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Letters on Taxation
by Edwin Burgess

Marion Mills Miller

[Excerpted from Chapter II - Land-Value Taxation [The Single Tax] of the book, Great Debates In American History, published in 1913 by Current Literature Publishing Company, New York]

In his first and second letters -Mr. Burgess showed the evils which arose from the existing use of the powerful instrument of taxation and the good which would result from confining it to its sole beneficent purpose, the destruction of monopoly.

Being in the county clerk's room of the court house, I saw a large pile of papers headed "Statement of Property," to be filled out and sworn to by every resident owner. "The number and value of horses and cattle, mules, and asses, sheep, hogs, pleasure carriages of every description, watches, moneys and credits, merchant's stock, manufacturer's stock and other articles of personal property," which is everything that one person could sue another for stealing.

Now I could not help thinking somewhat on the cost as well as consequence of such a method of taxing people for the support of government.

1. Taxing people for their personal property - on their oath - is a premium on perjury, because those who lie the most pay the least taxes, and children born under such influences will be famous for lying-if there is any connection between cause and effect in the condition of parent and offspring.

2. The means of valuing or assessing are very expensive, thus increasing the cost of government as well as the cost of corruption.

3. Taxing personal property prevents production, because the tax being added to the article for sale increases its price in proportion to the means of buying. Hence, less is sold and less is made, and the makers are less employed; and, having consequently less with which to buy, the makers of other things will be less employed also - till the surplus workers will become paupers and suffer much misery in consequence; many will become hopeless and reckless because hopeless. Some will be tempted to commit crime for the temporary alleviation of their misery, which, repeated, soon becomes a habit; thus the tax on personal property, or the product of industry, increases the amount of paupers and criminals, while the cost of keeping paupers and criminals, officers and legislators, increases the amount of tax and the cost of government, of course. If any person puts up a new fence, or makes any visible improvement which employs the unemployed and beautifies the city - he is taxed annually in proportion to the evil he prevents and the good he does.

4. Taxing personal property is inquisitorial, burdensome, and aggressive against -our right to labor and enjoy the fruit of our toil unmolested; so long as we injure no one, we should be protected against aggression instead of suffering aggression.

5. Taxing people in proportion to their industry prevents industry, because when an industrious person labors twelve hours per day successfully he must pay twelve times as much taxes because he has made twelve times as much property to be taxed as if he had worked only one hour per day, and besides the limit of his means to pay the tax, whether in a watch, a piano, or a horse, no one likes to be taxed for the idleness of others, and he feels the injustice also, and improvements are thus prevented which would profitably employ the idle.

6. Taxing personal property raises the price of land, and thus promotes its monopoly by the rich, because land being the source of our subsistence, which labor develops or increases, from which, and on which, all must live, and money instead of manhood being the qualification for owning land, it follows that, in proportion as the taxes are on personal property, the land will be exempt, and it will be thus comparatively cheap or easy for the rich to monopolize; so that if all the taxes were on the land it would sell for the lowest price and would be most difficult to monopolize, but, if all the taxes were on personal property and none on the land, then the land would sell for the highest price, and labor would sell for the lowest price because of the excessive competition of the landless and destitute workers, who, by selling their labor for the smallest portion of its produce, would keep the land at the highest possible price; so, when you want land to be low and wages high, put all the taxes on the land, but, if you prefer labor to be low and land high, you have only to put all the taxes on personal property. All articles of productive industry cost the keeping of the maker and contriver, but the land costs nothing for either. It is the natural inheritance of all, for all time, and all should be protected in their possession, and those who own all the land should certainly pay all the taxes for keeping them in possession and their neighbors out of it.

7. Taxing personal property promotes the monopoly of capital (as well as land) because whenever labor can be bought for a small portion of its produce the larger portion (or the unpaid labor) is owned by the capitalist in the name of profit, with which he can starve the landless workers into worse terms as long as they continue landless in proportion to their numbers and necessities.

8. Taxing personal property by preventing production and promoting the monopoly of land and its products makes the means of living the most precarious, especially for the landless, because there is less produced in proportion to the wants of the community, and as the land is high and labor low (from the taxes on industry and competition of the landless), it is proportionally beyond the means of the cheaply paid laborer to purchase the land, or even to rent it; and, when the means of living are the most precarious, the greatest anxiety is suffered by the landless, and the continuance of that anxiety causes nervousness, sleeplessness, misery, and insanity, which is transmitted to the offspring with increased force, and thus is insanity made hereditary.

9. Taxing personal property promotes intemperance by making labor so cheap that the labor must toil excessively for a living, thus causing bodily exhaustion as well as mental anxiety to the landless workers, and indolence also on the part of those who live on the labor of others. Those whose bodies are exhausted by excessive toil, and whose minds are suffering from mental anxiety, crave stimulants to recruit the body and make the mind forget its care, while those who live in idleness on others' toil crave stimulants to quicken the circulation which should he sustained by honest, temperate toil, carrying with it the moral satisfaction that for all they enjoy no one suffers. Then, and not till then, will the good be transmitted to the offspring instead of the evil as now.

10. Taxing personal property by making land dear and labor cheap promotes prostitution and disease to a fearful extent. Is not woman more sensitive and weaker physically than man, and when she can get no just reward for her labor, and frequently no right to labor, need we wonder that she sells herself legally or illegally for the means of living? Are not the high price of land and the low price of labor, or the no right of land and consequently no right of labor, the main causes? And thus is woman driven by injustice, poverty, and misery into temptation, and prayed out occasionally in revivals.

Pray folks out of temptation, while driving them in, Is the usual way to atone for the sin; To fight the effect, while feeding the cause, You will find the foundation of moat of our laws.

11. Taxing personal property is the main cause of rent, interest, and usury, for rent of land is but interest on the price, so that when the land is high the rent will be in proportion, and all the wages of the landless are required for their support; they cannot buy land or build houses, or have capital for business, but must pay rent or interest for all. Usury is but interest or rent of money - more than the law allows - which is sustained by the extremes of rich and poor, caused by land monopoly and its causes. Do we really want permanent prosperity and the interest of all to be honest and live on their own labor instead of speculating on the unpaid labor of others? Do we desire purity and truth instead of corruption and perjury to prevail? Then repeal all taxes on industry, and let the monopolists of land, the source of our living and the rightful inheritance of all, pay taxes in proportion to the value of what they monopolize, then poverty, prostitution, and intemperance will soon be among the things that were.

Letters III and IV criticized the Wisconsin tax laws. In Letter IV he used a term which has become the accepted definition of the single tax. It is a pity that Mr. Burgess's definitive phrase, the "ad valorem land tax", has not also been adopted in place of the present meaningless title.

Mr. Burgess said:

I would not tax any personal property or product of industry in any form, but the land alone, according to its market value, irrespective of all improvements.

In Letter V Mr. Burgess wrote of merchants shifting their stocks of goods from one State to another to escape taxation; of rich men "swearing off" their personal property assessments. He doubted if one-half the personal property in the country were taxed, the conscientious paying, therefore, not only for themselves but for the unscrupulous.

Returning to the "ad valorem land tax" he said:

If all taxes were on the land, would railroad monopolists want to steal the land (the birthright of all) by millions of acres while they deny to the landless and moneyless any land on which to get their "daily bread," while they hire ministers to open their robbery meetings in Congress by prayer? Do they not know well that it is only by keeping the workers landless that they can buy their labor for the smallest portion of its produce, and if all had what land they needed their plundered land would be almost valueless for sale, though its value for production and human sustenance would be undiminished?

If all the taxes were on the land, and none on improvements, then there would be the greatest encouragement for improvements and industry; then farmers and merchants would not turn land speculators, and run all over creation to buy land at ten shillings per acre with the produce of their toil, but make and enjoy the comforts of life with their families at home instead of being a curse to the landless and their families elsewhere; they could then have no fear that their children would suffer for want of land whenever they might need it.

Were all the taxes on the land and the people's land free to the landless, then none would be driven into the wilderness to suffer the changes of climate and want of society, but those who desired could then settle nearer to their kindred and friends and enjoy the blessings of friendship, love, and home with much less cost and inconvenience.

Were all the taxes on the land and the people's land free, then the hitherto landless could soon build their own homes on their own land and raise all they needed to consume or exchange, and no longer need the land, houses, or capital of others; then rent, interest, and even usury would cease for want of poverty to sustain them, for, the curse, land monopoly, being removed, the effect would cease with the cause. Thus would the happiness of mankind be immeasurably increased and misery be proportionately diminished; then would earth be redeemed from the giant sin of land robbery, and the Paradise of the present or future be as far above that of the past as the intelligence of the philosopher is beyond the ignorance of the child.

In Letter VI Mr. Burgess attacked the tariff, even in the mild form of tariff for revenue only, as set forth in the report of Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, December 6, 1858.

Does not all such taxation go directly to promote the profit of land monopoly and man monopoly (or slavery)? Does it not take the taxes out of the pockets of the toiling consumers, and by exempting the land from so much taxes, enable the landlord to sell or rent his land for so much more? Do people buy these imported goods in proportion to the land they hold, or in proportion to the slaves they hold? If not, who pay the taxes and make landholding and slaveholding profitable?

He then discussed the relation of land monopoly to slavery.

Land monopoly is really the parent of chattel slavery for if no persons owned the land of others, or more land than they needed to cultivate by their own labor for their own support, they would not covet their fellow-men as slaves; but, having obtained the land of others by legal or illegal robbery, they crave their fellow-men as slaves to work it for them, and Africa must be robbed, and slaves must be bred, and men and women and children reduced to bondage to maintain in luxury and idleness a land-robbing and man-robbing aristocracy, a nobility forsooth, based on the lasso, the manacles, and the lash: the gag, the fetter, and the thumbscrew; the whipping-post the chain and ball, the man-stealer, and the bloodhound.

The law might sanction slavery to all eternity if it was unprofitable and no law worshipers would be patriotic enough to hold slaves any more than they would carry white men to Africa for slaves at a loss. Let us, then, remove this cause or temptation which is the profit by putting all the taxes on the land, and the effect will assuredly cease.

Letter VII was devoted to the arguments for free trade. In place of deriving revenue from taxes on consumption he would do so from taxes on monopoly, that is, land.

To illustrate the relative merits of the tariff and the land tax, let us suppose, for example, that Racine exempted all merchants' and manufacturers' goods from taxes, and all grain, farm produce, etc., and all improvements from taxes, and put all the taxes on the land, and at the same time Milwaukee exempted all land from taxes and put all the taxes on the farm produce and merchants' and manufacturers' goods and improvements, where would the mechanics, merchants, and manufacturers settle? Where would the farmers go to sell their produce and buy their goods? Would not Eacine grow rapidly while Milwaukee dwindled? And will not this be true of any city, town, county, State, or nation?

The land tax, unlike the tariff, would require no extra officers for assessing and collecting revenue for the general Government, as the expenses would be defrayed by a percentage on the assessment for State purposes, which would be transmitted to the general Government in the best manner.

Think what a saving that would be over the old feudal system of barbarian despots! No buying Cuba or any other country on the plea of the benefits of free trade, but free trade without buying the country for it; no custom houses and officers; no revenue service to diminish our liberties, increase our expenses, and rob us of our right of free trade on the plea of protection; no commercial treaties abroad for special monopolies or vexatious litigation on tariff violations at home; more producers and fewer destroyers; standing armies and navies being no longer needed while our commercial motto shall be "Free Trade with All the World."

In Letter VIII Mr. Burgess spoke of the present tax system as depopulating the country districts and crowding the cities until these became "cess-pools of pauperism, prostitution, misery, disease, and crime."

But the land tax would abolish land monopoly and make the means of living honestly the most easy and certain for all, and make it unprofitable to keep land idle; then people would settle near each other for convenience, comfort, society, and profit, and farmers would not need to send their children to cities for education. "We should save millions weekly in cost of local government, in rents, interest, and usury, besides diminishing pauperism, prostitution, disease, and crime.

Letter IX continued the comparison of the ad valorem land tax with the tariff. The former had the advantage not only in defraying all governmental expense, but in increasing, instead of decreasing, the productive power of the country to pay it. With cheaper land there would result cheaper food. Rents would diminish, the saving being distributed among the manufacturer, the laborer, the merchant, and the consumer.

For, with all the taxes on the land, it would not pay to keep it idle, therefore speculation in land would soon cease and be transferred to untaxed manufactures or labor, which would increase the demand and raise the wages of labor and reduce the profits of capital and speculation, and at the same time we should create and sustain the most permanent and profitable home market for produce and manufactures. For, when farmers desire to settle near factories for the benefit of market and exchange, they may be sure the land will never be high nor manufactures either; because the tax is on the land and not on the manufactures, which keeps the landlord's rent and the speculator's profit from the land, and the robber tariff from the manufactures also.

Letter X amplified the former suggestion of the intimate relation between slavery and land monopoly.

By the operation of the ad valorem, land tax the poor white man in the South as well as in the North will possess and cultivate land now held for speculation. As slave cultivation is always poor and exhausting, slave farms surrounded by free farms and slave States surrounded by free States could not commercially compete with either in their surplus productions, and thus the profit of slaveholding would be diminished or destroyed.

Were all the taxes on the land, it would not pay to keep it idle; the result would be cultivation to make it pay, which would cause an abundance of produce for which manufactures would be made to exchange. And as the land would be free or cheap, the wages of labor would rise, because, whenever manufacturing paid less than farming, many more would farm the land, and thus equalize the wages of labor between farming and manufacturing.

With cheap free land, with the aid of machinery, we could easily produce a super-abundance of all that is best for mankind, and have an abundance of leisure for the cultivation of our physical, mental, and moral faculties, and thus produce that physical, mental, and moral elevation which slavery, either wages slavery or chattel, must inevitably dwarf instead of develop.

Letter XI was in rebuttal to a reply to Mr. Burgess's letters which had been made in the Racine Advocate by one who signed himself "S. S."

"S. S." thinks it wrong that the farmers, who, he says, "make the least cost of government," should pay in proportion to the land which they own. I think if the farmers do make the least cost of government it is because they enjoy their right of land and are less exposed to the destitution, privation, and temptations of the landless, and this is one of the reasons why I put all taxes on the land. With the high price of land caused by the labor tax, the landless and moneyless have no choice but to labor for others if they can get the work, or beg, steal, or starve. So that it is not the honest and thrifty, but the lazy and greedy farmers and land monopolists who own vast quantities of land and cultivate but little, who make paupers, drunkards, and criminals of the landless which "S. S." charges on the citizens, and would fain make the citizens support all the drunkards, paupers, and criminals whom the land monopolies have made. Why, he might as well buy up and monopolize the breasts of the mother and then blame the babe for crying for its food, for the land is to mankind what the breast is to the babe - the source of subsistence.

I believe that no one has a moral right to land because he has bought it and paid for it any more than the slaveholder has a moral right to the man, woman, or child he has bought and paid for, because no one can have a moral right to sell the land which belongs equally to all, or to sell the man, woman, and child whose persona, liberty, and labor belong to themselves.

Mr. Burgess showed that the ad valorem land tax was a "single" tax, in that it was paid only once, while all other kinds of taxes were liable to be laid again and again on the same property in its varying aspects.

"S. S." says the whole system of balances and averages would be changed, and this to the detriment and pecuniary ruin of the present and future farmers. Now, the farmers, as well as mechanics, could change their occupation if they found manufacturing more profitable, and much more easily than at present, because the land for the factory would cost probably nothing, and there would be no inquisitorial, pauperizing "labor tax" on manufactures to prevent them. So also it would be easier to commence farming because the land would cost less, and every implement and machine needed for cultivation would cost less also, and there would be no tax on the stock of the farmer or manufacturer, or on the improvements of either, so that the changes in values would be good for farming and manufacturing, and no "ruin" could result to present or future farmers or manufacturers from the land tax, but permanent prosperity to both.

"S. S." says: "If the great burden of the land tax causes one to sell out, the same cause will prevent others buying." I contend that the taxes will be much less and consequently less burdensome, because, the land being priceless, any persons, or, at least, many, could till the lands for themselves, whom we now keep as paupers and criminals. This would diminish the cost of government (or taxes), which will be less burdensome in proportion to the cheapness of land, and only the land kept idle or badly cultivated would be obliged to be sold because it would not pay the tax. And none can rightly keep land idle and make others suffer for their indolence, else, if one man could buy all the land he might keep all of it idle except enough to support himself and starve every one else to death.

"S. S." says: "At the low price of produce resulting from an increase of producers and a decrease of consumers, the farmer cannot sustain himself and pay his increased and increasing tax." This is the old fallacy of supposing that cheap land would compel people to farm while manufacturing paid better.

"S. S." says: "But, supposing the prices remain relatively the same, what better is a man off by paying a large tax to a government than paying the same amount in rent to a landlord?" I reply: Not only would the taxes be diminished by all the cost of the revenue service, but by that of every pauper and criminal who ceased to be landless because of the free or cheap land, also by that of every pauper and criminal who found labor in manufacturing for the increased supply of the produce of the land, while the very rent to which "S. S." refers would be saved also by any houses that were placed on the free or cheap land by their owners, and all interest and usury would cease also, as all could easily own their own homes and make all the capital they needed. Then bankers, brokers, and usurers would soon die out from the universal prosperity of mankind.

"S. S." complains that the land tax would change the actual and relative value of land. The actual value is its productive power which it would not change except by encouraging its use and making its idleness unprofitable. Its relative or money value might be changed by the Homestead bill which "S. S." might charge with destroying the hard-earned property of millions of monopolies by giving their birthright to millions of mankind. Let us remember that when we trade in the rights of others in buying risk, and not at the cost of the innocent or the wronged.

"S. S." says: "No man can have any more right to the soil another has bought than to the food that another has raised from it, or to the clothing or other products that he has earned by its cultivation." "S. S." still fails to distinguish between the land, which naturally and morally belongs to all, and the produce of the land, which naturally belongs to the producer. Suppose one man or many could buy all the land, who has the right to sell it? Would the buyers have the right to starve all the rest of mankind and entail the land to their children with the eternal power of starving all other children? I think not, and therefore think the right of land is as inalienable as our existence, and that everyone who buys the land of others ought to lose it, just as the slaveholder who buys a man, woman, or child ought to lose what he paid for his covetous villainy.

It is interesting to note in this last opinion the unyielding opposition to "compensation" which distinguished Patrick Edward Dove and Henry George.