A Statement of Personal Concern
over the Methods and Knowledge
of Many Self-Declared Single Taxers

Frank Stephens

[An address, "What Shall We Do To Be Saved?" delivered at the Henry George Congress, held in Chicago, Illinois, September. Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December, 1934]

The invitation of the Henry George Foundation to its Conference of 1934 announced: "Ways and means for further advances will be discussed." The first on the list of prospective topics was: "Economic Problems." Among those following were: "What Price Economic Ignorance?" "The Problem of Ownership Income," "If Henry George Were Writing Today, ""The Henry George School of Social Science," "Economics and Politics," "The Single Tax and Its Relation to Other Reforms."

Surely these were enough to warrant the belief that in the discussion of: "ways and means for for further advances" one might bring up questions relating to the science of economics as presented in Progress and Poverty, especially if these questions arose in relation to immediate and pressing economic problems.

So believing I came to the Conference seeking knowledge, plainly within the scope of economic science, as taught by Henry George, which is of vital importance to those of us who are now living our religion in the Enclaves of Single Tax and to the whole movement as soon as the time comes for which we are all striving when we shall have succeeded in making our economics and philosophy matters of general consideration.

It is one of many debts owing to the Enclaves by our whole movement that in their management such questions have arisen of which there has been no recognition as being matters of great, practical importance before the Enclaves were forced to consider them. My hope was that among our leaders gathered together from far-off parts of this country and Canada would be found some to answer what we and our neighbors thus far cannot.

To my surprise I found not only complete ignorance as to the matters in question on the part of all present but an almost complete and for the most part indignant refusal even to permit their discussion. To attempt it without interference with the announced programme of speeches, I obtained from the management, leave to announce two meetings for such discussion, from 8 a.m. to the scheduled openings of the morning sessions at 9:30. The first of these brought together seven delegates, one for a few moments only, the second brought together two.

I thereupon asked that through the courtesy of LAND AND FREEDOM I might express some opinions as to the matters where no one would be compelled even to listen to them to whom the process of thinking on economics is over-difficult or repellent. Forty years ago, in the Henry George Club of Philadelphia, such subjects were discussed and debated to a general agreement with an earnestness, honesty and intelligence which is today unknown in our movement so far as that movement is known to me. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that this may account for the living faith of those days as contrasted with the dreary uncertainty and pessimism so sadly run to nothingness in the Conference address of Mr. Clarence Darrow.

In the matter of "further advances" we are all agreed that our present advance is too slow for the feverish haste in which our entire civilization is dashing into despotism and chaos. We are all in disagreement as to the cause of that fatal slowness. In my opinion it is because advocates of the Single Tax know so little about it and are so especially ignorant of the economic truths on which our philosophy is built up as "a house founded upon a rock." So general is this ignorance that all which now saves us from being overwhelmed and forgotten as a school of belief is that the ignorance of those who oppose us, socialists, communists and reactionaries alike, is even greater.

In this opinion I quote the agreement of our gifted, learned and devoted fellow-worker, George L. Rusby:

"I share your view that nearly all of our so-called Single Taxers are without knowledge of the basic principles underlying the proposition. Clear perception of the vital differences is lacking. It is this incomplete knowledge of the fundamentals of the George teachings among Georgists themselves that is largely responsible for our present drifting towards communism and disaster."

I do not believe that the cause of our deplorable sickness is, as so often urged at the Conference, that we have had so little political success and that so few of our people have been elected or appointed to political office. As we proved by the failure of the Delaware campaign of 1895-6 the rivalry and trading of our own people for election to local offices is fatal. Office holding is always dangerous to principles.

Tom L. Johnson, after his congressional experience, told me no man could hold poilitical office in Washington and not be the worse for it. So it was surely with two men whom I knew first as earnest and self-sacrificing reformers and who ended as disappointed and disillusioned office seekers, Champ Clark and Wm. J. Bryan. Everyone knows what Ramsey MacDonald once was and what he is now. It is conceivable that even Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Newton Baker were once honest and truthful men.

Henry George said the business of the politician is to minimize resistance. Usually this is done by compromise and deceit, if not by saying what one does not believe, at best by saying only so much of what one believes as is acceptable to the majority. And the majority is always cowardly and reactionary. Further there is no necessary relation between ability to get votes and ability to legislate justice.

This is no reflection upon our friend McNair. He may prove to be the exception. But in the first place there are not many McNairs, and, in the second, hindsight, though less valuable than foresight, is apt to be more accurate.

Nor is our advance, as so often claimed in conference speeches, so slow because we must await a great leader. We have had that leader in life and in inspiration as great a leader as ever lived. Confucionism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, these did not have to wait for the coming of a second great leader. They succeeded because of the wisdom and will with which their apostles preached the gospel of their first leader. So it must be with us and the swiftness or slowness of the advance of our cause depends upon our acceptance of Henry George as a teacher of social science and human brotherhood and the wisdom and will with which we preach his gospel.

It is in this connection I assert that willing as his followers may be to work for his truth, "suffer for it and if need be die for it," they have not knowledge enough of the science of which he is the greatest of all masters to advance his cause other than slowly and haltingly. John Dewey said the philosophers since Plato's day worthy to be classed with Henry George can be counted on the fingers of the two hands. He might have added that those of George's followers competent today to plead his cause with George's logical exactness can be counted upon the fingers of one hand.

The pleas at this Conference, the purposes of all the ingenious plans for organization and propaganda, were that we must educate as to George's teachings. Those whom we should educate first of all as to those teachings, their tremendous possibilities, and the economic science Erom whch they are drawn, are ourselves.

All depends upon our attitude toward the teacher. I speak as one who believes he was as wise a man as ever taught and his book the greatest and most needed that was ever written. But it is too much to demand that a man writing a scientific text book, along lines in which lie was to a great extent a pioneer, should make no statement that would be proven wrong by the studies and experiences of the succeeding half century. Could that be asked of those who then wrote as authorities in the science of astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, even apart from their relations to the marvelous other sciences, radio transmission and the like, of whose very existence our scientific grandfathers knew nothing?

To follow in the footsteps of a great leader one need not lie down and roll in the mud where he made a mis-step. What is necessary is to move forward along the paths he opened with the guidance of his motives and methods. It is not necessary to declare that one will never press farther along than he attained. This is the plain meaning of those words of Henry George which his followers so disregard, that he did not want men to accept his opinions but wanted them to think for themselves. [Loyalty to his memory does not consist in repeating words, even his wonderful words, like a Thibetan-praying machine, but in carrying on his studies in the light of the (last half-century's added experience and with the method by which he so triumphantly succeeded.

As to his method of research he leaves no doubt, and his followers have failed in the first and fundamental one, which he enforced by the precept of Socrates: "The beginning of wisdom is in the definition of terms," and by that of Marcus Aurelius which is printed before the the title page of Progress and Poverty: "Make to thyself a definition or description of the thing that is presented to thee."

Our failure here is almost unbelievable. The five men who with myself accepted the invitation to a conference discussion of economics are prominent enough in our movement to be known by name to practically all our fellow workers. Yet not one of us could give a definition which the majority of us would accept of any of the following familiar economic terms Wealth, Money In- terest, Utility, Value. Most of those present believed Value to be a thing, an object. And we are those who propose to educate the world in the science of economics in a crisis when the world is dashing to destruction through ignorance of that science.

Further proof of our imcompetence is given by our refusal as Single Tax advocates to discuss the money question and the interest question in our conferences and public meetings. Our spokesmen push their heads into the sand, or rather into the mud, gurgle forth: "If you had all the money in the world and I had all the land what would you do if I ordered you to get off my land?" and then we plume ourselves on having silenced all questioners as to money and interest, the two topics about which questions are most earnestly asked today throughout the civilized world.

Senator Harrison in his excellent address at the Conference Banquet pleaded for more cooperation with reformers of other schools and asked why it cannot be. The chief reason is that all other groups of reformers, socialists, communists, anarchists, liberals generally, believe the money question to be of tremendous importance and are united against what they consider the fatal exactions of interest. Our little few alone among so-called reformers refuse to talk about money and attempt to defend interest by those arguments of Henry George thereon which were ridiculed and thoroughly refuted forty years ago by the Philosophic Anarchists led by Tucker and Yarros, and are not now accepted by any considerable number of Georgists.

It is not that we ought to accept the opinions of other reformers as to the relative importance of questions of money and interest, but we ought to educate ourselves on these subjects as to which Progress and Poverty has not taught us, or has not taught us correctly. We should be ashamed of our cowardly evasion: "We will not debate these questions with you but if you will debate the land question we can beat you." This is too much like the reply of state socialists when we ask how they, believing as we do in the common right to the use of the earth, think it can be made of effect by communal collection of economic rent and they reply: "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." We ought to know enough to meet them in debate on their chosen topics, money and interest, fight them to a finish there, and so give them respect enough for our knowledge of economics to lead them to listen to our arguments on the land question.

Of like cowardice and absurdity was the assertion of the gifted orator from Cleveland who twice so thrilled us with his eloquence when in admitting he is not able to answer the question Arden so earnestly asks: "How shall we assess the rental value of land when collection of economic rent has ended selling values?" he shuffled out by saying: "Let us be elected first and we'll find out what to do about it afterwards." The cheapest ward politician would not insult his constitutents by such a quibble.

This is the question brought up as vital to the existence of the enclaves, a question I have asked year after year at these Conferences only to be told not to press it then and not to bring it up thereafter. Sometimes one or two delegates would rise and say they could answer it, but on following up all, either by interview or letter, I found in every case that they did not know about it enough even to understand the question.

Our fellow workers in New Zealand and Australia have gone fartherst in this inquiry. Those in England, as I know from letters of the high authority appointed to assess land values in England before MacDonald's wretched failure had ruined what Snowden had tried to do, cannot answer it. The ablest man of my acquaintance along these lines, a professional expert in land appraisal, has not answered it to my understanding, nor have the experts of the Somers System nor those two of our Single Tax editors who are best versed in the knowledge of Georgian economics.

There were present in the Conference the leaders of the various educational and propaganda groups of our movement, one in particular of international reputation, also officials and assessors of the cities of whose advances in tax reform we boast the most, and there were there also the best known leaders of the enclavial movement, but all I could secure from them was a request to take my question away unanswered and not trouble future Conferences with it.

If by an unlooked-for happening in these mad, present day conditions where anything may happen unlooked-for, President Roosevelt and his advisors should turn to one of our belief for council and should be told our faith in the results that would follow ending land speculation and land monopoly by the collection of economic rent, this is the question they would first ask if they understood our plan. Is there no one of us who could answer it? I must not ask space to develop the related thesis that the vast majority of so-called Single Taxers are not Single Taxers at all but state socialists who favor land value taxation. Their opinion of Henry George is in reality about that so quaintly set forth by a Chicago newspaper when first reviewing: Progress and Poverty:

"The author appears to be a kind of communist, yet he means well"

not a profound judgment perhaps but at least better than that taken by The Nation in its review and consistently maintained to this day:

"We have to consider Mr. George's position essentially unsound."

Yet our exhorters are right, we must educate, poorly as we have thus far fitted ourselves to be teachers, but with more vivid realization of what is likely to be the goal of the blind led by the blind. We must educate, and the time between this and the chaos of the next Dark Ages is lessening fast. Probably the so-much deplored failure to draw more young people into our movement is due to the fact that they look upon the past, the shameful record of social outrages perpetrated or tolerated by us their elders both before, during and after the World War, as an open book which everybody has read. Therefore they very sensibly have no respect for our opinions. As to the present they see that our society is without leaders or principles, in the guidance of no one.

Yes we must educate. The Past is everybody's, the Present is nobody's; but the Future if there is to be a Future must be ours.

A Response to Frank Stephens by John Luxton

MR. STEPHENS takes a very gloomy view of the situation as far as Single Taxers are concerned. The idea that the science of economics as expressed in Progress and Poverty is not fully adequate in solving whatever problems may arise now, or in the future. So far as man's economic welfare is concerned, it is not to be tolerated for an instant by those who understand the Single Tax. But one must be sure that such are legitimate problems and not just fears entertained by those unable to use the tools at their disposal.

The author of the article asks:

"How shall we assess the rental value of land when the collection of economic rent has ended selling value?"

This question has bothered him for years and he says that Conference after Conference has avoided answering it. He claims that the selling value does not wipe out economic rent, but wiping out economic rent does destroy selling value. We are well acquainted with the latter phenomenon. The diversion of traffic from lower Fulton Street, in Brooklyn due to the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge, caused a fall in property values in that section following a migration of business toward Flatbush Avenue. The lower part of Jersey City suffered a similar decline due to the opening of the McAdoo tubes.

Mr. Stephens seems to be under the impression that the result of taking the economic rent will first destroy selling value and thus the basis for determining rent. We Single Taxers are all agreed that it will do the former. That is the goal we look forward to. The latter will never happen when the Single Tax is fully in force. It is not so in force in enclaves where a limited number of disciples are struggling along trying to prove objectively the soundness of their philosophy. First there are county and State taxes to be paid, after these the income tax, gasoline taxes, and whatever other taxes the ingenuity of politicians and lawmakers may concoct.

The opportunities in enclaves are limited. There is no great competition for certain sites, such as the local butcher, grocer, drug, or hardware store. Hence there is no bidding for sites, and a seemingly difficult job of assessing ground rent arises. This is a problem that belongs to enclaves alone, and it is up to enclavists to solve it in the only practical way. Require of each business man an accounting of his stewardship each year; an itemized account of all expenditures and all income, the value of his own services judged by the prevailing rate of wages in the same lines elsewhere, the return on his capital at prevailing rates, all insurance payments, and a small percentage, to be determined by the enclavists in their general meeting, to be applied to an emergency fund for the particular business. These items include all interest and wages. They also include the tribute paid to State and county in the form of taxes. Since these latter expenditures are really a legal form of robbery they have the choice of deducting them from the business man's wages and capital return or of deducting them from the rental value which in the enclave should be the surplus after all of the enumerated expenses are taken out of income. I think that they should be deducted from the rental value, since in this way only is it possible for the tradesman in an enclave to enjoy the full product of his labor.

Lest it seem that this method of computing the rental value of business land in an enclave does not take into consideration the return due to a man's superior knowledge and skill, let me explain that only under pure and unadulterated Single Tax will any man receive full justice in an equitable distribution of wealth. The residential property in an enclave will have to be assessed in the same manner that the prices for seats at the theatre, the legitimate stage of course, are assessed. Such property can be assessed without difficulty at the start of an enclave's existence by considering the same principles that real estate operators consider in any new develop ment. Any misjudgment will show itself later on and can be adjusted satisfactorily to all concerned. Later assessments must be determined by the budgetary and site value of the lots. So much for enclaves, of which I do not approve unless they can be made colonies free and independent of all taxes whatsoever.

Can a man travel to his best advantage, when burdened like Sinbad with the old man of the sea? When the entire State collects the economic rent the problem does not exist. The selling value will have been destroyed but not the economic rent. Land is assessed now, not by government assessors but by experts in realty values, for the purpose of buying and selling real estate. There is no guesswork about it. Government assessors err very often by from ten to twenty-five per cent in assessing resident sites because graft, favoritism, and ignorance are to be expected in our method of carrying on government business on account of the prevalence of privilege throughout our social fabric. But real estate salesmen who survive the ups and downs of business depressions are no amateurs or shysters. Shysters blossom out with much noise, glaring advertisements, fancy cars, clothes, and suites, but they wither and disappear after a year or two. The real estate man whose name remains year after year rarely makes any mistake in computing the possibilities of any parcel of land. From these possibilities he arrives at the selling price. If he is commissioned to buy the land he sets a limit to his bids, starting low and working up, but he never pays more than he believes to be the real value based upon the potential economic rent capitalized at five per cent. To arrive at the potential economic rent he has canvassed all property owners in the neighborhood, learned the rents of improved property, prices asked, prices offered, length of time on the market, and all other information upon which to base his conclusion. If he is selling land he knows all these things in advance, sets his lowest price and attempts to get the highest price possible. He expects the prospective customer to meet him on his own ground and then begins the "higgling" of which Oscar Geiger used to speak. When a final price is agreed upon both buyer and seller are satisfied.

The only persons taken in in the buying of land or land and improvements are the gullible and inexperienced. Can one imagine a group of investors in a power site, bankers and promoters, proceeding to buy without first having information furnished by expert engineers and real estate men in their employ? If it is possible to assess land values accurately in private business it is certainly possible to do the same under government auspices when monopoly and other forms of privilege shall have been destroyed by the working of the Single Tax. Thus, Mr. Stephen's question which he has propounded for so many years resolves itself into a private problem for enclavists, in fact a skeleton in the closet which enclavists should be careful to conceal from the eyes of practical folk.

I am not sure that we are "all agreed that our present advance is too slow for the feverish haste in which our entire civilization is dashing into despotism and chaos." I am one of those who believe that civilization must go on to the bitter end and end in chaos and destruction, the final end of despotism, because our present civilization is so honeycombed with class prejudice and injustice that it is not fit to survive.

Single Tax is capable of working wonders with it if put into force but the working of the wonders will take years. It were better to start from scratch, let man slowly find himself as he emerges from the destruction of our rotten civilization, and with the knowledge available, and the horrible example of man's refusal to be guided by his own discoveries, the man of the succeeding civilization can profit where we have failed. But this is not the opinion of others and I offer it here only to show the fallacy of Mr. Stephen's statement. There is no need for stampeding truth into a headlong rush to oblivion simply because civilization is doing so. Far be it from me to find fault with the faith of those of many years agone, but I am so confidant of the living faith of those of the present generation who accept in its fullness the doctrine of the Single Tax that I do not believe that the Single Taxers of forty years ago were any more animated by the spirit of man's love for mankind than we are. One must not forget that in all ages those who respond to a dynamic and magnetic leader are legion, and this applies to leaders who are scoundrels as well as to angelic characters such as Christ and Henry George.

We grow by what we feed upon. What has Clarence Darrow fed upon but the mental fodder supplied by the environment during these last fifty years. The Haymarket riot and succeeding legal massacres, the treatment of John P. Altgeld, the Pullman Strike, Homestead disorders, etc., to name a few, are not mental nourishment for one who believes that the Declaration of Independence means what it says. When one considers that man is a biological entity the fact that not one of five prominent Single Taxers could agree upon certain definitions is not to be wondered at. Mr. Stephens expects too much of the human race. It is still in a state of evolution mentally. Also it is hide-bound by an enormous mass of misinformation that has been accumulated from the beginning of man's time on earth and passed on as learning.

To be fully educated is impossible since man spends so much of his time unlearning nonsense. I speak from a quarter of a century of experience in the educational field. Money and interest are problems understood by so few people in the world that there is no wonder that even Single Taxers balk at trying to discuss them. This is due to confusion even in the minds of experts in banking and finance. If Communists and Socialists rush into discuss these issues it is because they have been clever enough to learn of the ignorance of the average man on such matters.

Mr. Stephens should know that the late Oscar Geiger was able to confound both Socialists and Communists on the subject of money and interest, and did so frequently at the forums of the Henry George School of Social Science. He did not put his head in the sand, not by a long shot. Lest Mr. Stephens fear these Socialists and Communists let me assure him that they are mere windbags, changing their premises and meaning of terms many times in a single discussion. How on earth can one convince such folk?

If all mankind could vision money in its true light, a draft upon the stock of existing wealth, to be used in exchange for goods or services at the convenience of its possessor, much of the confusion in regard to it would disappear. The really important problem for man to solve is the acquisition of it and not its meaning, which never was in doubt. Interest is too often considered merely as the charge for the use of money when it is in fact the return for the use of some one else's wealth. It may be that certain men believe that Henry George was refuted by this or that expert on interest, but Mr. Stephens accepts the refutation without giving reasons and proof. If Mr. Stephens lends me his typewriter and in consequence has to stop writing until I return it, thereby losing the chance to earn wages with it, or is compelled to hire one in its place, he is certainly not enjoying the use of his own property. I should make a return for the loss to him if I believe in an equitable distribution of wealth. If I don't I am accepting charity. The return is interest. No Socialist nor Communist will deny its justification in the case I mention. But we should not permit them to stray from the field when discussing these topics.

From sad experience we know their methods in argument and that is the reason why many of us will not argue with them, and not that we are just cowardly evasive. Mr. Stephens has weighed Single Taxers in the balance and found them wanting. He says that the vast majority are not Single Taxers at all but state socialists, favoring land value taxation.

I must admit that after all this I am at a loss to tell what sort of Single Taxer Mr. Stephens is. Does he believe in the collection of the economic rent in lieu of all taxes, or does he believe in them with a proviso? He has betrayed his own ignorance regarding the computing of ground rent and his confusion as to money and interest. He has failed to explain why Single Taxers fall down in expounding Henry George's theory but sees a way out in educating the coming generation admiting the shortcomings of the teachers. Perhaps the confusion in Mr. Stephens' mind comes through the refusal to see man as the biologist sees him, an animal forced to draw his sustenance for growth and repair of tissue, and for the release of body heat and energy to carry on the functions of a living organism, from the ground, the water, and the air around him and who must have free access to these great storehouses of body-building and life-sustaining materials or perish from the face of the earth. Considering man in this light, money and credit become mere tools made by man to assist him in the fulfilling of his biological mission to live.