A Philosophy Unfolds

Edgar Buck

[Reprinted from Land & Liberty]

In the year 1927 I was 21 years old. This was the year in which the depression in Wales reached its deepest. The year before saw the general strike. Memory of it gives of riots, overturned cars, police baton charges. Then followed frustration, unemployment, bewilderment.

It was also the year that I joined Eustace Arthur Davies in his law practice in Cardiff. He was not only a lawyer but also the Honorary Secretary of the Welsh League for the Taxation of Land Values -- quite a mouthful.

His enthusiasm expressed itself in almost a one-man propaganda unit. The League had an Executive Committee, but its decisions, in the main, directed: the secretary to send out masses of leaflets and circulars I recall directions that circular letters be sent to all miners' lodges, church organisations, Trades and Labour Councils and the like. These were sometimes numbered in thousands and the only equipment to deal with them was an old flat duplicator.

By a process of delegation this work came to me, sore hands, inky fingernails, innumerable envelopes, endless lists. Henry George in Progress and Poverty prophesied that the cause he propounded would find those who would suffer for it. It seemed to me that this was the fulfilment of that prophecy.

In those days the Liberal Party, which before the 1914 war was knowledgeable and active on the land question, had been eclipsed. The Labour Party was in the ascendancy, but, except for a small minority, it saw only the "capitalists" as the enemy of labour, and only nationalisation of industry as the cure for economic ills.

In the years that followed I became familiar with the philosophy of Henry George, but only in its propagation. To be frank I had a living to make, and I concentrated on my profession.

Eustace Davies never felt like that. His heart was in the Great Reform. Nevertheless he modestly prospered and by 1939 we were in partnership together.

The inter-war years were frustrating ones for the Movement. Minor successes came only by special efforts, but in the middle of the period came the Snowden Budget of 1931, which provided for a tax of 1d. in the £ on the capital value of all land, vacant and developed. These provisions were gone again before the ink was dry; repealed by the so-called National Government which, I feel sure, came into existence much more because of the land taxation provisions, than for anything else. Gone was the chance of reform for another decade. Then followed the years of the war, which took me away.

Returning, the first necessity was making a living, and hard work in my profession was essential. Steeped as I was in the work of the League, I thought then that the reform it was advocating was necessary, but my enthusiasm did not go beyond that. Nevertheless, as I watched the policies of the political parties become more and more administrative and give less and less attention to basic economic factors, I began to question.

In about 1955 Dr. Fred Jones, Fred Giggs and I started a Henry George School in Cardiff, and this has gone from strength to strength. My tutorship has done more for me than for my pupils. In the closer study the dawn broke. Realisation came that all wealth was nothing but the product of land with labour applied t it, and that those who could monopolise land could exact a share which would increase with the need for land, and this in turn would increase with increasing activity. Such was the upsurge in the post-war years that this process became not only a matter of economic theory but plain for all to see.

These years have seen labour at its most ingenious. Its productivity with the machines it has constructed has leapt forward. It has benefited to some extent -- to a startling extent compared with 1927 -- but to a far greater extent has it benefited those who have monopolised land.

The proportion taken in land values has increased many times over. Still increasing, it leaves proportionately less of the wealth produced to wages and interest. Economic disaster is held back only by still further ingenuity of labour and to some extent by inflation of the currency. But the day will come when the continued pressure for land will enable those who hold it to take so great a toll that what is left will not be sufficient to renew capital goods and maintain labour. Then will come unemployment again.

Not only did all this become a matter of conviction in me, the remedy too was clear. As the earth and its fullness is the Lord's, and as he has given it to all his children, they without distinction must have the benefits.

This, it was clear, could be achieved by taking land values by way of taxation for the benefit of all; consequently abolishing taxation on labour and capital. This would promote a great step forward, because by also taxing vacant land, it would be brought into use and the holding of it out of use would be rendered impractical.

On the financial side it is not, I think, generally realised that the whole annual land value of Great Britain must now approach the annual budget of the country.
There is a philosophical side too. I have come to know that no person born into this lovely world is a stranger here. Providence gives abundantly, repeatedly and punctually, free as the air itself. The situation which has arisen, and which obliges the labourer to give some of his wages for his natural bounty, denies the divine intention. Obviously it must be corrected.

So deep is the present system entrenched, however, and so many privileges does it buttress, that it will need strong men to persist steadfastly in the reform. In humility I pray that I may be counted in their number.