Where is the Vanguard of the Single Tax?

Fiske Warren

[The following essay is largely a revision of an article with the same caption that appears in the Single Tax Year Book (1917), published by the Single Tax Review Publishing Company, Sun Building, New York City. Reprinted from the introduction to the 1921 book, Enclaves of Single Tax, edited by Charles White Huntington]

RETURNING from Andorra, the oldest republic in the world - one hundred and seventy square miles of liberty, defended by the Pyrenees as Switzerland by the Alps - I put myself the question as above. Andorra is a country with no taxes on improvements and no tariff at her borders, to which goods can be brought in bond through France and Spain, a country not even mentioned in my good friend Fillebrown's valuable Single Tax Handbook, and yet, where stands even vaunted Vancouver in the comparison? Does not British Columbia still get her revenues in Vancouver, as well as in other parts of her territory, from taxes on polls, real estate (including buildings and other improvements), and incomes? Does not the tariff afflict all of Canada, of which British Columbia is a part? Even Vancouver herself does not take the whole of the economic rent. In the light of the facts, how grotesque becomes the claim of her ex-mayor, L. D. Taylor, that the city has adopted "the Single-tax System in its entirety." Truly, I think the six thousand inhabitants of Andorra need not yield the place of honor to Vancouver.

Moreover, there is no army in Andorra; there is no graft, there is little or no crime, the richest man has no more than $100,000, and, on the other hand, I saw only one beggar. The expenses of government per capita, both local and national, are less than one- half of the expenses with us of our national alone - and all this in spite of, or, as some perverse ones would say, by reason of, the fact that there is no printing-press within the limits of the republic, no free system of public schools, that literacy of the barest kind hardly embraces one-half of the adults, and that till within a year or two no wheeled vehicles could enter the country, and even now cannot reach its capital and centre.

This is the republic that has known how to maintain itself with dignity and success since the days of Charlemagne, a steady-going democracy, while on both sides, in France and Spain, the Andorrans could see the insolence of dynasty after d3masty, despotism after despotism, war after war, passing like phantasmagoria. Indeed, except that the suffrage is restricted to the heads of the families, democracy is at its freest, and self-government ramifies upwards from the smallest units. For the affairs of a country no bigger in population than many a town in New England are dealt with as a whole by the council-general, which also elects the Syndic or President; then there is a council for each of the six parishes, and finally the parishes are themselves divided into several divisions, each governed by a council composed of all the heads of families.

But there are some defects in Andorra. The revenues are derived about half from letting public lands, chiefly to foreigners, for grazing, and half from licenses, new roads being paid for by a special tax on cattle, while no tax whatever is laid on land. Hence flow the natural ills. The mines remain unworked, the water-powers remain undeveloped, and the lands most valuable for agriculture are held perennially by the old families, or made the subject of speculation, while the cadets of the new generation must emigrate or be helpless in the land of their birth. Thus the population remains at six thousand from time immemorial. There are portents of a change, however; a new temper is showing itself, and a crisis looms up ahead, at which the issue may be either the taking of the economic rent, or appropriation for the benefit of the landless. May Andorra then be wise and choose the former, adopting the Single Tax in its integrity, thus substituting the just for the arbitrary and evolution for revolution!

To take the tax from improvements and put it on land alone brings no terrors to the would-be monopolist, but only to the actual. All the unearned increment of the future is his, as before, and his buildings are untaxed. Indeed, he has a real advantage. Yet this is all to which Vancouver is committed. This contains no gospel for those unfairly handicapped in life's race.

To give equal access to the earth by taking the economic rent and to liberate enterprise by untaxing improvements - this is what the five free communities of Fairhope, Arden, Tahanto, Free Acres, and Halidon stand for. Is it not clear that they alone are in the van of the Single Tax? To make them perfect requires only the complement of free trade, which is not theirs to provide, alas ! or they would hasten to provide it.

ENCLAVES OF SINGLE TAX

THE word "enclave," as used by Single Taxers, means an area of land where the economic rent is collected under the terms of leaseholds and used to pay certain of the taxes levied by the town, county, state, or nation.

An enclave may or may not be a colony, this depending upon whether its characteristic note is attracting settlers or extension of territory, the bringing of the people to the land or of the land to the people. The first class of enclaves, which can properly be spoken of as colonies, is represented by Fairhope in Alabama, Arden in Delaware, and Free Acres in New Jersey; the second class by Tahanto in Massachusetts, while Halidon in Maine represents a compromise between the two, for although in theory it is like Tahanto, its growth has consisted more largely in accessions of colonists than in accessions of land. All the enclaves are identical in the principle of taking the economic rent and using it in payment of taxes. In all of them, therefore, improvements^ are exempt from taxation. Thus in essence the Single Tax prevails; but, on the other hand, in no one of them has there been any attempt to pay either the customs or the excise or the national income tax, or to make good the artificial increase in the prices of domestic goods due to the "protective" policy. Thus, to a substantial degree, the plan as so far exemplified fails to realize the splendid conception of Henry George of a Single Tax on the value of land, involving freedom of trade with foreign countries and freedom from interferences at home. But it is much to untax improvements, and thereby to untax local industry.

The vitality of the enclaves is to be noted. All of the many socialistic communities of America, with the notable exception of Amana in Iowa (and it although still vigorous is now suffering decline), are either dead or dying, while each of the Single Tax communities has grown in strength with the successive years. It was but natural at the beginning that many Single Taxers should have been doubtful about the issue. The judgment of Henry George himself, when consulted regarding Fairhope, was unfavorable. He thought it inadvisable to risk the reputation of the Single Tax on the success of a pioneering experiment in land, which might fail for practical reasons entirely unconnected with the principle; moreover, the project seemed to him more akin to the nationalization of land than to the Single Tax which he advocated.

Varying opinions are held as to the value of enclaves for the purpose of propaganda, some holding that they are too limited to be effective; but this point needs no discussion here. It is enough for the justification of enclaves that they demonstrate the practicability of the Single Tax, that they give opportunities not to be found elsewhere for their inhabitants, and that they furnish much needed laboratories where minor, yet very important, points, about which Single Taxers differ, can be determined by experience. Some of these points are: Shall railroads be publicly owned or operated? Shall mines be treated by taking the economic rent, as under the ordinary rule of Single Tax; or shall they be regarded as a capital value to be reproduced elsewhere on the earth as a capital value in proportion as the mines are depleted? Shall the distribution of water, gas, and electricity be communal or private? How nearly is it practicable to take the whole economic rent? Shall a forest be called a site value or an improvement? Can the increment in rent due to private water-works be collected as a proper part of the economic rent? After collecting the economic rent and paying the ordinary expenses, can the remainder, if any, be devoted to any purpose whatever, or how shall expenses that are properly governmental be defined?