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SCI LIBRARY

Review of the Book:

The Theory of Earned and Unearned Incomes
by Harry Gunnison Brown

Joseph Dana Miller



[Reprinted from Single Tax Review, Vol.XIX, No.1, January-February 1919]


We hope this book will be widely read. We welcome its appearance. Particularly should it be read by those who at this critical time are responsible for the reconstructive legislation which a disordered and disheartened world demands. Now, more than ever, must legislation look beyond palliative devices to economic laws. In so far as statesmen, whatever their sphere, -- the nation, the state, the municipality, -- act upon the old make-shift policy, to the neglect of the lasting needs of the community, they will do an evil service to their own day and future generations.

Mr. Brown addresses hb book to all who "are concerned with the evils in our present economic system and who look forward to worthwhile changes during or after the war. World-wide democracy will be but half achieved if it be achieved in the political realm only, with no accompanying economic changes."

With Mr. Brown's conclusions Single Taxers have little reasons to quarrel. The debate will be rather with those whom the author describes as "economists whose social sympathies (of the influence of which they are not always conscious) or whose training by their former teachers, incapacitate them for seeing any distinction between land and capital." To these Mr. Brown's work comes as a virile challenge, made in such terms that it must be taken up. The fundamental issues raised affect the economic policy of the country too profoundly to be ignored. They must be discussed by professional economists and settled once for all. It is unfair to American democracy, now deeply concerned about her future, that uncertainty as to these issues should continue a day longer than necessary. Class interests of a contrary nature must not be allowed to prejudice the final triumph of reason.

While the economists debate, we trust that the unprofessional student of the economic problems now facing our nation, will also consult this work of Prof. Brown. Economic problems, after all, are but the problems of business, industry, agriculture, the getting and distributing of wealth, the material and better things we all are rightly striving for. The style of the work is clear, easy, and its vocabulary untechnical; while on every page it is provocative of thought.