more advanced to assert exclusive rights, but still they held little if anything by common consent. Each held what he could by force. Under these conditions civilization had its birth.

As the race advanced and began to feel the throb of God-like impulses, and to live in harmony with divine law, consent to proprietorship developed. For several centuries, in all civilized countries, with here and there a relapse into barbarism like the French Revolution of the 18th century, and the Russian Revolution of the 20th century, property rights and some measure of personal liberty have gone hand in hand and have been quite generally recognized and respected.

CONSENT WITHDRAWN

For the first time in the history of an English speaking people consent to personal ownership is being gradually withdrawn. Unless you have studied popular audiences, analyzed current magazine articles and scrutinized modern legislation, probably you have little conception of the proportion, even among the respectable and high minded, who are committed to some degree of confiscation.

At a joint debate on single tax under the auspices of an organization like many styled “Academy of Political Science” or “Political Science Club” or “Science of Government League,” which in this instance was an adjunct of one of our very large universities, I called for a direct expression from the audience upon the clear-cut proposition of confiscation of all private property. Two-thirds of the audience promptly responded in its favor. That audience was composed of “high-brows.” They were men and women who read magazines, attended lectures, belonged to “uplift” associations and indulged in mental processes which they thought was thinking. I had had similar experiences in joint debates on socialism, but had never before struck a bunch of incipient anarchists of such apparent respectability.

Some years ago I had the privilege of addressing an association of Socialist Clubs at Cooper Union. While I have addressed many better read audiences I have never seen one that had read more. Many of them did little else but read. In addition they were a most sincere and good intentioned body of men and women. There are, as every one knows who has come in contact with them, somewhat more than fifty-seven varieties of socialists, every one of which was well represented that evening. They were courteous, they were respectful, they listened with manifest interest; but it was easily discernible that they considered our civilization wrong and harmful in the extreme. One could see it, feel and taste it. The very atmosphere conveyed to every sense the unmistakable evidence that that great body of men and women thoroughly believed that what they termed “Capitalism” had its heel upon their necks. They were not rebellious, but it was evident they did not intend anyone to be misled into supposing that they were unconscious of their conditions, or that they intended to acquiesce longer than necessary.

In the campaign of 1918 the “single-taxers” of California made their third and great attempt to confiscate land values in that beautiful state. The issue of July 20th of “The Great Adventure,” an official organ of the single-tax propaganda, printed upon its front page in heavy double leaded type this announcement: “Single tax will put these big land values into the public treasury and leave the Ground Hogs nothing to rent but the actual value of their buildings.”

The January, 1918, number of “Everyman,” another of their official organs, contained a well-considered article lauding conditions in Russia, and promising the same for California. I quote briefly: “The people of Russia, who only yesterday were semi-starving slaves to a tinsel aristocracy, are now for the first time living upon their own lands, in their own homes, and working in their own fields and factories. They have dispossessed landlords and profiteers; and all who work have plenty. People do not starve where there is none to take the food out of their mouths. Famine is a result of human exploitation. When the people of any country go hungry it is because they are denied access to natural resources. The people of Russia have taken their natural resources, and also their industries and they will not go hungry… Out of darkest Russia has come the great light of actual freedom; and there is every reason to hope she will soon have the weakest government in the world, which means, of course, the strongest, bravest, truest and most united people… That is what we are striving to do in California, but we won’t stop with the land. We will only begin there. We could not stop there; the tide is too strong. It will bear us on into the new world of economic friendship.”

The same issue of “Everyman” gave a word picture, for the truth of which it vouched, of what it termed “Zapataland” – 90,000 square miles in Mexico – where it claimed confiscation had wrought its legitimate and beneficial results. It claimed the same conditions would be accomplished in California through the adoption of the single tax amendment to the Constitution as had been wrought in Mexico with the musket. It says: “In Zapataland they have no need for money. Is it food you want? Go to the market and help yourself. Do you need shoes or a hat? Go and take what you need! Have you a fancy for jewelry? Go make your selection… In some of the centers the women of Zapataland clamored for finger rings and bracelets. The elders consulted. They melted down some of the church ornaments, and in a few months baskets full of the envious shining trinkets were in all the Plaza shops. Help yourself… Labor is plentiful. Everybody wants to work at least a few hours a day – they insist upon it. ‘Give me that shovel! You have been digging there for a couple of hours or more. Let me dig awhile.’ ‘Here, you, stop straining yourself. Go and rest. I am stronger than you.’… In Mexico, the propaganda was carried on with ‘30-30’s’. The Zapata army went from valley to valley, from village to village, and dispossessed the owners.”

Such stuff is well calculated to deceive almost anyone except those who have seen a Mexican. For three successive campaigns California was flooded with that class of literature, its boasted purpose being confiscation. The organization back of the propaganda, with ample endowment, purposes to use California as an object lesson and to extend the principle throughout the nation.

For the benefit of any who thus far have not appreciated the gravity of this most plausible attack upon property rights, and therefore have not studied the question, I make the following brief statement of the case as it appeals to a very large number.

Henry George, the great apostle of single tax, was a very able man. I do not say he was a very wise man. Great intellects frequently lead to great errors.

Every advocate of single tax legislation has been a faithful disciple of Henry George. No one has added a new argument, stated an old argument with greater force, or reached a different conclusion. None of his followers has ever apologized for anything Henry George ever said, or refused to stand or fall with the great originator of the scheme. Therefore, to quote Henry George is to quote the best authority, and all authority.

I propose, therefore, to make a few extracts from Henry George’s standard work on the subject – the great text book of single-taxers – “Progress and Poverty.”

He begins and ends his argument with the proposition that God made the land, the sea, and the air, for his children collectively, and has never granted the exclusive right to any part thereof to king or subject. All pretended grants and conveyances, therefore, have been fictitious. Relying upon this argument, he holds that all natural resources still belong to the people collectively, and confiscation in the interest of all is justified.

On page 401 of “Progress and Poverty,” he says: “But a question of method remains. How shall we do it? We should satisfy the law of justice. We should meet all economic requirements by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring all lands public property, and letting it out to the highest bidder in lots to suit.”

On page 403 he says: “I do not propose either to purchase, or to confiscate property in land. The first would be unjust; the second needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land; let them continue to call it their land; let them buy, and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.”

Again, on the same page, he says: “We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some changes in our mode of taxation to take it all.”

Thus it will be seen that Henry George, with all his intellect, was mentally dishonest. His heart-beats were sympathetic, but his mind wobbled. He was able to perceive nothing dishonest when I sold my acres, or my lot, invested the proceeds in stocks and bonds, and then by my vote exempted my property from taxation, and placed all the burdens of government on the purchaser of my land.

He would have seen no injustice in a government of the people establishing Rural Credit Banks, as has been done, loaning millions, with mortgages as security, upon lands purchased from the government, then inducing widows and orphans to buy securities issued against these mortgages, and finally taxing the value of the real estate away, thus leaving the widows and orphans to beg their bread from door to door.

The American people are inherently and intuitively honest and just. Do you think it would be just, after the people, through their Congress and their president, had granted the homesteader a patent title in fee simple, now to tax its value away? As Henry George says, the effect is the same as confiscation. He calls it “taking the kernel and leaving the shell.”

CHAPTER XXVI

EQUALITY OF INCOME

The inevitable effect of equality of income, assuming it could be accomplished, is discussed.

Two or three years ago George Bernard Shaw had a prize article in the “Metropolitan” in which he advocated “Equality of Income” as a panacea for all the ills that afflict civilization. I remember he urged that if all had equal incomes the race would be improved; for there would be greater freedom of selection. He seemed to deplore the fact that under present conditions “men and women meet in parks and other public places, recognize natural affinity” so promptly responded to by some but are nevertheless kept apart because of this iniquitous inequality of income. However much the man may be attracted by the personality of the lady he will not humble himself to make advances if she gives evidence of being financially beneath him; while his advances will be spurned if he bears the marks of a more meagre income than she enjoys.

It was the same old free-love doctrine, and the author argued at length to show that inequality of income thus seriously interferes with the free course of “natural affinity” and hence retards the coming of the “superman.” He did not in that article suggest how he would equalize incomes. Suppose we study, for a moment, not how to accomplish it, but the effect of its consummation.

If equality of income would be a panacea now – if it would solve the ills we have and prevent others – it would have worked well from the beginning. Imagine therefore that instead of following the divinely implanted impulse to acquire, to hold, to exercise sovereignty, to achieve, the race had remained as it was when it had no income, and therefore when no inequality of income existed. Would churches and cathedrals have been built? Would colleges and universities have been founded? Would art and literature have flourished? Would America have been discovered? Equality of income would have left Queen Isabella with no jewels to sell with which to purchase the Santa Maria. In fact there would have been no Santa Maria to purchase. The race would have remained where the race started. Inequality of income began when incomes began. Inequality of income marks the birth of civilization, and if civilization ever dies “equality of income” should be the title of its dirge.

The wealth of the United States is about twenty-five hundred dollars per capita. Assume, if you please, that all our property could be and has been converted into cash. Then assume that the rest of the world is able and willing to supply our every need and our every want so long as our money lasts! We would eat up and wear out the accumulation of the centuries in about three years; and henceforth would go about clothed in skins, and our own skins at that. The world lives from the income and accretion resulting from the accumulations of the ages, but in order to make it effective it must be kept in circulation, going first to labor, thence to the producer – the manager – by way of the merchant, and again to labor.

CHAPTER XXVII

AN HISTORICAL WARNING

The teachings of Rousseau, which logically resulted in the French revolution, wherein the confiscation of property was the prime purpose, is compared with some of the teachings of today. History that should constitute an ample warning is cited.

We have been sowing what Rousseau was permitted to sow and from which was reaped the French revolution. The “Social Contract” taught that property as understood today did not exist. The citizen simply held it in trust for society. For under the “Social Contract” each “surrenders himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his resources, of which his property forms a part.” The next logical step in the revolution was to discharge or recall the trustee, and thus vest the property again in society itself. That was done. George W. Hinman in “Can We Learn Anything from History?” summarizes this recall of trusteeships as follows: “Society proceeded to recall its trustees as fast as ‘Society’ needed the property. It recalled the trusteeships of all the church property, $800,000,000; of all the property of exiles, $600,000,000; of all the property of the guillotined and condemned, $200,000,000; of all the property of hospitals and charitable institutions, $200,000,000; of all the state domains sold and rented in the last three hundred years, $400,000,000; of all the gold and silver vessels and specie, $100,000,000; of all the property of other institutions, valuables and common goods, $700,000,000. Then it recalled the trusteeships of coats and trousers, growing crops, pots, kettles, pans and mattresses. In one town it recalled the trusteeship of ten thousand pairs of shoes from ten thousand pairs of feet, and thus condemned ten thousand former custodians of this property to go about their tasks barefooted in the snow.”

Not only this but the government extended confiscation by means of income tax until the whole of every income in excess of six hundred dollars was to be taken. Taine, the historian, summarizes thus: “Whatever the grand terms of liberty, equality and fraternity may be, with which the revolution graces itself, it is in its essence a transfer of property. In this alone consists its chief support, its enduring energy, its primary impulse and its historical significance.”

Hinman summarizes thus: “The people in a body is infallible; unlike individuals it can make no mistakes. Therefore we should not trust government to individual representatives or agents but to the pure and direct democracy. But we cannot have direct democracy at its purest without equality of condition. To get equality of condition we must get equality of property. To get equality of property we must correct the inequalities of the past and present. Therefore to correct these inequalities we invent the theory of trusteeship of property, recall the trustees, and take possession of all unequal properties in the name of society.

“That is the whole cycle; that is the great revolution! Twenty-five years in preparation, eleven years in actual practice, fourteen years in immediate consequences; fifty years all told and that is sum, substance and essence from the beginning to the end, a transfer of property! A transfer of property without compensation! A confiscation of property beyond appeal and beyond recall! There were movements also against the church, and against the family, but the transfer of property far surpassed them both in size and in significance.

“That the convulsions attending the movement were more spectacular than the movement itself; that a million persons were stabbed, drowned, shot, beheaded and hunted to death within the borders of the nation; that wars were started that strewed Europe with 5,000,000 dead; that the oppression was far more ferocious than under Louis XIV, that the waste of government was arithmetically four times greater than under the most wasteful monarchy; that a whole nation was bathed in blood, bankrupted in morals, and rotted in character to the core – all of these things, hideous and appalling as they may be, distracting and absorbing as they may be, are still but as colossal incidents. The chief movement through this sea of blood and wilderness of death was the transfer of property.”

Nevertheless, Robespierre – the bloodiest man who had ever lived, the bloodiest man who ever has lived outside of Russia, and the bloodiest man who ever will live unless socialism gets control in the United States – was an idealist. He resigned the bench rather than pronounce sentence of death upon a convicted criminal. He read Rousseau’s “Social Contract” every day. He was the leader in the “uplift” movement of the age in which he lived and sought to produce Utopian conditions of “liberty, equality and fraternity” throughout France. While an Internationalist he sought to reform and transform France before extending his field of influence.

But being self-willed as well as self-opinionated, at the first appearance of opposition he threw down the challenge. There was “some fight in him and he liked it.” He appealed directly to the people and condemned to the guillotine everyone who had the temerity to resist his efforts to ameliorate human conditions. While seeking everywhere for property to confiscate, and heads to guillotine, he made the most elaborate speech of his career:

“Our purpose is to substitute morality for egotism, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason for the tyranny of habit, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobility for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high breeding of the great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for amiable, frivolous and wretched people; that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.”

I submit that is pretty good rhetoric and excellent diction. Though it means absolutely nothing it must have sounded well to the proletariat. The people idolized Robespierre for a while at least, as they always idolize an orator who has great command of indefinite and high-sounding language. Idolizing an idealist they followed him and were led to the extremes of democracy. The whole population of France was transformed into an organized mob, doing everything that a mob can do but, in the main, preserving the forms of law.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CAPITAL AND LABOR

Among the dangers threatening the republic is the warfare which admittedly exists between capital and labor, the manifest tendency of which is in the direction of bolshevism. Some citations are made showing its imminence.

One need not to have read the preceding pages to know that the United States is fast approaching a crisis. Industrial and social unrest is everywhere apparent. Capital and labor are at grips in many places, while management, the all-essential factor, seems helpless to accomplish reconciliation.

When given free rein, capital enforced unbearable terms. This resulted in legislation forbidding combinations for the purpose of limiting output or advancing prices of the products of labor. Thus far labor has enjoyed express exemptions from anti-trust laws, and it is now making unbearable exactions. I would like to warn labor unions that they are liable to exceed the limits of prudence. Admittedly Congress has the same power to forbid combinations of labor as it had to prohibit combinations of capital. Combinations of every kind are beneficial so long as their purpose is legitimate.

There is an old fable of a man who had an ox that he worked with a donkey. One day the ox refused to work and at night he asked the donkey how matters had progressed without him. “I had a very hard day, but I got through with it,” said the donkey. “Did the boss say anything about me?” asked the ox. “Not a word,” said the donkey. The next night the ox again inquired and received the same reply: “A very hard day, but completed.” “Did the boss say anything about me?” asked the ox. “Not a word,” said the donkey, “but coming home he stopped in and talked awhile with the butcher.” It might be well for us all to understand that if one million or ten million bankers, if one million or ten million farmers, or if one million or ten million organized labor men should ever attempt to rule America in the interest of any one class, and should assume to dictate the terms on which production can be continued, it will be only a question of time when one hemisphere will be freed from organized coercion. But every organization of labor, every combination of capital, and every association of farmers, might be dissolved and it would not more than temporarily relieve the situation. It is a condition that confronts us and no amount of theorizing will improve it.

Recently an official of the Department of Labor, in a carefully prepared article, made the profound declaration that warfare between capital and labor will continue until justice is assured. Grant, if you please, that a court of exact justice could be created, with a judge wiser than Solomon on the bench. Its decisions would satisfy neither capital nor labor. Arbitration boards occasionally seek to do exact justice. They usually ignore that element and aim simply to effect a workable compromise, that will temporarily save the situation. When the terms are accepted and acquiesced in, both sides profess to be satisfied, but neither side is satisfied. Capital thinks it is entitled to everything because without capital labor would starve, and it demands that labor remove its shoes from off its feet in its presence. Labor thinks it is entitled to everything because without labor capital would languish. It goes further and declares capital to be a myth. It says that all so-called wealth is the product of labor; and if labor had not been robbed there would be no accumulated wealth – and all such socialistic and anarchistic nonsense which emanates largely from German-bred or German-educated teachers of political economy and sociology, emphasized by a large number of public speakers both within and without the church, and by demagogues generally. Hence “labor claims the full proceeds of its service less enough to keep the tools and machinery in repair.” It asks that capital remove its shoes. Both capital and labor ignore the most important factor of production – management.