A Cityless and Countryless World
An Outline of Practical Co-Operative Individualism
Henry Olerich
[A condensed and edited version of the book
originally published by Gilmore & Olerich, Holstein, Iowa, 1893 /
CHAPTER 24 - How the Transition from the Old to the New Order of
Things was Accomplished]
All of us agree that we are all in pursuit of the greatest happiness;
we also agree that some acts are always attended with pleasure, or
happiness, while others are always attended with pain, or misery. The
reward of happiness, invariably following certain acts, and the
punishment of misery, invariably following certain other acts, can be
our only guide in ascertaining the most advantageous course of
conduct, and the only incentive that leads us forward on the road of
progress. Hence, as we advance in intellectual culture, our course of
action will be more and more nearly in accord with the fullness of
life; for acts which tend toward the fullness of life must, as a
whole, produce greater happiness than those which detract from it, for
under no other conceivable conditions could a race of sentient beings
have been evolved.
[S]ociety, on the one hand, tends to widen and perfect voluntary
co-operation on the part of production, and thereby economize also in
consumption, and, on the other hand, it tends to enlarge the field of
individual freedom; for both an abundant supply with which to satisfy
our wants, and the largest possible scope of individual freedom tend
to produce the greatest happiness.
"That people, then, who by the widest and most thorough
voluntary co-operation most completely satisfy all their varied and
complex desires with the least amount of labor, and with the greatest
freedom to the individual, is the highest civilized. A strong
centralized government is not a mark of a high state of civilization,
as some of you at first sight may think; if it were, Russia would rank
in civilization far above the United States. Armies, navies and
policemen are no signs of high intellectual culture; if you consider
them such, Russia ranks first in culture and civilization. They are
nothing more or less than remnants of barbarity; they are the marks of
contemporaneous discord.
"By following the same course of reasoning, and by bearing in
mind that our social and industrial organizations, in which every
sound person is kind, non-aggressive, rich and free, have no use and
no place for civil, judges, man-made laws, kings, and queens,
presidents, congresses, legislatures, tariff, prisons, lawyers,
priests, politicians, schemers and compulsory taxation, you will at
once understand that they are not signs of civilization and culture,
but are, on the contrary, marks of existing fraud, compulsion and
quarrelsomeness. Orthodox preachers, sectarian churches, and legal and
priestly marriages are remnants of former superstitions. Public
schools, charitable institutions, and reformatory prisons are marks of
a crude, defective and unnatural system of instruction. Millionaires,
paupers, bankers, land value, profit, interest and rent are
consequences of monopolization. They must all become unnecessary and
repugnant to the mind, before a high state of civilization and culture
can be attained.
As we slowly learned these facts, both the city and country
disappeared. The people that lived in large cities found that a city
is a noisy, smoky, filthy and unwholesome place to live. There was,
perhaps, but one little park in the whole city. The wealthier class
gradually began to build their dwellings more and more remote from the
center of city activity. But the vast majority of the working citizens
at this period of transition were living in small tenement houses,
paying high rent and working a long, long toilsome day in the factory,
store or mine for very low wages. They were too rude, thoughtless and
poor to be sensible to the wholesome wants of a city life. They, like
your city people, rarely ever saw and heard a bird, smelled the
fragrance of blooming plants, or saw the flowers and green grass grow.
Every opening in their poor abode admitted noise, dust, vermin, stench
and vitiated air. In winter they were often too poor to heat their
apartments, artificially; in summer the heat was almost unendurable,
and the ventilation was often next to nothing. We also gradually
learned that cities, as such, do not only tend to produce crime, but
also shelter and secrete criminals. They tend to concentrate wealth
and power, making a few millionaires and a vast army of extremely
poor. More than that, they foster and often license many of the
gravest crimes.
On the other hand, the farmer, living almost a solitary life and
working early and late to produce the necessaries and luxuries of life
for himself and family and for the comparatively unproductive city and
town boomer who must all live from the products of the earth,
gradually learned by high-priced experience that such a lonely,
toilsome country life is scarcely worth living. His single-handed work
was so hard, slow, often wasteful, and comparatively unproductive that
he had hardly any leisure left for cleanliness and mental culture. In
many cases, his wife and children rarely ever came in contact with
other members of the human family. The wife generally was at the same
time mother, nurse, cook, washerwoman, tailor, housekeeper,
dressmaker, milliner, milk and dairy maid, stock and poultry breeder,
gardener, not infrequently assistant farmer, and sometimes, as when a
widow, even head farmer.
Just in proportion, then, as the farmer and towns man learned the
evils of a crowded, unhealthy and unnecessary city, and also of a
lonely and unnecessary country, both the city and country disappeared.
The burdens caused by the city and country, which were formerly unfelt
by all, became, under a higher state of intellectual culture,
unbearable even by the dullest. The most thoughtful men and women, who
saw the advantages of co-operation and the agreeableness of a larger
family, first began to live together and work together. Aggressiveness
slowly changed into personal freedom, and invasions became fewer and
fewer; in other words, we gradually learned to mind our own business.
Thus we did away with the solitude of the country and with the evil
effects of a city. We are now all living in splendid parks, adorned
with life-giving vegetation. Thus our social instinct is gratified;
the evil effects produced by cities are no more, and we are also
conveniently located to the land from which, as we have seen, all
wealth must be produced by the application of labor.
Our family homes, of course, were at first not so orderly and
advantageously arranged as they are at present; but they were not so
close together as to be unhealthful, and not so distant as to be
lonely. The members of the family continued to increase. From a
single, cruel, covetous, jealous, married man and wife to sometimes
more than a thousand kind, free, cultivated, non-aggressive persons
men, women and children, none of whom pretend to hold any compulsory
claims against any other one.
"You must not imagine, either, that the arrangement and growth
of all our present families and communities occurred instantaneously
and simultaneously. Our present conditions are, of course, a social
and industrial growth, and required time and intelligence for their
completion or advancement. To illustrate: Your so-called republics did
not all appear at the same time. The second republic profited by the
experience of the first. The first republic did not postpone its
formation until all mankind were ripe for a republic. As soon as a
certain collection of your people thought that they could live more
agreeably and more happily under a republican form of government than
under a monarchy, the monarchy was gradually changed into what you now
call republics. You have had republics for years, yet not all your
earthly inhabitants are subjects of republics at the present time.
All persons do not mature for the same thing at the same time. So it
was with our families and communities. Those men and women that
matured for a higher plane first, began to live together, regardless
of the immature, as nearly as possible a life approaching the one [we
cooperative individualists] are now living. As I have already stated,
years ago each married couple constituted a family, and lived alone in
the same manner as you are now living. Then two suitable couples began
to live together as one family. The two couples cooked on one stove,
ate from one table, and co-operated in their domestic and other labor.
Their social intercourse made the individual members continually more
free and less aggressive. One stove or heating apparatus did the
heating for both couples. One house, one table, one clock, one cellar,
one musical instrument, one washing-machine, one library, one parlor
carpet, one lamp, one churn, etc., supplied four individuals just as
well, and in many respects better, than they had formerly supplied
two.
By this co-operation nearly one-half the commodities were economized.
But this was by no means all the advantage gained. The women s
domestic labor by working together was only little more than half as
much to each individual as it was when each couple lived in a house
separately, Thus they largely economized in labor and in commodities.
A laborer, whether man or woman, when so co-operating, can, on an
average, work more advantageously than they can when working
single-handed. Under a division of labor, a person can do much more
and much better work than he can otherwise, but it requires a large
community of extensive and thorough co-operation to make a complete
division of labor possible. Under co-operation much more work can be
done with improved machinery, and much less machinery is required to
do it.
With regard to the care of children, two mothers in the same family
can greatly assist each other. One can nurse the children for a time,
while the other is at liberty to go out, or do some other work. They
are then not bound down so closely as if each were living in a
separate home. Of this division and economy of labor and saving of
commodities, both men and women gradually took advantage.
As the family and homes increased in number and size, and as material
subsistence was more and more easily obtained by co-operative
production and economy, avarice, covetousness and jealousy gradually
disappeared. All learned by experience that in order to be really rich
and happy each individual must do his part from the promptings of an
inward sentiment which constitutes character. No one can, without
impairing his own permanent happiness, invade the rights of another.
Each learned to build his own happiness on the happiness of his
fellow-beings.
The increase of individual freedom and equality kept pace with the
enlargement of the home and family until the individual man, woman and
child were completely free and equal, in all the privileges that could
be enjoyed according to the individual's age and sex. All former
claims that were not voluntary and mutually agreeable were gradually
disregarded. Promises were broken as soon as they were found to be
untrue. The discovery of truth became the great aim. Each individual
became the sole owner of his or her person.
Just as the family and home grew in size, kindness, freedom and
order, so did the community grow in size, arrangement, regularity and
wealth. The new houses were built larger, more healthful, and more
convenient as to location; the old ones were enlarged and rearranged.
Railroads or motor-lines with large depots and warehouses at short
intervals connected every home. Door-yards, parks, play-grounds,
boulevards, greenhouses, gardens and farms were enlarged, rearranged
and improved. Land engines, electric vehicles and steam engines of
various kinds superseded the draught animals, and in turn they were
supplanted by electric power.
As man grew continually more vegetarian and less carnivorous, cattle
breeding became less and less, until they were sparingly used only for
dairy purposes. Poultry was raised only for their eggs and for pets;
sheep for their wool. All these industries, as time passed, were
conducted on a larger scale, and in localities best adapted for them.
Timber culture was also carried to those localities best suited for
that industry.
Mining and manufacturing became great industries, and were carried on
in some form in nearly every community. By the prospecting scheme, the
richness of the mine constantly increased; and the improved mining
machinery and tools made mining not an unpleasant occupation. As the
industrial adjustment became more complete, much of the mining was
done during those seasons of the year when agriculture and other labor
was least. The principal manufacturing was done on a large scale in
those localities where water and wind power for the generation of
electricity were most abundant. Our machinery and the skill of our
workmen constantly improved and developed. By our keen, free
competition each community naturally drifted into those industries for
which the community was best adapted.
The interior of the house became more and more useful, convenient and
comfortable. Stoves for heat ing and cooking purposes were superseded
by engines and natural gas, then by electricity. Powerful mellow
electric lights, which lighted the big-houses, walks, lakes,
boulevards, motor lines and railroads more brilliantly than a noonday
sun, took the place of the former lamps. Stairways were superseded by
improved and wonderfully convenient elevators. The steam and electric
laundry did away with hand washing. Every thing was improved, and
countless new things were constantly invented. With our present
leisure and wealth we have a hundred inventors, where we formerly had
one, or where you have one. The kitchen, the dining-room, the
barber-shop, the halls, the furniture, the commercial department, the
nurseries, the restaurant, the grand parlors, the store, the
bathrooms, the scientific departments, the carriage-room and the
private apartments all kept pace with the general advancement.
Voluntary co-operation and individual freedom were so abundantly
productive and economized so enormously in all directions that wealth,
health and happiness reigned everywhere.
Gradually, as the people acquired this additional practical
knowledge, each individual became better able to transact his own
business, for several reasons:
First, the social and industrial organization grew more and more
natural, and, therefore, more simple. Secondly, an intelligent person
can keep himself out of trouble better than an ignorant and aggressive
one. And thirdly, an enlightened person is capable of transacting more
complex business than an unenlightened one.
With the rise of a higher intelligence, unproductive and destructive
labor gradually disappeared, until none was left. Just in proportion
as our ancestors allowed one another more and more individual freedom,
they became also more peaceable, for aggression only can provoke
quarrels and fights. These peaceful sentiments gradually diminished
the number of soldiers, policemen, peace officers, civil judges,
lawyers, politicians, legislators, etc., and also their tools and
machinery guns, clubs, prisons, scaffolds, courts, law libraries,
legislative halls, fortifications, navies, etc. All of this shortened
the days of manual labor.
In the commercial and mercantile business all needless and
destructive labor was done away with. The army of profit takers
contemporaneously disappeared with the cities and towns. The banker's
customers left him just to the extent as a medium of exchange, based
on productive labor or the negotiable wealth of the community was
introduced and recognized. Money was secured by the actual negotiable
wealth on hand, and there was always as much and no more in
circulation as there was actual negotiable wealth. Interest, which is
the result of money monopoly, became a thing of the past. Money was
made more and more of cheap and convenient material. The vast army of
gold and silver miners, who were once at work to produce the expensive
material for a medium of exchange, were slowly compelled to file in
the ranks of productive labor; for we now make all our medium of
exchange out of a cheap convenient paper.
Our middlemen had to quit business for want of customers. One family
and community bought directly of another community, everything came
directly from the producer and went to the consumer. Traveling
salesmen, as such, could find no employment, because every community,
by the aid of the annual invoice and census, by samples, by the
[community cooperatives], and by a thorough classification of goods,
bought and sold whatever and wherever they could to the best
advantage. The vast sum of wages and expense formerly paid the
traveling salesmen, is no more taxed to the goods they sold. The
consumer is rid of that extra burden. Under our system, we require
only a few stores and clerks to do our business much better than you
are doing yours with your count less stores, clerks and traveling
salesmen. By this advantageous adjustment, we economized a vast amount
of labor by co-operation and concentration.
As man's belief in the uniformity of nature became clearer and
stronger, the sectarian preacher's congregation diminished in number.
As man himself became so good that punishment and revenge seemed
barbarous and repugnant to him, he could no longer believe that the
formative forces of the universe consciously and deliberately delight
in acts of torture too vile for human contemplation. Here again a vast
number of unproductive and destructive laborers had to become
producers.
The business of insurance companies of all kinds dwindled down to
nothing. Our social and industrial organization afforded all the
protection the individual could utilize. Every community, so to speak,
is an insurance company without any special agents. We have no
husbands that need make provisions for a widow and orphans. Our women
are as capable of caring for themselves as our men, and our helpless
children are all provided for by the family, whether the parents are
living or dead. Our big-houses are fire-proof; and if not it would be
next to impossible for a fire to originate, because we use neither
stoves, lamps, tobacco nor matches in the house. The army of insurance
agents and officers that were once supported by the insured were
slowly forced by natural conditions into the field of productive labor
also.
The improvement of commerce kept pace with the other improvements.
The person s back, the ox-cart, the horse-team and the steam and
electric engines successively superseded one another. The ill-graded
and muddy street and road were supplanted by the boulevard, motor-line
and finely-constructed railroads. The bicycle, tricycle and electric
vehicles succeeded the poor, expensive coach horse. The floating
palace of the ocean increased in speed, convenience and safety. Aerial
navigation was also vastly improved in many ways.
Co-operation in intercommunication is fully as complete as it is in
other industries. The improvement continued from the rudest beginning
of mail-carrying until each private apartment is furnished with a
post- office, telephone, phonograph, etc.
Land Ownership
As I told you the other evening, monopolization of land, which is
caused by the deed system, is either directly or indirectly the source
of nearly all the social and industrial derangement; at least, this
was formerly the case on Mars, and is plainly now the case on earth.
But everything for the better must be solved by intelligence, which
can be acquired only by experience, either ancestral or personal. So
as we learned during the lapse of time that we could be happier by
owning land by occupancy and use than by owning it by deed, we
gradually took to the former.
Of course, primitive man with his rude and unpolished intellect sees
nothing of this evil. The antagonistic propensities which man has
inherited during the fierce struggle for existence from his lower
ancestors, caused him to monopolize natural opportunity wherever he
could, because his intelligence was so low and narrow that to him the
material subsistence seemed to count for all, and the higher social
and industrial qualities counted for little or nothing. Such an
intellect can not see that one can not be happy as long as he is
surrounded by many who are ignorant and miser able. But with the
unfolding of higher and nobler sentiments, man, at last, clearly
realized that no person can really be wealthy in any world as long as
a portion of his fellowmen are pinched with poverty, oppressed by
slavery, burdened by ignorance and affected with filth and rudeness.
He learned that in order to have universal prosperity, high mental
attainments and cleanliness and purity, man must be free to apply his
labor to land wherever he finds some vacant.
We have seen that in order to make industry most productive, we must
have a complete division of labor; and a complete division of labor is
possible only under an extensive and thorough voluntary co-operation.
But notice that the ownership of land by deed creates or tends to
create extensive landlords. Hence all individuals must either be
extensive landowners, or some are compelled to work either directly or
indirectly for the landlord. But if every individual is an extensive
landowner, population must necessarily be sparse; and with a sparse
population, extensive and thorough co operation is impossible, while,
on the other hand, the laboring of some landless individuals for the
landlords, as you now have it and as we formerly had it, causes land
monopoly, which is the cause either directly or indirectly of nearly
all your social and industrial evils.
[L]et us consider a few of the transitional steps through which [we
cooperative individualists] passed in effecting the change from the
old to the new method of owning land. Of course you know very well
that not every one abandoned his vacant land simultaneously. All great
ideas are born in the mind of one individual. He imparts it to a few
of his social companions, and his companions to their companions and
so on until it becomes universal. Just so did the vacant land
agitation arise [in our society], and just so has it already arisen
[elsewhere] on earth. You can perhaps see more clearly the rise of an
idea when you con template how your so-called civilized nations,
states, and individuals gradually abolished chattel slavery, wife
stealing, imprisonment for debt, etc., etc. But allow me to give you a
warning right here. Do not be deceived like many of you are, by
thinking that war can really set slaves free. All freedom and
toleration, like all ideas, have their origin in the intellectual
faculty of the individual. They are born by mental impressions
received on consciousness and not by bullet-holes through the brain.
As I have told you, the social feelings unfolded in proportion to the
intellectual elevation. With the development of the just and peaceable
sentiments, a closer and more extensive association and co-operation
became mutually agreeable. The evils caused by the deed ownership of
land became constantly clearer and more apparent to a larger number of
our population, and the conscious burden of this wrong became more and
more painful to bear; so much so that many began to abandon their
vacant land, or invited others to cooperate with them on equitable
terms.
In this manner the rude community was born and developed. The tillers
of the soil commenced to live, and work together. They began to
manufacture their own implements, mine their own minerals, made their
own medium of exchange, and bought what they needed and sold what they
had to spare directly to other similar rude communities. This, for
want of business, forced the townsmen out of the cities and towns onto
vacant land to provide for their own wants. The reward of co-operation
and of individual freedom strengthened and built up the infant
community. The communistic production was so abundant, the labor so
easy and pleasant, and the social life so agreeable that even the
dullest began to see the advantages and sought to become a constituent
part of a community.
Thus the landowner, as land gradually depreciated in commercial value
from the effects of numerous abandonments of vacant land, was even
pleased to have a co-operating community take up and work his land,
because he would produce more and much easier as a co-operator than as
an owner under a perverted system. Thus gradually every individual
became a member of a community. This communistic co-operation
concentrated population, so that even with the former increase of
population, there is still at present an abundance of first-class land
unoccupied for want of population, and any one who would get tired of
co-operation can get all the land he wants for nothing and set up over
himself and over his followers, if he could get any, any kind of
religion or government he wished; but those who have once tasted the
advantages of voluntary co-operation and individual freedom can never
again be induced to become the dupes of poverty, tyranny and
superstition.
Money
In the beginning, one infant community in buying and selling gave a
kind of due-bill to the other. Men, instead of hunting for the
precious metals out of which to make money, as was formerly the case
with us and as is still the ease with you, directed their labor toward
the production of food, clothes, shelter and luxuries.
Our money system was thus gradually perfected into the one I have
described to you elsewhere. This gradual development is easily
traceable. Of course, with money as with everything else, the fittest
will eventually survive. More and more business was transacted by
means of commercial papers without the use of government-monopolized
money. As the commercial business grew more simple and definite, the
commercial apartment in our big-houses sprung up and became more
perfect. This arrangement and rearrangement continued until every
individual has his own money issued by the community on his monthly
labor record. Practically, each individual produces wealth, and on
this wealth he has his money issued monthly. Under these conditions,
money can now be obtained only by productive labor and by voluntary
gift, and all productive labor receives all it earns.
Government
[W]e once lived in small families composed of husband and wife and
their children. These families, like yours, had a family government.
The husband generally considered himself the boss, or head of the
family. In a low state of civilization he maintained his authority by
resorting to physical force and superstition. He often thought it
necessary and even his duty to flog his wife and children when they
refused to obey his orders. Sometimes he even beat them to death. It
was thought then that a family could not exist successfully without
some such boss. But as experience gradually taught them that such
cruel course of conduct produced discord, sullenness, lies and
deception, the element of physical force constantly diminished,
especially toward the wife. Her wishes were more and more conceded to
until she finally became the equal to the husband in the general
management of the family; and still further on she managed her
domestic affairs as she thought best without asking the permission of
the husband. The growth of this governmental freedom and independence
between husband and wife continued until both learned that each is
best capable of doing their own work without interfering with the
other. Each learned that non-aggressiveness produces more happiness
than aggressiveness. Thus did the government begin to change.
But long after the husband and wife had learned not to interfere with
each other s course of manual labor, they deemed it still necessary to
employ physical force in the training and management of their
children. Both father and mother, in this later period, seemed to
think that a child can not be successfully reared without an abundant
application of the rod. Hence the maxim, He who loves his child does
not spare the rod. But later on the parents found that they were
mistaken in this, the same, as the husband had formerly been mistaken
in the use of the rod on his wife. They found that they could raise a
much better and a much wiser child by kindness and freedom than they
could by cruelty and slavery, and that both parents and children under
freedom and gentleness are much happier than they could other wise be.
Quite a number of your families have already reached such a stage of
culture as the foregoing; but such is not the end of family freedom.
Long after a husband and wife do no more interfere with each other s
labor affairs, they still often interfere with each other s private
affairs on jealousy and other grounds. One is often not free to act as
he desires for fear that he may thereby offend the other. I find the
same also to be true with regard to children. You have many parents
that have put aside the rod long ago; yet they believe that a child
ought to remain at home and work for the parents until it is eighteen
or twenty-one years of age, and such parents do not hesitate to enact
statute laws to that effect.
Such parents seem to think that a child owes a parent a great sum for
the parental care it received from them, and that it requires the
labor of the child up to that age. Notice that the parent alone,
without the consultation of the child, names this age, and he could
make it fifty years as well as twenty-one. But these parents seem to
forget that they received parental care during their infancy and that
they, in turn, are bound to give parental care or else die a debtor to
human equity. Free persons are those who are not forcibly prevented by
others from going where, when, and with whom they please, and act as
they see fit, provided they do not invade the equal rights of others.
But do not understand me here that the family development was the
only one. Religious and political toleration also kept pace with the
family. The witch fires were slowly extinguished, the Benefit of
Clergy disregarded, trial by ordeal abandoned, direct tithes were
regarded impositions, church and state were separated first in theory
and later in practice also, colossal churches and cathedrals, which
were once built by compulsory taxation, were later on built by
voluntary donation, the army of clergy who were once a social caste
maintained by compulsory taxation be came later on dependent on the
voluntary gifts of their congregation. So step by step, we, like you
are now doing, moved toward justice and freedom.
Politically the different hordes and tribes coalesced gradually into
powerful absolute monarchies, then they slowly changed to limited
monarchies, then to your so-called republics, and still later on we
became free as we now are. Gradually the sphere of compulsory taxation
contracted and weakened. Primitively a person passing from one small
district or country had to pay duty on himself and goods, later on he
paid duty only on his goods, still later all migration and commerce
became free; a person could go where he pleased, and buy and sell
where he found the best market without paying duty on anything.
By the advance of intellectual culture, the unjust burden of
compulsion be came continually more apparent and sensitive to a larger
proportion of the people. As long as a progressive people believe that
man can be elevated and reformed by human-made laws that a person s
heart can be made good by the ballot, that long they will employ the
ballot, and that long the rights of using the ballot will be given to
a continually increasing number of the people.
In a certain political stage, the absolute monarch was the sole ruler
and law-maker; then a few advisers were added; then a parliament with
hereditary members; then representatives elected by a certain
privileged class, as landlords, etc.; then the franchise was vested in
all male citizens, who were of age, and who owned a certain amount and
kind of property, or paid a certain sum of taxes or rent; then to all
male citizens who were of age, then the female was gradually
enfranchised, first in school and municipal affairs, then in county
and state matters, and further on the female had the same privileges
to use the ballot as the male; and then the age of political majority
was continually lowered from twenty-one downward.
But long before all these rights were accorded to the wife and child
by the masses, the more thoughtful ones of the age had learned that
the ballot is powerless in bringing about justice, prosperity and a
harmonious social adjustment between man and man. Hence, instead of
voting as before, they slowly ceased to use the political ballot, and
began to direct all their progressive energy toward self-improvement
and the general diffusion of knowledge. By these means their number
continually increased until it included every man, woman and child in
our community government.
But these were not the only means by which the compulsory element of
government was frustrated and finally defeated. Compulsory taxation
was another element which matured the people to abolish compulsory
government. In proportion as the people grew in self-reliance,
individual liberty and aversion for government by physical force, the
burden of compulsory taxation became more and more sensitive. In the
course of time the vast majority of the people believed more or less
in lying and otherwise deceiving the assess ors, so as to avoid paying
taxes; and the assessors generally knew themselves that the tax-payers
were lying to them when they enumerated their property for assessment.
And these sentiments, more or less, are easily traceable with your
tax-payer here on earth. As far as I can learn, nearly all of you try
more or less to deceive your assessors. You, like we first, attempted
in this matter to make people truthful by putting them under oath, but
it was soon found that when people do not wish to pay taxes any
longer, they have no greater scruples for perjury than they have for a
simple, straight falsehood. Thus the oath, too, became powerless and
eventually obsolete.
In this manner the taxes and duties were one by one taken off from
the different kinds of property, so that at last all was free. The
cessation of compulsory taxation caused the government of physical
force first to weaken and then to crumble to pieces. It, of course,
was for a while more or less maintained by voluntary donations by
those who still believed in it, in a somewhat similar manner as you
now maintain churches which were also formerly built and maintained by
the state. But as man s sentiments grew more and more in harmony with
freedom, the compulsory element slowly disappeared altogether, as we
now find it in our communities. Thus we arrived by successive
approximations to our present form of voluntary government. In
proportion as the human-made laws were repealed and ignored, natural
opportunity became equally open to all, so that justice, free
competition, and a healthy supply and demand, guided by a constantly
increasing intelligence, made a proper adjustment of all things.
CONTENTS
|
