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revenue system. I do not think so. In the case of any successful monopoly, a certain portion of the winnings is due to administrative skill and effort, and is not the gift of society. Land value, on the other hand, is purely the creature of social deed and toil.

Professor Patten shows how a monopoly tax may also be utilized for the immensely important purpose of steadying retail prices, but brevity forbids more than a mention of such a possibility in this place.

Lastly, it is an old maxim of political science that a constitutional government must be kept poor, dependent, unable to get money except by the deliberate act of its constituents. The doctrine has history behind it and human nature beneath. A republic is no safer in this matter than a monarchy. Let its ruling powers have access to resources which are not voted to them, item by item, after debate and reflection, and liberty will soon be but a name.

Now, by the operation of the single tax in the form desired by Mr. George, government is provided with the most ample reve

nues in a dangerously silent, imperceptible, and automatic manner. The system once launched, the state waxes rich, sleeping or waking, as do landlords in growing cities. Increased revenue comes without debate or observation. No budget is presented or discussed. No general appropriation bill is put forward to be argued pro and con. Public assessors, incessantly but noiselessly at work, ascertain and register each rise in land value, while collectors at once, without ado, drain the additional rent into the public till. Of course, the individuals who have this year to pay more rent than last are aware of the difference and may complain. But such voices, being isolated, would be without volume or unity, and hence without effect. In certain localities rents would be falling at the same time, no one knowing how much. There could be no common consciousness of drain. Even exact publication of the state's financial condition could not beget this certainly not as it would do. if every dollar received had to be voted by the representatives of the people in the form

of a tax which men would feel. American financiering since our treasury surplus began is proof of this.

To sum up, desirable as it would be to fasten our chief tax upon land, we should not be beguiled by the seductive idea of simplicity into the exclusion of other kinds of impost, since that course would, among many things, (1) aggravate the wrong of all imperfect assessments, which are unavoidable, (2) produce a most inelastic revenue system, (3) cut us off from a much needed weapon for disciplining minatory and refractory businesses, and (4) gravely threaten free institutions.

CHAPTER XV

SOCIALISM AND THE FARMING INTEREST

IF

F I have any special qualification for discussing socialism it is that of sympathetic opposition. I was once as near being a disciple of Rodbertus as I could come without baptism into the church. I thought I saw in Rodbertian socialism, socialism scientifically wrought out and applied, a remedy for the most glaring of our social evils. In time and upon study, however, the system which had seemed to me so desirable grew to look quite otherwise, the difficulties connected with it assuming vaster and vaster proportions, until in my thought they towered above and outnumbered those necessarily bound up with the present order. I was thus converted to the opinion that society has greater hope of reform on the general basis of individualism than by flying to the unknown though

[graphic]

HON. VICTOR L. BERGER,

Member of Congress from the State of Wisconsin.

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