They Who Control Land Control Capital
Selim N. Tideman
[An article that first appeared in the St. Louis
Mirror.
Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, July-August 1915]
When, in the division of wealth, land monopoly takes all that labor
produces, save the living, it takes the capital produced; thus the
capital becomes monopolized too, and rent will naturally be charged
for its use, the same as for land. When the use of a particular piece
of land or capital is contracted for, the payment is generally called
rent, but when the bargain is for a blank order on the market, that is
to say * 'money,'* the charge is called interest. Both are essentially
the same; it is a monopoly charge, and this in Political Economy is
covered by the term "Rent." The root of the power thus to
tax is the monopoly of the land. Without that monopoly the capital
produced would all go to the producers, and as they are the users of
it, the power to charge them interest on what they themselves
produced, would be at an end. Capital they could then produce without
limit; and it would be theirs. Whoever controls the land controls the
capital, and herein is labor's only salvation.
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