Single Taxers and the new Black List
of Dangerous People

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1928]

The few among us who would confine the Single Tax movement to the discussion of the mere transference of taxes from labor products to land values, and who would hold LAND AND FREEDOM strictly to the narrow advocacy of that policy, have now something to consider.

Perhaps the very reason why many people feel a lack of sympathy with the Single Tax movement is due to the too formal character of our agitation, to the purely cut and dried formulas, to the narrow range of our inquiry that fails to take into account the varied phenomena of social movements, and the many manifestations continually arising because of the lack of social justice which it is the aim of the Single Tax to establish. At a time when we were successfully appealing to many of the disinherited, to minds only vaguely conscious of great social wrongs, our words were out of a vocabulary more universal, and therefore more distinctly welcome to hearts that hungered for a message of emancipation. We were by reason of this better understood.

And indeed if the proposal of Henry George is not for a new and different state of society, and if we will not accord our teaching to this very real vision, then indeed has this movement of ours lost its magic. Our sympathies must be with those who for any reason are raising the standard of revolt against the intolerable conditions of a false civilization. Their way may not be our way; their justice not our justice. But their right to revolt, and their right to express their convictions, is our right. We must defend their rights as peculiarly our concern. The state of society we are helping to build as disciples of Henry George, is a society of freedom, for it is that, and not a new tax system, that we would bring about.

Our enemies are not merely those who attack the Single Tax. In a sense they are our friends. Our real enemies are those who, desiring to perpetuate things as they are, would bring under ban those who are doing anything to destroy what they regard as existing injustice. For the time being these are our friends.

This comment is for the purpose of leading up to what we want to say about a certain group of irresponsible, reactionary busybodies calling themselves "Key Men of America." Their names, though not important in themselves, deserve mention for qualities that are typical of certain so-called 100 per cent Americans. Their names are Fred B. Marvin, Edward A. Hunter, of the Industrial Defence Association, and Harry A. Jung, of the Military Intelligence Association. Just now they are preparing a blacklist of men and women among whom we find some of the finest characters of our time.

The object of this blacklist is to prevent certain persons from obtaining engagements to speak at public functions, town halls, and universities. In other words, their aim is to create a reign of terror that will suppress all freedom of speech. The New York World has been commendably active in disclosing the evil machinations of this dangerous group which may well arouse us to exercise that vigilance which has been declared to be the price of liberty. They have already prevented many distinguished men and women from addressing audiences by threat and intimidation and misrepresentation. They sought the removal from the high school faculty of a teacher whose sole offence had been that he won a five dollar prize for a definition of socialism. The man who sought this dismissal should be mentioned so that he shall receive the proper share of obloquy. He is Major General Amos A. Fries, Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service. Happily he was unsuccessful.

Other activities successfully achieved are said by the New York World to be the dismissal of two teachers from the West Chester, Pa. Normal College, their offence being the support of the right by the Student Liberal Club to criticise the American policy in Nicaragua, the cancelling of addresses by Lucia Ames Mead on the charge that she failed to salute the flag (though she has denied this), the preventing of Dr. Frank Bohn, journalist and lecturer, from addressing the Community Forum at Cranford, N. J. Other achievements are recorded to their discredit. And it is to be noted that members of the American Legion who fought in a war to make the world safe for democracy are active in this new movement to make democracy impossible.

These "Key Men," with the apparent object of making themselves as ridiculous as possible, have issued a blacklist of names of men and women supposed to be dangerous to the welfare and security of the country. Look at just a few names on this list: Jane Addams, John Dewey, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Zona Gale, Oswald Garrison Villard, Rabbi Wise, George Foster Peabody. We see by this that Single Taxers are not wholly ignored.

WE say now to these preposterous "Key Men of America " that Single Taxers are more dangerous than any of those named dangerous to the spirit of war which they are fomenting, dangerous to the policies of injustice and oppression and militarism, and the government policies in Hayti and Nicaragua. What the Single Tax proposes is the destruction of most everything that these superheated patriots stand for. It spells complete obliteration of the spirit of persecution that this dangerous group would launch upon the country. It has nothing but supreme contempt for them, mingled with concern for their power of harm, which is in proportion to the hate they can engender among the ignorant and prejudiced.