Leavenworth Labor News from Leavenworth, Kansas • 3

it not perfect the present imperfect 1 QUERY AND CRITICISM. Under this heading brief and pointed objections to the single tax, and questions regarding it, will be printed and answered. Headers are invited to send questions to the publisher of this paper. title? Does the collection of monthly rent destroy a lease, or does not this payment protect the lease? According to the Register, the anarchist can see no difference between the products of tho land which are produced by labor, and the land which is not produced by labor. Neither can tho Register; and it is perfectly natural that the anarchists and the Register should regard those that can recognize some difference as lunatics.

I trust that the Register will show this idiocy up in proper shape. If everybody is going crazy somebody ought to know it. An Old Soldier. taxes instead of 45 cents. If tho tax is not going to fall, tho do-mand for land in my neighborhood must remain tho same as at present.

Mr. Ward must explain how tho demand can remain unabated in the presence of a supply greater by far than tho necessity. I labor under the hallucination that ho will find this a difficult task. Tho rental value that will remain when no land is held idle by monopolists and speculators is what I choose to regard as economic rent. Certainly this is tho only rent that will exist after the adoption of the single tax, because there will be no land held idle then.

Whether or not Mr. Ward is willing to agree to this definition of economic rent, I do not un-uerstand how he can fail to agree that this will be the only rent ex-isting after the adoption of the single tax. In his writings for the reform press, Mr. Ward expresses tho opinion that rent will d.appear when non-occupying landlordism is abolished. As Mr.

TCinl inn- in intellectual darkness? Certainly our Republican friends will not stultify themselves by asserting such a preposterous proposition. Is ho some malignant enemy of his race, or some boodthirsty revolu-tionists or anarchist who is socking to turn the world upsido down all at once, and regardless of con-sequences, inciting his followers to acts of lawlessness and violence? Docs any one stand ready to thus accuse? But, if ho is not to be accused or convicted of these capital crimes, may I bo permitted to change the form of my question and ask whether ho be guilty of offenses of a lesser grade? In his discussion of economic, social and political problems, docs he employ unjustifiable or vituperative Ian-guage and outrageous illustrations? Has he anywhere in all hh writings violated good manners or transgressed the recognized limits of a strict propriety? Ah, Mr. Chairman, this man is not vulnerable along any of these lines. He is not weak in any of lots. The single tax would simply wipe out this speculative margin.

People who want land would bo willing to pay just as much for it under a single tax regime, as under the present system, and the rental value will be one-twentieth of, the price individuals are now willing to pay for land. I submit the proposition that I have demolished Mr. Pepoon's argument, and proved that the single tax unlimited would be $25 instead of 45 cents. As to the assertion that $25 "is certainly less by far than the tariff taxes on the consumption of his family of six persons," I must say that I am hardly prepared to admit that either. Mr.

Pepoon's earnings, at $2.50 a day, if he works 300 days in the '''car, are $750 annually. It is not at all likely, being a mechanic, that he works 300 days in a year. He pays, probably, $50 annual inter-est upon the mortgage he incidentally mentions, and two-thirds of his income is expended for articles of consumption upon the prices of which the tariff has no influence, so that I cannot believe that he pays anything nearly as much as $200, "director indirect taxes per year." Geo. C. Wa lid.

Kansas City, Mo. ANOTHER FREE TRADER. On the 15th of June the House of Bepresentatives at Washington had under consideration tho question of reducing the duty on tin plate, when the Hon. Frederick E. White, a Democratic member from Iowa, said: This tariff question is hoary with age and remarkable as a says, "that is another story." I shall discuss that question hereafter.

But if rent will disappear with the lisappearance of non-occupying landlordism, then rent will disappear with the adoption of the single tax. Let's try it and see! P. P. To the Editor: I have been very much interested in perusing the able and courteous letter in the News, offered, as a reply by Mr. Percy Pepoon, to iny communication which appeared in the same issue.

I sin-cerely trust that Mr. Pepoon may eee a copy of the article I wrote for my Alliance page, (a copy of which I sent you), in order that he may understand just where I stand. I shall only intrude, upon your space, at this time, to take square issue with Mr. Pepoon in regard to certain statements in his communication. In the first place Mr.

Pepoon, in speaking of the miles of unused and unoccupied lots, intervening between his $500 lot and the thickly settled portions of the city, and in picturing what would take place, were the single tax, unlimited, put in force, says: "The vast expanse of vacant lots between his house and the business center are now taxed to their full rental value. No speculator will hold one of them any longer. There is room upon those vacant lots to build four cities as large as this. All vacant lots being thrown open to use, there is no longer any demand for lots in his neighborhood for building purposes, and the rental value drops to that of farm land, about $50 per acre capitalized. Levying the full current rate of interest upon the writer's sixth of an acre makes his taxes about 45 cents per annum total instead of the total direct and indirtct tax of at least $200 per year that he now pays." Mr.

Pepoon is laboring under a strange hallucination, or misapprehension, which seems to be the case with all Single Taxers. The "vast expanse of vacant lots" Mr. Pepoon speaks of, is all for sale at some price, and that price is its speculative value. Its capitalized rental value is -the price that individuals are willing to pay for it. Now, as Mr.

Pepoon paid, or at least, can sell his lot for $500, which is at the rate of $3,000 an acre, the acre adjoining his on the side nearest the city is worth, that is, would sell for $6,000, and as the distance is covered going towards the city, each successive adjoining acre is worth more and more, until at last it arrives at the value, or selling price of the inside, thickly settled portions of the city. Or to put it in another shape: As a rule, rental value, or rent, is more than the current rate of interest upon the selling value of land, but Mr. Thos. G. Shearman takes 5 per cent of the selling value as the rental value, in making arguments for the single tax and we will use that rate in our statement of the case, although it should bo much more; 1st, because interest is 7 or 8 per cent in St.

Louis; 2nd, because 20 years is rather a long term to use as capitalization in this new country. Now if Mr. Pepoon's lot will Bell for $500, the rental value is $25, while as it must undoubtedly be the fact that Mr. Pepoon went out and out and out until he found one-sixth of an acre he could buy for $500, and that he was willing these particulars. I will tell you what it is that hurts the Republican leaders.

It is coming to be gradually but surely understood, not alone by what were once his immediate followers, but by all classes of our people, a large section of the Republican" party included, that this man Henry George is one of the most remarkable men the present century has produced. A humanitarian, a philosopher, a large-hearted and noble-minded patriot, a true lover of his kind, an original, a bold and successful investigator. A man, sir, equipped with an intellect of which any age may be proud, and who is industrious beyond all belief. It is logician and philosopher who is succeeding better than any of our day in laying bare to the gaze of tho world the wretched philosophy which has vitalized and characterized the commercial policy which for thirty years the Republican party has fastened upon an unwilling and protesting people. It is the resistless current of this writer's1 logic, his unanswerable reasoning, and the indestructibility of his con-elusions which are dreaded and sought to be suppressed by the Republican party.

The sum total of his offending is that ho is seeking to supplant with a better philosophy, a nobler creed and a more generous gospel the wretched ideas and antiquated methods indorsed by Republican platforms and enacted into law by the Republican party; methods and ideas the pedi-gress of which reach back into the feudal ages, to the barbarous epochs in the history or our race. Now, Mr. Chairman, I do not believe that a protective tariff could be maintained in this country for twenty -four hours if it were not for two delusions. Tho first of these delusions is that it makes things cheap, and the second is that it protects labor. I say that it does neither.

ANSWER. The main question at issue is, will the rental value of lots remain practically the same as at present, when the speculators who hold three-fourths of the lots vacant have been taxed until they lot go of them? Prices are fixed by supply and demand. If the single tax is applied, the population remaining the same the demand for land will remain the same; but the supply of land, within the city limits, will be increased four -fold. Obviously the result will be a tremendous drop in ground-rent. My taxes, the first year, will, of course, be $25.

But the second year they will be 45 cents. Because, there lies, between my lot and the business center, more vacant land than three cities as large as this could use. Corn fields occupy the geographical center of St. Louis, because people are absolutely excluded by speculators who know that the increase in the value of the land will enrich their children. When we take the whole value of these lots annually, through taxation, there is no longer any possibility of profit from holding land idle.

No one will want it for that purpose. No one can afford to hold it idle if he does want to. In short, there ceases to be any demand for land except for use. There is now 45 square miles of land inside the corporate limits of St. Louis that is unused.

There is now an active demand and a brisk sale for all of it, but, as a rule, speculators buy it and speculators sell it. For use, there is no present demand for five square miles of it. When, under the single tax, not a foot will be held except for actual use, it is clear that there will be miles upon miles of lots between my lot and the city hall for which there will be no demand, except for farming and gardening. It is thus certain that my lot and the lots of all other mechanics, will be outside the margin of the demand for building purposes, where land will rent for about $2.50 per acre per year, for farming purposes. Therefore, my sixth of an acre will be taxed about 45 cents per year, after the first year; and corresponding reductions would be made in the rental value of the more valuable lots nearer the center.

I submit that Mr. Ward has made no argument that weakens my position. He has simply made an assertion, unsupported theme of discussion. In this coun-try it is over a century old. It is older than tho Constitution, and had been almost continuously the subject of exciting and sometimes acrimonious debate.

It is perfectly safe to assert that it will continue so to be until wre cease to use it for the questio nable purpose of public taxation, as well as for the disreputable purpose of booming private enterprises. We shall never be able to agree how much or how little tariff ought to be levied, how high or how low the per cent, ought to be, what business should be discriminated against, and what business in favor of. In tho very nature of the case there must always be a pro-jongkl and bitter contest each time a general tariff bill is formulated over the inevitable question as to which interest is to be let in on the ground floor, and which is to be left out in tho cold. Some weeks ago when we were discussing tho free-wool bill, as you all remember, five of our Democratic colleagues combined, and, by what our Republican friends call a clever trick, inserted in the Record all the chapters of Henry George's book (entitled 'Protec-or Free relating to the tariff question. Our friend from Kansas (Mr.

Simpson) took care of those chapters treating of the question of the single tax. A motion was made on the Republican side of tho House to expunge from the Record this literature. This motion was promptly tabled. Our genial friend from Michigan (Mr. Burrows) had made this motion and took the occasion as the spokesman of his party to to deliver himself of an opinion which, if true, would certainly be of momentous importance.

As the leader at the time of tho Republican minority de deliberately declared that the action of the House in refusing to expunge from the Record Henry George's book irrevocably committed the Democratic party to the doctrines of absolute free trade. Well, now, if this were true, I am willing to admit right here in the presence of you all that I should not allow it to disturb me very much. I should not permit myself to go into any hysterical fits over the matter. (Applause and laughter on the Democratic side). The troubles with his (Mr.

Burrows' declaration is that it is not true. Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to ask, if I may be permitted to do so, who is this man Henry George, against whose breast the Republican party has levcJed its savage-looking lance? Is he some noted ignoramus whose overshadowing ignorance threatens to engulph us A SOLDIER TALKS. From the Dos Moinca Leader: Editob Leader: You have probably noticed the following output of some gigantic intellect as it appeared in the Sunday Morning Register: "The French anarchists apply the anti-land ownership policy to everything that is produced on land, and the argument is equally as reasonable that no man has the right to own the product of land as the Henry George idiocy that he has no right to own the land, the pettifogger of the Des Moines Leader and W. Edwin Brokaw have not dared to extend the Henry George anti-land ownership lunacy to the products of the land, but it would be no more unjust to product owners than to land owners." Being myself one of these "anti-land ownership Henry George lunatics," I beg of that enterprising journal, the Register, that it assist me out of this terrible condition by answering a few questions.

It is perfectly proper that lunatics should ask questions, and it ia for wise men to answer them. First Is not tho "product of land" generally produced by la-bor? Is land, or land value or any portion of the same produced by human hands? If so, give an ex. ample. Second The farmer has a bushel of corn that he produced by labor, and Mr. Clarkson has a tract of land.

Did tho latter person create this land, or any of its value? Did Mr. Clarkson buy this laud from any one who produced it? or from any one who had bought it from any one who had produced it? Third If no human being ere. ated land, who did; and for whom was it created? Fourth Did not our land titles and the titles to the slave come from the same source discovery and conquest and is not the Register's argument perfectly in keeping with the argument of the slave holder? Fifth Take a given parcel of land for example. Will the Register kindly suggest some proof, or argument, showing by right (not legislation) that one person has a better title than another to this parcel of land? Sixth How will the single tax destroy ownership of land? Will to pay $500 for, it certainly must be the case every acre between his lot and the city is worth, at the least, $3,000 because every one would be willing to pay as much for an acre between Mr. Pepoon's lot and the city as they would be willing to pay for Mr.

Pepoon's lot. The trouble with Mr. Pepoon is that he misapprehends what is really "speculative value." Ileal value is what any one will pay for a tract of land. Speculative value is the margin between what any one is willing to pay, and what the landowner asks for it. The land between Mr.

Pepoon's lot and the city is worth, or will sell for at least, $3,000 an acre, because Mr. Pepoon's lot will sell at that rate. The reason the "vast expanse of vacant lots" does not sell is because the land owners ask more than those who want land aro willing to pay. The difference between them is the specu-lative value, or rather the speculative margin in the price of the THOMAS CARLYLE'S WORDS. Among the many telling and oft quoted words of Thomas Carlyle about work and workers, aro the followiug: "A man willing to work and unable to find work is, perhaps, the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under sun he might be put on a level with the four-footed workers of the planet, which is his! There is not a horse willing to work but can get his food and shelter in requital; a thing this two footed worker has to seek for, to solicit occasionally in vain.

And yet it is currently reported that the two-footed worker has an immortal soul within by any logic. He must demon strate one or two things before he can establish his position that the average mechanic who owns his home will pay $25 per year in.