Land-Value Policy

James Dundas White, M.A. LL.D.

[A pamphlet published by the United Committee for the Taxation of Land Values, London, 1924. J.D. White was a member of Parliament for Dumbartonshire from 1906 to 1910, and for the Tradeston Division of Glasgow from 1911 to 1918. He was the author of "Land Reform in Theory and Practice" and "Land-Value Problems"]

INTRODUCTION

The master-problem of economics is to determine the proper relation of the people to the land on which they live, and from which they derive their sustenance and their wealth. Their rights to the land are bound up with their rights to life and liberty, because the right to life implies a right to the means of living, and liberty begins with the liberty to use the gifts of Nature to satisfy human needs. These rights are inherent and inalienable; the recognition of them is of the first importance; and they ought to be asserted at the earliest possible moment, any law, custom, or usage to the contrary notwithstanding.

This economic problem is at the root of the production of wealth, because all wealth is ultimately obtained from the land. It is at the root of the distribution of wealth, which in large measure follows, and is bound to follow, the distribution of the sources from which wealth is derived. It is at the root of all social and political questions, because the well-being, the prospects, and the contentment of a people depend on the extent to which they are enabled to make use of the natural opportunities.

Justice requires that all the people should have equal rights to the land which Nature has provided. The rights to land are of a comprehensive character, for they include the rights to the light that shines on it, to the wind that blows over it, to the rain that falls on it, to the springs that rise in it, to the streams that flow upon it, to the water-power, to the natural growths, to the use of the surface in a variety of ways, to the stone, the clay, the coal, the minerals, and the other materials which it contains, and to all else that pertains to the land and passes with a grant of it. These gifts of Nature, which are in no wise due to the agency of man, ought not to be the subjects of private property, but ought to be treated as the common property of the people, from generation to generation continuously.

In so far as the land is utilised by the people in their collective capacity, or is the subject of their common use or enjoyment, no difficulty arises. In so far as the land is in the hands of private persons, the people as a whole should be regarded as the super-landlord, and their right to the land should be enforced by requiring those who hold it to pay a rent or tax for it, this rent or tax in each case being based on the market value of the land apart from improvements, and being payable whether the land is used or not.

Land-value policy - the policy of taxing land-values and untaxing improvements - is founded on the recognition of the rights of the people to the land, and of the improver to the improvements. It would secure to the people the value which attaches to the land in consequence of their presence and requirements. It would provide public revenue without burdening industry. It would, moreover, put a stop to the withholding of land from use, because the pressure of having to pay according to the market value of the land, whether the land was being used or not, would deter people from holding land idle and would cause them either to use it themselves, or to transfer it to others who would use it. The taxation of land-values would lay the axe to the root of land monopoly and make the land available for use; while the untaxing of improvements would promote its development.

Land-value policy is the true basis of reconstruction. Its direct effects would be to make the land more available for use and to promote production. Indirectly, it would prepare the way for the reform of land-tenure and the simplification of title to land. In its financial aspect, the increasing absorption of economic rent as public revenue would facilitate the corresponding abolition of taxes on production and exchange : whilst, from the International standpoint, the application of the policy in different countries would lay the economic foundations of prosperity and peace.

J. D. W. January, 1924.

APPENDIX

NOTABLE SAYINGS

Our Birthright

" The Earth hath He given to the children of men." [PSALM CXV, 16]

Profit of the Earth for All

" The profit of the Earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field." [Ecclesiastes, v, 9]

The Mother-Earth

"The Land is Mother of us all; nourishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly enriches us all; in how many ways, from our first wakening to our last sleep on her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as with blessed mother-arms, enfold us all! ... Properly speaking, the Land belongs to these two: to the Almighty God; and to all his Children of Men. …It is not the property of any generation, we say, but that of all the past generations that have worked on it, and of all the future ones that shall work on it." [Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, iii, 8]

Nature's Full Blessings

"If every just man that now pines with want
Had but a moderate and beseeming share
Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury
Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
Nature's full blessings would he well dispensed
In unsuperfluous even proportion,
And she no whit encumbered with her store."
[Milton, COMUS, 768-774]

The Bottom Question

" This land question is the bottom question. Man is a land-animal." [Henry George, The Crime of Poverty]

The Herd of Cows

"Certain persons have driven a herd of cows, on whose milk they live, into an enclosure. The cows have eaten and trampled the forage, they have chewed each others' tails, and they low and moan, seeking to get out. But the very men who live on the milk of these cows have set around the enclosure plantations of mint, they have cultivated flowers, laid out a race-course, a park, and a lawn-tennis ground, and they do not let out the cows lest they should spoil these arrangements. …The cows get thin. Then the men think that the cows may cease to yield milk, and they invent various means for improving the condition of the cows. They build sheds over them, they gild their horns, they alter the hour of milking, they concern themselves with the treatment of old and invalid cows … but they will not do the one thing needful, is to remove the barrier and let the cows have access to-S pasture." [Leo Tolstoy, A Great Iniquity]

The Mythic Earth-tree

"Man is an animal; but he is an animal plus something else. He is the mythic Earth-tree, whose roots are in the ground, but whose topmost branches may blossom in the heavens!" [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, II, 3]

Two Blades of Grass

"He gave it for his opinion, 'That whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.'" [Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ii, 7]

For Whose Benefit?

"Supposing … that for every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the seed that now increases fiftyfold should increase a hundredfold! Would poverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the material universe could only be utilised through land. And, land being private property, the classes that now monopolise the bounty of the Creator would monopolise all the new bounty. Landowners alone be benefited. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the starvation point!" [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, x, 5]

Disheriting their Brethren

"Oh, what a blessed world were this!" she cried,
" But that the great and honourable men
Have seized the earth, and of the heritage
t '. Which God, the Sire of all, to all had given,
Disinherited their brethren!"
[Robert Southey, Joan of Arc, I, 168-172]

A Landless Nation
"We hear it said, the soil of England, or of any country, is properly worth nothing, 'except the labour bestowed on it,' This, speaking even in the language of Eastcheap, is not correct. The rudest space of country equal in extent to England - could a whole English nation, with all their habitudes, arrangements, skills, with whatsoever they do carry within the skins of them and cannot be stript of, suddenly take wing and alight on it - would be worth a very considerable thing! . . . On the other hand, fancy what an English nation, once 'on the wing,' could have done with itself, had there been simply no soil, not even an inarable one, to alight on? Vain all its talents for ploughing, hammering, and whatever else; there is no Earth-room for this nation with its talents. …Soil, with or without ploughing, is the gift of God. The soil of all countries belongs evermore, in a very considerable degree, to the Almighty Maker! The last stroke of labour bestowed on it is not the making of its value, but only the increasing thereof." [Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, iii, 8]
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Appropriations

" ' This dog is mine, said these poor children ; there is my place in the sunshine.' Behold the beginning and the likeness of the usurpation of all the earth." [Blaise Pascal (d. 1662), Thoughts, v, 295]

Beginning of Land Monopoly

"The first person who enclosed a piece of land and be-thought himself to say, 'This is mine,' and found people foolish enough to believe him, was the real founder of our social system. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would have been spared to mankind, if somebody had torn down the stakes or filled up the ditch, and had warned his fellows, 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the produce is for all, and the earth for no one.'" [Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Causes of Inequality among Men, 1755]

" ;

How to Recover the Inheritance

"The earth, in its natural state … is supporting but a small number of inhabitants, compared with shat it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true that it is value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land owes to the community a ground-rent, for I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds. …Cultivation is one of the greatest natural improvements ever made. . . .But the landed monopoly that began with it has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance." [Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797]

Improvements on the Land

"You have turned over the soil to a few inches in depth with a spade or a plough; you have scattered over this prepared surface a few seeds ; and you have gathered the fruits which the sun, rain, and air helped the soil to produce. Just tell me, if you please, by what magic have these acts made you sole owner of that vast mass of matter, having for its base the surface of your estate, and for its apex the centre of the globe? . . . You say truly, when you say that 'whilst they were unreclaimed these lands belonged to all men.' And it is my duty to tell you that they belong to all men still; and that your ' improvements' as you call them, cannot vitiate the claim of all men. You may plough and harrow, and sow and reap ; you may turn over the soil as often as you like; but all your manipulations will fail to make that soil yours, which was not yours to begin with. . . . This extra worth which your labour has imparted to it is fairly yours . . . but admitting this, is quite a different thing from recognising your right to the land itself." [Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851, ix, 4]

Security of Improvements

"What is necessary for the use of land is not its private ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not necessary to say to a man, 'This land is yours,' in order to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only necessary to say to him, 'Whatever your labour or capital produces on this land shall be yours.' Give a man security that he may reap, and he will sow; assure Him of the possession of the house he wants to build, and he will build it. These are the natural rewards of labour. It is for the sake of the reaping that men sow; it is for the sake of possessing houses that men build. The ownership of land has nothing to do with it." [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, viii, I]

The Work of their Hands

"They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of hands." [Isaiah, lxv, 21, 22]

Nature of Land-value

"The rent of any one portion of soil does not depend on the labour or capital that has been expended on that portion. ...For instance, if, in the heart of London, a space of twenty acres had been enclosed by a high wall at the time of the Norman Conquest, and if no man had ever touched that portion of soil," or even seen it from that time to this, it would, if let by auction, produce an enormously high rent." [Patrick Edwrd Dove, Elements of Political Science, 1854, p. 283]

The Well-provisioned Ship

"It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, 'This is mine!'" [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, iv, 2]

All from the Earth

"Suppose you want to build a house; can you build it without a place to put it What is it built of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron - they all come from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose, any of those things; which men struggle for, where do they come from? From, the land. It is the bottom question. The land question is simply the labour question; and when some men own that element from which all wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live, then they have the power of living without work, and, therefore, those who do work get less of the products of work." [Henry George, The Crime of Poverty]

To see how Things are shared

"It's hardly in a body's pow'r
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shar'd."
[Burns, Epistle to Davie]

Land and Labour

"Political economists have insisted much on the small matters that affect the value of labour. By far the most important is the mode in which the land is distributed. Wherever there is a free soil, labour maintains its value. Wherever the soil is in the hands of a few proprietors, or tied up by entails, labour necessarily undergoes depreciation. In fact, it is the disposition of the land that determines the value of labour. If men could get the land to labour on, they would manufacture only for a remuneration that afforded more profit than God has attached to the cultivation of the earth. Where they cannot get the land to labour on, they are starved into working for a bare subsistence." [Patrick Edward DOVE, Theory of Human Progression, 1850, p. 406 n]

The Island

"Place one hundred men on an island from which there is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner of the soil of the island, will make no difference either to him or to them. In the one case, as the other, the one will be the absolute master of the ninety-nine -his power extending to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission to upon the island would be to force them into the sea." [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, vii, 2]

The Island

"Upon a larger scale, and through more complex relations the same cause must operate in the same way and to the end - the ultimate result, the enslavement of labourers, coming apparent just as the pressure increases which compels them to live on and from the land which is treated as the exclusive property of others. Take a country in which the soil is divided among a number of proprietors, instead of being in the hands of one, and in which, as in modern production, the capitalist has been specialised from the labourer, and manufactures and exchange, in all their many branches, have been separated from agriculture. Though less direct and obvious, the relations between the owners of the soil and the labourers will, with increase of population and the improvement of the arts, tend to the same absolute mastery on the one hand and the same abject helplessness on the other, as in the case of the island we have supposed. . . .Just as removal to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, labourers, no matter what they produce, will be reduced to a bare living, and the free competition among them, where land is monopolized, will force them to a condition which, though they may be mocked with the titles and insignia of freedom, will be virtually that of slavery." [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, vii, 2]

Wealth and the Source of Wealth

"It is not in the relations of capital and labour; it is not, in the pressure of population against subsistence, that an explanation of the unequal development of our civilisation is| to be found. The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people. And it must be so. For land is the habitation of man, the storehouse upon which he must draw for all his needs, the material to which his labour must be applied for the supply of al! his desires ; for even the products of the sea cannot be taken, the light of the sun enjoyed, or any of the forces of Nature utilised, without the use of land or its products. On the land we are born, from it we live, to it we return again - children of the soil as truly as is the blade of grass or the flower of the field. Take away from man all that belongs to land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land; it can but add to the power of producing wealth from land; and hence, when land is monopolised, it might go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving the condition of those who have but their labour, it can but add to the value of land and the power which its possession gives. Everywhere, in all times, among all peoples, the possession of land is the base of aristocracy, the foundation of great fortunes, the source of power." [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, v, 2]

The Land it is the Landlords'

"The land it is the landlords'
The traders' is the sea;
The ore the userer's coffer fills -
But what remains for me?

"The coming hope, the future day
When, wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now."
[Ernest Jones, Song of the Factory Slave (1856)]

Why Wages are low

"Why is it that men have to work for such low wages? Because if they were to demand higher wages, there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who compel that fierce competition that drives wages down to the point of bare subsistence" Why is it that there are men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employment ? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment; neither had Robinson Crusoe; the finding of . employment was the last thing that troubled them. If men cannot find an employer, why cannot they employ themselves? Simply because they are shut out from the element on which human labour can alone be exerted. Men are compelled to compete with each other for the wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of the natural opportunities of employing themselves; because they cannot find a piece of God's world on which to work without paying some other human creature for the privilege." [Henry George, The Crime of Poverty]

Treasure-house for Nation

, "We desire to develop our undeveloped estates in this country - to colonise our own country - to give the farmer greater freedom and greater security in the exercise of business - to secure a home and a career for the labourer, is now in many cases cut off from the soil. We wish to make the land less of a pleasure-ground for the rich and more of treasure-house for the nation." [Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, at the Albert Hall, 21st December 1905]

Politics of the Home

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
'Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land."
[Goldsmith, The Deserted Village]

Twin Principles

"Here are two simple principles, both of which are self-evident:

"I. - That all men have equal rights to the use and enjoyment of the elements provided by Nature.

"II. - That each man has an exclusive right to the use and enjoyment of what is produced by his own labour.

"There is no conflict between these principles. On the contrary they are correlative. To secure fully the individual right of property in the produce of labour, we must treat the elements of Nature as common property." [Henry George, Protection or Free Trade, ch.26]

A Declaration of Policy

"We would simply take for the community what belongs to the community, the value that attaches to the land by the growth of the community ; leave sacred to the individual all that belongs to the individual; and, treating necessary monopolies as functions of the State, abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those required for public health, safety, morals, and convenience." [Henry George, Condition of Labour, iii]

Cumulative Effects

"To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, hampers every wheel of exchange and presses upon every form of industry, would be like removing an immense weight from a powerful spring. …And to shift the burden of taxation from production and exchange to the value or rent of land would be not merely to give new stimulus to the production of wealth; it would be to open up new opportunities. For under this system no one would care to hold land unless to use it, and land now withheld from use would everywhere be thrown open to improvement." [Henry George, Progress and Poverty, ix, I]

Preparing the Ground

"Knowing this, that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow."
[J. G. Whittier, Barclay of Ury]

Most Just and Practicable

"The only indubitable means of improving the position of the workers, which is at the same time in conformity with the will of God, consists in the liberation of the land from its usurpation by the landlords. …The most just and practicable scheme, in my opinion, is that of Henry George, known as the single-tax system." [Leo Tolstoy, To the Working People, xiii]

The Injustice and the Remedy

"The injustice of the seizure of the land as property has long ago been recognised by thinking people, but only since the teaching of Henry George has it become clear by what means this injustice can be abolished." [Leo Tolstoy, Letter to Single-Tax Leagues of Australia]

Henry George's Merit

"It is Henry George's merit that he not only exploded all the sophism whereby religion and science justify landed property and pressed the question to the farthest proof, which forced all those who had not stopped their ears to acknowledge the unlawfulness of ownerships in land, but also that he was the first to indicate a possibility of solution for the question. He was the first to give a simple, straightforward answer to the usual excuses made by the enemies of all progress, who affirm that the demands of progress are illusions, impracticable, inapplicable. The method of Henry George destroys these excuses by so putting the question that by to-morrow committees might be appointed to examine and deliberate on his scheme and its transformation into law." [Leo Tolstoy, Letter to a German Reformer]

Our Present Land Laws

"Our present land laws cause a greater drag upon trade, and are a greater peril to the standard of living, than all the tariffs of Germany and America." [Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, at Bolton, 16th October 1903]

Land-value Valuations

"Let the value of the land be assessed independently of the buildings upon it, and upon such valuation let contribution be made to those public services which create the value. This is not to disturb the balance of equity, but to redress it. …There is no unfairness in it. The unfairness is in the present state of things. Why should one man reap what another man sows? We would give to the landowner all that is his, but we would prevent him taking something which belongs to other people." [Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, at Leeds, 19th March 1903]

The Hostile Tariff

"Our present rating system operates as a hostile tariff on our industries, it goes in restraint of trade, it falls with severity on the shoulders of the poorer classes in the very worst shape, in the shape of a tax upon house-room. …So long as this system is left unamended, we are consenting - you and I, by allowing it to remain unamended - to the aggravation of these appalling evils of over-crowding, which are a disgrace to our humanity and a blot upon our record as a capable self-governing community." [Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, at Dunfermline, 22nd October 1907]

Rights of the Community

"The value of land rises as population grows and national necessities increase, not in proportion to the application of capital and labour, but through the development of the community itself. You have a form of value, therefore, which is conveniently called 'site value,' entirely independent of buildings and improvements and of other things which non-owners and occupiers have done to increase its value - a source of value created by the community, which the community is entitled to appropriate to itself. …In almost every aspect of our social and industrial problem you are brought back sooner or later to that fundamental fact." [Mr. H.H. Asquith, at Paisley, 7th June 1923]

Potent Promoters of Industry

"We hold, as we always have held, that, so far as practicable, local and national taxes which are necessary for public purposes should fall on the publicly-created value rather than on that which is the product of individual enterprise and industry. That does not involve a new or additional burden on taxation, but it would produce these two consequences - first of all, that we should cease to be imposing a burden upon successful enterprise and industry; and next, that the land would come more readily and cheaply into the best use for which it is fitted. These two things would be two potent promoters of industry and progress." [Mr. H.H. Asquith, at Buxton, 1st June 1923]

The Greatest Grievance

"The great criticism against rating is not merely that it lacks uniformity and is unfair between the parties, but that it is unfair to the class of property that you tax and rate. This is the greatest grievance of all - that it taxes improvements. The more a landlord improves his property the higher he is rated; the more he neglects his property the less he is rated. …If he allows his cottages to fall into decay and become empty, his rates are less; but if he is a good, sound landlord, who repairs ruinous cottages and builds new ones, up go his rates. The man who trusts to obsolete machinery in his business can keep his rates low; but the man who puts in new machinery and improves his buildings has to pay a higher contribution to the rates." [Mr. Lloyd George, in the House of Commons, 28th April 1913]

Tackle Land-values First

"You cannot build houses without land; you cannot lay down trams for the purpose of spreading the population over a wider area without land. As long as the landlords allowed to charge prohibitive prices for a bit of land, even land, without contributing anything to local resources, so long will this terrible congestion remain in our towns. That is the first great trust to deal with, and for another reason --resources of local taxation are almost exhausted. It is essential that you should get some new resources for this purpose. What better resources can you get than this wealth created by the community, and how better can it be used than for the benefit of the community? ...It is all very well to produce Housing of the Working Classes Bills. They will never be effective until you tackle the taxation of land-values." [Mr. Lloyd George, at Newcastle, 4th March 1903]

Who ordained . . .?

"Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth; who is it? Who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour, to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself . . . and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of the law come from? Whose finger inscribed it?" [Mr. Lloyd George, at Newcastle, 30th September 1909]

Let's Burst It!

"Search out every problem, look into these questions thoroughly, and the more thoroughly you look into them you will find that the land is at the root of most of them. Housing, wages, food, health, the development of a virile, independent, manly, Imperial race - you must have a free land system as an essential condition of these. To use a gardening phrase, our social and economic condition is root-bound by the feudal system. It has no room to develop, but its roots are breaking through. Well, let's burst it!" [Mr. Lloyd George, at Aberdeen, 29th November 1912]

Entering the Inheritance

"We want to do something to bring the land within the grasp of the people. We want to put an end to the system whereby the land of this country is retailed by the ounce, so that there should not be an extra grain of breathing spaces. . . .The resources of the land are frozen by the old feudal system. I am looking forward to the spring-time, when the thaw will set in, and when the people and the children of the people shall enter into the inheritance that has been given them from on high." [Mr. Lloyd George, at Liverpool, 21st December 1909]

Thought and Action

"Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real."
[James Russell Lowell, Longing]

The Land Reformer's Case

"Our moral thoughts are usually cast ultimately into a theological form, and so the land reformer's case is generally opened by a statement like ' the land is God's common gift to all.' Cast in its severely economic form, however, the point is equally effective. Rent is a toll, not a payment for service. By it social values are transferred from social pools into private pockets, and it becomes the means of vast economic exploitation. . . .Rent is obviously a common resource. Differences of fertility and value of site must be equalised by rent, and it ought to go to common funds and be spent in the . common interest." [Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism, Critical and Constructive, p.164]

It is Fundamental

"Our old Socialist argument that economic rent must be taken by the State, because it is created by circumstances of which the whole community is entitled to take advantage, has been enormously increased by the results and the experiences of the war. And it is fundamental." [Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism after the War, p.53]

One Point of Socialism

"To take only one point of our case: Socialism declares it to be wrong that the land which is necessary for the life and maintenance of all men should be held in private ownership by a few men: it declares it to be wrong that a landowner who contributes nothing in skill or labour to the land should get anything out of the land: it declares it to be wrong that a landowner who certainly did not bury the metals and minerals in the earth - and who does nothing to win them out - should get greater remuneration than those who do win them at the expense of heavy toil, and life and limb. If you have an answer to these claims, we shall be glad to give it space." ["Forward" Newspaper, Glasgow, 16th December 1922]

The People's Anthem

"When wilt Thou save the people?
O God of Mercy, when?
The people, Lord! the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people! Thine they are;
Thy children, as Thy angels fair:
Save them from bondage and despair!
God save the people!"
[Ebenezer Elliott, Corn-Law Rhymes (1831)

Breaking Land Monopoly

"The Labour Party says that if the great landowners of this country desire to put fences round the most productive soil in the world … they must pay for the pleasure of doing so. Accordingly, it is proposed to have the land valued, and to ask the owner to pay a tax on that valuation. I think that by the pressure of the taxation and rating of land-values the owners would soon find that the land held out of use was not so necessary to their pleasure as they thought. I venture to suggest that they would quickly commence to seek buyers or tenants. The plentiful supply of land that would come on the market would enable farmers to obtain their holdings at a reasonable price or rent instead of having to enter into possession on the inflated values with which you are acquainted. I assert, without fear of contradiction, that nothing would give a greater stimulus to the agricultural industry than the freeing of the land. More farms would be opened up; more opportunities of employment would offer for the agricultural worker; the countryside would become a hive of industry instead of a grave of disappointed hopes. The root of the rural problem is where all roots are to be found - in the Land." [Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Cromer, 17th March 1922]

Suicidal to Penalise Improvements

"The taxation of land-values would not impose any further burden upon the agricultural industry. . . .The landowner would have to pay it. He could not pass it on to the farmer, and he could not make the agricultural worker pay it by means of a reduction in his standard of life. I challenge anyone to say that a tax on economic rent is paid by anyone else than the receiver of the rent. But the Labour Party would go further than that. The present system of assessment and rating produces an inequality of burdens which are injurious to agriculture. Improvements are positively discouraged. The burden of rates is often heaviest where it can least well be borne. A farmer who improves his land or erects an additional building for the housing of his live stock finds immediately that his assessment is raised. The Labour Party holds that it is suicidal for the nation to penalise by increased taxation occupiers of land who effect improvements which add to its value. We propose a drastic revision of the entire system of assessment and rating in order that the taxation of land may be used to unrate the improvements made by the occupier." [Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Cromer, 17th March 1922]

Undesirable Taxation

"Under our present system improvements are penalized. If a shopkeeper extends his premises, or a farmer increases the value of his farm by erecting improved buildings or draining the land, the rates are immediately increased. That is a tax on private enterprise with which I do not agree. Private enterprise of a character not subversive of the public good I would encourage. It little becomes the wealthy landlords who oppose the shifting of the burden of the rates from houses, factories, shops, and machinery on to the value of the land, to criticise the speech I made at Newport. Why f I recently attached my name to a Bill for the taking of rates off machinery. Is that an attack on private enterprise? " [Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Newcastle By-election, January 1923]

A Vital Need

"The principle and policy of the United Committee have no more sincere supporter than myself. The taxation of land-values has been a vital need ever since the private ownership of land formed an integral part of the social system, but the aftermath of a great war has brought us problems which have dragged its urgent necessity more into the light and indicated the essential truths of the doctrine taught by Henry George." [Mr. Arthur Henderson, Letter to the International Conference on the Taxation of Land-values at Oxford, August 1923]

Unlocking Nature's Storehouse

"The taxation of land-values with, of course, the exemption of improvements, does not receive my support merely as a plan for raising additional revenue. It is designed to achieve far greater results. It seeks to open the way to the natural resources from which all wealth springs. The labour is here, and with it the wilt to work, but the land still lies locked in the grip of a tenacious and unrelenting monopoly, while unemployment and poverty haunt us with a terrifying persistence." [Mr. Arthur Henderson, ib.]

The Victory that Counts

"We want no flag, no flaunting rag,
For Liberty to fight;
We want no blaze of murderous guns,
To struggle for the right.
Our spears and swords are printed words,
The mind our battle-plain:
We've won such victories before,
And so we shall again."
[Charles MacKay, British Freedom (1848)]

Concentrate upon Land Reform

"Until they had abolished landlordism root and branch, every other attempt at reform was building upon the sands. Every reform not based on common ownership of the land was simply subsidising landlordism. Every social reform increased the economic rent of land. Therefore, unless they were going to continue to waste their efforts by tinkering with social questions as in the past, they must concentrate upon this fundamental question, to secure the land for the people." [Mr. Philip Snowden, at Memorial Hall, London, 24th May 1919 (Land Nationaliser, June 1919)]

Economic Value of Land

"We hold the position that the whole economic value of land belongs to the community and that no individual has the right to appropriate and enjoy what belongs to the community as a whole. Let there be no mistake about it. When the Labour Government does sit upon those benches it will not deserve to have a second term of office unless in the most determined manner it tries to secure social wealth for social purposes." [Mr. Philip Snowden, House of Commons, 4th July 1923 (on Third Reading of Finance Bill)]

Backbone of Capitalism

"Why is it that, in spite of their great numbers and large organisations, the workers have not yet succeeded in gaining their freedom? The reason is simple: they do not understand the capitalist system. They always imagine that if they can gain higher wages and shorter hours, all will be well. But they fail to realise the great strength of the capitalists, which strength lies in their possession of the land and all the raw material from which wealth is produced. So long as they are allowed to retain possession of these things the workers are helpless." ["Freedom," Newspaper, London, October 1920]

Labour's Land Policy

"This policy is based on the following principles:

"The land which Nature provided as the physical basis of life ought to be treated as common property.

"When land is in private hands those who hold it should be called upon to pay to the people a rent or tax for it.

"That this tax or rent should be based on the true market value of the land apart from the value of any improvements which may be in or upon it.

"The tax should be made payable whether the land is being used or not."

[Labour Speaker's Handbook, 1922]

Land and Social Problems

"Late in life I have realised, what I failed to see in the early days, that the root of all our social problems lies in the land question. So long as land is withheld from free access to men, anxious and willing to utilise Nature's bounty, just so long will you have a crowd of men at the factory gate waiting for jobs. The key to the anomalies we are all endeavouring to solve is the land problem. …If the atmosphere could have been parcelled out and bottled up so that every child that comes into the world would only be allowed to breathe on the payment of air-rent, you can picture a state of affairs as deplorable, but no less unjust and ridiculous, as that obtaining at the present time with your private ownership and monopoly of the land." [Mr. Robert Smillie, at Newcastle-under-Lyme, October 1921]

Dictates of Equity

"It may by-and-by be perceived that Equity utters dictates to which we have not yet listened ; and men may then learn that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the earth, is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties." [Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851, ix, 9]

The Coming Brotherhood

"Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an' a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That Man to Man the world o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that."
[Burns, Is there for honest poverty]