The Single Tax Movement in the United States

Arthur Nichols Young

[Princeton University Press, 1916]

CHAPTER I

ANTICIPATIONS OF HENRY GEORGE'S IDEAS

Introduction

Few movements of any sort bear such a striking relation to the life and work of a single individual as the single tax movement bears to the life and work of Henry George. Scarcely anything in the history of social reform movements is more remarkable than the spectacle of this unknown California printer setting foot in New York City in 1880, poor in pocket, equipped solely with a book and the consciousness of a message, to become the founder of a new world-wide crusade against world-old evils. Like the founder of a new religion, Henry George believed that he had been called to be a prophet to his age. The task to which he set himself was to be the bearer of an economic revelation, to point the way to social salvation, to show the "great primary wrong" which causes a shadow accompany our advancing civilization. He sent forth his gospel with unwavering faith that his message would find friends who would take "the cross of a new crusade". That faith has been realized and to-day thousands of his disciples in all parts of the world are devoted to his memory and turn for the final solution of economic problems to Progress and Poverty.

In order to reach a clearer understanding of the place which Henry George's single tax doctrines occupy in the history of economic thought, we shall consider in the present chapter the extent to which they were anticipated. A discussion of the anticipations, however, must be confined within limits. An attempt to consider the numerous manifestations of the idea to which land reformers of all times have appealed -- that all men have a "God-given" or "natural" or "equal" right to the earth -- would take us too far afield. Hardly any agrarian movement fails to exhibit some manifestation of this idea, which dates back at least to the time when the author of Ecclesiastes wrote that "the profit of the earth is for all". We must confine ourselves to considering (1) some of the more specific anticipations of George's characteristic doctrines, and (2) the relations between these doctrines and the doctrines of the leading economists, from the Physiocrats to Cairnes.[1] We shall then examine the question of George's originality, his knowledge of and dependence upon former writers while formulating the ideas which, first presented in 1871 in Our Land and Land Policy, were worked out more fully eight years later in Progress and Poverty. In the second chapter we shall consider the influence which the environmental conditions of early California exerted upon Henry George.

Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher (1632-1677), in his Tractatus Politicus proposed that the rents of the soil, supplemented perhaps by the rents of houses, should defray the expenditures of the state.

The fields, and the whole soil, and, if it can be managed, the houses should be public property, that is, the property of him who holds the right of the commonwealth: and let him them at a yearly rent to the citizens, whether townsmen or countrymen, and with this exception let them all be free, or exempt from every kind of tax in time of peace. And of this rent a part is to be applied to the defences of the state, a part to the king's private use.[2]

Marshall Vauban published in 1707 his Projet d'une Dixme Royale. His travels through France had given him an opportunity to see the poverty of the peasants, which believed was due largely to heavy and unequal taxation.[3]. He proposed a reform of France's tax system which some regarded as entitling him to rank as "a pioneer of the single tax".[4]

The title of Vauban's book, however, is misleading as regards his reform project. The dixme royale, or royal tithe, was not, as its name might indicate, a single income tax. It was a comprehensive proposal for simplifying the tax system, but yet far from a single tax proposal. It called for proportional taxes on the produce of land and the revenue of wealth in general, but definitely proposed to continue (not without improvements in method, however) the raising of revenue from salt duties, and to retain certain other imposts.[5]

It is better, therefore, to regard Vauban as a reformer who made an earnest and worthy plea for greater simplicity, justice, and uprightness in taxation, rather than as a pioneer advocate of the single tax.[6]

Thomas Spence, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, advocated ideas strikingly like those of Henry George in a lecture before the Philosophical Society of Newcastle on the 8th of November, 1775, for the printing of which, wrote Spence, "the Society did the Author the honour to expel him".[7]

Spence believed in the natural right of all men to land, and his views on the effects of its private appropriation are suggestive of Progress and Poverty.

For as all the rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is not full, so let there be ever so many sources of wealth, let trade, foreign and domestic, open all their sluices, yet will no other but the landed interest be ultimately the better.[8]

Spence's remedy was "to administer the landed estate of the nation as a joint-stock property, in parochial partnerships, by dividing the rent."

There are no tolls or taxes of any kind paid among them, by native or foreigner, but the aforesaid rent. The government, poor, roads, &c. &c … are all maintained by the parishes with the rent: on which account all wares, manufactures, allowable trade, employments, or actions, are entirely duty-free.[9]

When all necessary expenditures of government have been met comes "the most pleasant part of the business to everyone", the equal division of the surplus.

A contest between the Corporation of Newcastle and the freemen of the borough probably suggested to Spence his proposal. The Corporation had enclosed and leased a part of the common land, but were defeated in the law courts and obliged to allow the rent to the freemen as dividends.[10]

The result of Spence's advocacy of this proposal was that he was forced to remove to London. There he continued his propaganda and at one time gained a considerable following. But the government laid a heavy hand upon his agitation and the societies of his followers were suppressed.[11]

William Ogilvie, Professor of Humanities in King's College, Aberdeen, was another eighteenth century thinker who anticipated certain of Henry George's ideas. In 1782 he published anonomously An Essay on the Right of Property in Land with respect to its Foundation in the Law of Nature.[12] He believed that the equal right of all men to the earth was "a birthright which every citizen still retains",[13] and as a means for securing that right he proposed a progressive agrarian law", under which men were to be permitted to claim their birthright share from unoccupied lands, and those holding more than this share were gradually to be deprived of their surplus of land, retaining, however, the title to any improvements which they might have made.[14]

Ogilvie's ideas on taxation were somewhat vague, but he wrote in a footnote that he believed a land tax to be the most equitable form of tax.[15] The landowner, he believed, enjoyed a revenue without performing a corresponding social service.[16] He suggested a tax on barren lands to force the owner either to cultivate or dispose of them.[17] Ogilvie was probably the first to suggest definitely a tax on the increment of land values. He wrote:

A tax on all augmentation of rents, even to the extent of one half the increase, would be at once the most equitable, the most productive, the most easily collected, and the least liable to evasion of all possible taxes, and might with inconceivable advantage disencumber a great nation from all those injudicious imposts by which its commercial exchanges are retarded and restrained, and its domestic manufactures embarrassed.[18]

Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Agrarian Justice opposed to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly, appeared in 1797.[19] Paine distinguished, as did Henry George, between natural property and artificial property.

There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe, -- such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property, -- the invention of men.[20]

"Equality of natural property", wrote Paine, "is the subject of this little essay."[21] Since the private appropriation of land "has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance," justice demands an indemnification.[22] This was best to be managed, Paine believed, by a tithe upon all inheritances to create a "National Fund", which should give to each the sum of fifteen pounds sterling at the age of twenty-one and an annuity of ten pounds at the age of fifty.[23]

Patrick Edward Dove, a Scotchman, was the most remarkable anticipator of Henry George. In 1850 he published anonomously The Theory of Human Progression, and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice.[24] This is a diffuse work largely taken up with philosophical and theological speculation; economic problems hardly seem to be the main issue. However, Dove referred to the land question as "the main question of England's welfare."[25]

Dove stated the problem with all the vigorous fervor of Progress and Poverty.

How comes it that, notwithstanding man's vast achievements, his wonderful efforts of mechanical ingenuity, and the amazing productions of his skill, . . . a large portion of the population is reduced to pauperism.? . . . To charge the poverty of man on God, is to blaspheme the Creator. . . . He has given enough, abundance, more than sufficient; and if man has not enough, we must look to the mode in which God's gifts have been distributed.[27]

Dove diagnosed the cause of poverty as the denial of the natural right of all to the land of their birth, "the alienation of the soil from the state, and the consequent taxation of the industry of the country."[27]

Dove believed that the actual division of the land, even if possible, would be futile as a remedy. The solution was to be found in "the division of its annual value or rent" which could best be done "by taking the whole of the taxes out of the rents of the soil, and thereby abolishing all other kinds of taxation whatever."[28] If this were done "all industry would be absolutely emancipated from every burden, and every man would reap such natural reward as his skill, industry, or enterprise rendered legitimately his, according to the natural law of free competition.[29]

Herbert Spencer. in his Social Statics, published in 1850, the same year as Dove's work, gave the fullest exposition of the natural rights theory applied to land prior to Henry George's writings. In chapter IX, The Right to the Use of the Earth, he declared that "equity . . . does not permit property in land".[30]

The right of each man to the use of the earth, limited only by the like rights of his fellow-men, is immediately deducible from the law of equal freedom. We see that the maintenance of this right necessarily forbids private property in land. On examination, all existing titles to such property turn out to be invalid."[31]

Spencer believed that equal apportionment of the earth among its inhabitants and common property in land would be alike unfeasible. But the change could be effected with no serious disturbance of the existing order.

The change required would be simply a change of landlords. Separate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the public. Instead of being in the possession of individuals, the country would be held by the great corporate body -- Society. Instead of leasing his acres from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy-agent of the community. Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones; and tenancy the only land tenure.[32]

Spencer admitted that the question of compensation to present proprietors of land was complicated and difficult.[33] But he declared that "the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil is consistent with the highest civilization, and … however difficult it may be to embody that theory in fact, Equity sternly commands it to be done."[34]

In the eighties, when discussion of Progress and Poverty was at its height, Spencer's name was frequently coupled with George's as an advocate of land nationalization. But Spencer had modified the views set forth in 1850 in Social Statics, and in 1892 he withdrew the original volume, issuing in its place Social Statics, abridged and revised, a book from which his radical utterances on the land question were omitted.[35] For his retraction he was sharply criticized by George in A Perplexed Philosopher, published in 1892.

ANTICIPATIONS BY THE SOCIALISTS

Socialist writers before the time of Henry George had regarded private property in land, together with private property in other forms of wealth, as exploitative. Some had held that land ownership was peculiarly exploitative, because it infringed the natural right of all men to the earth, the heritage of the race. Proudhon gave forcible expression to this thought in his Qu'est-ce la Propriete? published in 1840, when he wrote: "Qui a fait la terre? Dieu. En ce cas, proprietaire, retire-toi !"[36]

Likewise the socialists, desiring collective ownership of most forms of wealth, had regarded collective ownership of land as a fundamental plank in their program. The famous Communtst Manifesto of 1848, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, has the following as first in the list of measures "pretty generally applicable" in "the most advanced countries":

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.[37]

Some socialist writers had placed particular emphasis upon the abolition of private ownership of land. Among these were the Belgian socialist, Baron de Colins, a voluminous writer of the middle of the nineteenth century,[38] and Francois Huet, a Christian socialist.[39]

ANTICIPATIONS BY THE GERMAN BODENREFORMERS

The first of the German Bodenreformers was Hermann Heinrich Gossen.[40] In 1854 he proposed that the state should purchase all land and lease it to the highest bidders.[41]

The state could acquire land advantageously, he believed, because it would be able to borrow the purchase money at low rates of interest. If collective ownership of land were introduced, society instead of private individuals would get the advantage of any future increase in land values.[42]

In 1871 August Theodor Stamm, in his Die Elosung der darbenden Menschheit, presented views similar to those of Henry George.[43] Stamm believed that private property in land was the cause of nearly all human ills. In its abolition was to be found the complete solution of the social problem. Collective ownership might be effected in several ways, but the best means, Stamm believed, was gradually to absorb the rent of land by increasing the land tax. Stamm differed from George, however, in holding that, since the original wrong of private appropriation of land was not that of the present but of previous generations, the rights of present owners should receive some consideration.[44]

In 1879 Adolph Samter, in his Das Eigentum in seiner socialen Bedeutung, advocated land nationalization.[45]

When, in 1879, Progress and Poverty was published, it was early translated into German and attracted considerable attention in Germany.[46] The result of the discussion it aroused was the development of a group of Bodenreformers, who have worked assiduously for proposals similar to George's. The leaders among the Bodenreformers have been Michael Flurscheim, Theodor Hertzka, and Adolph Damaschke.[47]

Proposals similar to George's single tax have not found much favor in Germany. But the Germans have taken the lead in taxing the "unearned increment" of land values.[48]

ANTICIPATION IN MOVEMENTS FOR SPECIAL TAXATION OF LAND

Movements for special taxation of land together with exemption of improvements from taxation are met independently in several newly settled countries. It is not strange that settlers who improve their farms should resent the fact that the result of their labor is to add to the value of land held by non-improving or absentee speculators.

In Iowa in the thirties and forties there was a considerable movement for the exemption of improvements from taxation.[49] The actual settlers felt that non-resident speculators and big land-holders were bearing too little of the burdens of taxation. The outcome of the agitation against "land monopoly" was the passage of the act of January 14th, 1840, which made it the duty of the county assessor to assess real estate at "the actual value which such real estate would bear without the improvements thereupon."[50]

This law, however, was soon repealed as a majority of the legislature held it to be contrary to the Organic Law of the Territory.[51]

But the repeal did not put a stop to the agitation. It continued after Iowa had been admitted to the Union in 1846. The advocates of exempting improvements urged that the existing system encouraged "land monopoly" and speculation, and discouraged improvements.

These lands of the capitalists [held for speculation] are now being more valuable by the labor of the settler, whose improvements are increasing the same, and the fruits of whose industry under the present law, are taxed to support that very government, which protects these lands, and without which they would be measurably valueless. …

Assessments on land for taxes should be levied and graduated according to the relative value and quality of the same, whether selected in the country or towns, and . . . the value of improvements on such lands or town lots should not be included in the assessments unless it should be for corporation purposes in towns.[52]

The agitation, however, did not result in further legislation.

Siimilar ideas were advocated by a Wisconsin tailor, Edwin Burgess, of Racine.[53] In 1848 he wrote a letter from Racine which appeared in "Excursion No. 45, Clearance No. 3, of the Portland [Maine] Pleasure boat, J. Hacker, Owner, Master, and Crew,"[54] in which he said:

I want now to say a few words on the best means of raising revenue or taxes so as to prevent land monopoly. I know not what are your views on the subject, but should like to have you inquire whether raising all the taxes off the land in proportion to its market value would not produce the greatest good to mankind with the least evil, of any means of raising revenue. Taxing personal property has a tendency to limit its use by increasing its price, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining it.

In 1859-60 Burgess gave a more extensive presentation of these ideas in a series of eleven letters to the Racine Advocate, in which he urged that land should be taxed and improvements exempted.[55] These letters aroused considerable discussion and some opposition. Burgess believed that his policy would force idle land into use, would encourage the production of wealth and increase opportunities for employment, and would do away with the evasion and fraud which accompany other taxes.

Were all the taxes on the land, and the people's land free, then the hitherto landless could soon build their own homes on their own land, and raise all they needed to consume or exchange, and no longer need the land, house, or capital of others; then rent, interest, and even usury would cease for want of poverty to sustain them, for the curse, land monopoly, being removed, the effect would cease with the cause. Thus would the happiness of mankind be immeasurably increased, and misery be proportionately diminished; then would earth be redeemed from the giant sin of land robbery, and the Paradise of the present or future be far above that of the past.[56]

In the seventies similar ideas were expressed in Australia. When Henry George was editing the San Francisco Post, a copy of a tract written by Robert Savage, of the "Land Tenure Reform League of Victoria," came to his attention. He published an extract from it in an editorial in the Post, April 16th, 1874. The author of the tract declared that "the allocation of the rents of the soil to the nation is the only possible means by which a just distribution of the created wealth can be effected."

The movement for the exemption of improvements in western Canada dates from 1874, in which year the town of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, received a special charter permitting the total exemption of improvements from taxation.[57] Nanaimo has never taxed improvements.

FOOTNOTES

1. A detailed consideration of these points would take us too far afield. The precursors here discussed are representative; the list is by no means exhaustive.
   ... For further discussion of precursors of Henry George see: Dolifus, Uber die Idee der einzigen Steuer, Basel, J897; Gide and Rist, Histoire des Doctrines Econotniques, Paris, 1913, pp. 654-76; Escarra, Nationalisation du sol et Socialisme, Paris, 1904; Henry George, Political Economy, New York, 1898, bk. 2, ch. 7; E. H. Crosby, The Earth-for-All Calendar, in the National Single Taxer, New York, each month of 1900 (a list of quotations from many anticipators of George); and J. M. Davidson, Concerning Four Precursors of Henry George and the Single Tax, London, 1899.
   ... The first two accounts mentioned are the most valuable. Davidson's partisanship for the single tax has led him at times to strain a point in discovering similarities between George's doctrines and those of Spence, Ogilvie, Paine, and Dove, the precursors whom he discusses.
2. Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, ch. 6, sec. 12.
3. Vauban, Projet d'une Dixme Royale, 1708 ed., p.3.
4. E.g. Haney, History of Economic Thought, New York, 1911, p.135.
5. Vauban, op. cit., premiere partie.
6. For a thorough discussion of this point see Dolifus, Uber die Idee der einzigen Steuer, Basel, 1897, pp. 15-25.
7. Spence's two chief pamphlets are, The Meridian Sun of Lihert,, or, the Whole Rights of Man Displayed and most Accurately Defined, a twelve page pamphlet which, Spence stated (1796 ed., p.4), he had been "publishing in various editions for more than twenty years"; and The Rights of Infants, or the Imprescriptable Right of Mothers to such a Share of the Elements as is sufficient to enable them to suckle and bring up their Young. The latter, which was written in 1796, has been reptinted in the Single Tax Rev., Oct. 15, 1907, pp. 11-16. Copies of these pamphlets are in the New York City Public Library.
8. Spence, The Rights of Infants, p. 3.
9. Spence, The Whole Right, Of Man, p. 11.
10. Foxwell, Introduction to Menger, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, London, 1899, p. xcv.
11. See Menger, op. cit., p. 147 et seq. It is of interest to note that Spence's pamphlet came to New York in 1829 and that some of his ideas were incorporated in the platform of the first workingmen's political party. See Commons, Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol.7, p. 30.
12. Ogilvie's book was reprinted by W. Dogdale, London, 1838, with a notice that "the book attracted considerable attention" at the time of Publication, but was suppressed. It also has been reprinted by D. C. MacDonald under the title, Birthright in Land, London, 1891.
13. Ibid. (MacDonald reprint), p. 9.
14. Ibid., p.93 et seq.
15. "If the original value of the soil be the joint property of the commonwealth, no scheme of taxation can be so equitable as a land tax." Ibid., p. 16, note. See also p. 95, note.
16. "It [the rent of land] increases also without any effort of his, and in proportion to the industry of those who cultivate the soil." Ibid., p. 35.
17. Ibid., p.58.
18. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
19. Thomas Paine's Works, New York, 1895, vol. 3.
20. Ibid.. p. 324.
21. Idem.
22. Ibid., p.331.
23. Idem. Paine's plan was criticized by Spence in his Rights of Infants (p. 3) as being an execrable fabric of compromissory expediency, as if in good earnest intended for a Swinish Multitude".
24. The original of Dove's work is rare. There is a copy in the Library of Princeton University. It has been reprinted, edited and abridged by Julia A. Kellogg, New York, 1910. The essence of Dove's argument in his Theory of Human Progression is in the third section of ch. 3, On the Theory of Man's Practical Progression. Dove also wrote The Elements of Political Science, Edinburgh, 1854, in which he made known his authorship of the earlier work. George was later charged with plagiarizing from Dove. See infra, p. 24.
25. The Theory of Human Progression, p. 322.
26. Ibid., p. 311 et seq.
27. Ibid., p.320.
28. Ibid., p. 387.
29. Idem.
30. Spencer, Social Statics, New York, 1865, p. 132.
31. Ibid., p. 143.
32. Ibid., p. 141.
33. Ibid., pp. 142-32.
34. Ibid., pp. 143-44.
35. See George, A Perplexed Philosopher, New York, 1892, pp. 132-35.
36. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce la Propriete'? p. 74.
37. Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chicago, n.d., p. 45.
38. See Laveleye, Socialism of Today, pp. 245-53.
39. Ibid., pp. 253-56. also Laveleye, Primitive Property, pp. 333-36.
40. Regarding Gossen see Jevons, Preface to the 2d (1879) and subsequent editions of The Theory of Political Economy; Walras, Un economiste inconnu. Jour. des Peonomistes, 1885; Handworterbuch der Staatswissensehaften, article on Gossen; Dollfus, Uber die Idee der einzigen Steuer, p. 103, note; and Gide and Rist, Histoire des Doctrines Peonomiques. Paris, 1913, pp. 669-7I.
41. Gossen, Entwieklung der Gesetze der menschlichen Verkehrs und der darausfliessenden Regeln fur menschliches Handeln, Brunswick, 1854.
42. Dollfus, op. cit, p.103, note.
43. For an account of Stamm's views see Dollfus, op. cit., p.101 et seq.
44. Dollfus, op. cit, p. 102.
45. See Menger, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, London, 1899, p.151, note.
46. See Henry George, Jr., The Life of Henry George, pp.330, 343 (referred to hereafter as The Life of Henry George), and Dollfus, op cit, p. 101.
47. For accounts of the German Bodenreform movement, see Dollfus, op. cit., pp. 101-08; Gutzeit, Die Bodenreform, Leipzig, 1907; articles in the special German number of the Single Tax Rev. (New York), Mar.-Apr., 1912, especially an article by W. Schrameier, Land Reform in Germany, Single Tax Rev., May-June and Jul.-Aug., 1912; and the files of Bodenreform, the organ of the Bodenreformers, published at Berlin.
    ... See also Flurscheim, Auf friedlichem Wege, 1884; Hertzka, Freiland, ein soziales Zukunftsbild, Leipzig, 1890; and Damaschke, Die Bodenrejorm, Berlin, 1902.
48. For an account of the German land increment taxes see Seligman, Essays in Taxation, New York, 1913, pp. 505-15. [49] See Brindley, History of Taxation in Iowa, vol. I, pp. 8, 24-29, and 370-73 for an account of this movement.
49. See Brindley, op. cit., pp.8 and 361, note 16.
50. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
51. Ibid., pp. 372, 373.
52. See The Edwin Burgess Letters on Taxation, first published in the Racine (Wis.) Advocate, 1859-60, reprinted by W. S. Buffham, Racine, Wis., n.d. The introductory note gives a brief account of the life of Burgess.
53. This letter was quoted in The Standard, Aug. 5, 1891, pp. 6-7.
54. Cf. note 53, supra. The arguments of "S.S." against Burgess's proposal are included in the reprint.
55. The Edwin Burgess Letters on Taxation, p.14.
56. Haig, The exemption of improvements from taxation in Canada and the United States, a report prepared for the Committee on Taxation of the City of New York, New York, 1915, pp. 170-71. This report gives a full account of Canada's experiments in special taxation of land. For accounts of Australasian experience with land taxes see the British Blue Book of 1909, Taxation of Land, etc. Papers bearing on land taxes and on income taxes, etc., in certain foreign countries, and on the working of taxation of site values in certain cities of the United States and in British colonies, together with extracts relative to land taxation and land valuation from reports of Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees. Cd. 4750. See also an account by Knibbs in The Financial Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901-10, Melbourne, 1911; and Seligman, Essays in Taxation, pp. 516-31.