Natural Law Governing the Rate of Interest

Walter G. Stewart

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April 1938]

Mr. Quinby's "Fundamentals of Interest" (Jan.-Feb.) properly condemns any effort to control interest. The law of supply and demand must do it naturally, regardless of futile beliefs, and all Single Taxers agree that any man-made laws about it must be worse than useless.

But they also agree that rent-yield from land investments (about one-half of all) is unnatural, and that it will be cut off by Single Tax: That this result is certain; and that when this field is cut off only business investments will remain.

(1) Is it honest or sensible to ignore these certain results of Single Tax?

Whether or not universal prosperity will increase "savings for safety" it is certain that users of capital will not have to compete for it against the land-owning lure. (Does any Single Taxer question the truth of Mr. Thompson's statement, just above Mr. Quinby's article, that "so long as wealth can purchase land that will yield a revenue just so long will man refuse to loan wealth without demanding a similar return?"

(2) Is not the direct effect of present rent yield on yields generally, obvious and important enough to call for honest recognition by Single Taxers?

Everybody knows that nature furnishes special help in the producing of pigs, wheat, honey, etc. Nearly everybody knows that these are unlimitedly producible just as machine products are; and that their lowered prices similarly benefit all consumers not the owners in particular.

(3) Must Single Taxers discredit their cause as well as their own intelligence and honesty, by not knowing or not admitting this natural general distribution of these gifts of nature?

Unless we honestly answer these questions we hurt our cause as well as our own repute.