FullReads

It will not do, my dear friend; you must think again on the Single Tax, even though, in doing so, you might make men suspect that you are not infallible. The sublimest act it will ever be given you to perform is to candidly confess to your grand and ever-growing constituency that you were mistaken in your estimate of the Single Taxers and their faith. “Government must compel each to pay toll in proportion the amount of wealth it has produced–and this is the only equitable law of taxation.” Just reflect for a moment what a monstrous conclusion flows from these premises. Labor applied to land produces all wealth. Landlordism as such produces nothing. Therefore labor should bear the whole burden of taxation, while landlordism and all other forms of monopoly should go scot free. The iniquity of our present system of taxation is that a portion of it is levied on land instead of being all levied on labor products, like the tariff! To be strictly just, we must quit taxing land and exact no royalty from owners of coal mines and oil wells! That your view?

“There is every indication that his cult has had its day and is rapidly going to join the many other isms, political and religious, that have been swallowed up like cast off clothes and other exuviae by the great mother of dead dogs.” This is fine, incontestably fine! Also forcible, impressibly forcible–with the force of a squirt of tobacco juice. If “the Single Tax party will not long survive its creator,” perhaps it is because it has not as much attraction for the great sovereign voter as the blessed protective tariff, which, to use your own fantastic expression, you should “cosset on your heaving brisket” for its splendid success as a survivor of its primogenitors. Look at the pinnacle of political success to which the McKinley bill has brought Bill McKinley (excuse the paltry little pun) and sound money (saving your presence) brought Grover Cleveland, and then contemplate the ignominy and obscurity has brought George and free silver has brought Bryan. Evidently George isn’t a mouse to McKinley, while Bryan is but a brindle pup compared to the great and only Grover. Yes, the “public concept of truth” makes it plain that protection is all right and Single Tax all wrong. “George is a reformer who can’t reform because he took issue with the wisdom of the world,” just like the man who said that the earth was round and that the sun didn’t go round it every twenty-four hours, contrary to what the wisdom of the world had long ago decided.

You are not mistaken in saying that “Mr. George was unable to keep one of these expounders of his doctrine (a S.T. paper) from running on the financial rocks.” It is a very logical deduction to draw from this fact that the teachings of the paper were worthless. Why should anybody teach what does not, in the teaching, promote his financial prosperity? See what fools Professors Bemis and Andrews have made of themselves. Because they did not have due regard for the “public concept of the truth” they are cashiered; and it serves them right, for the truth must be vindicated–if it pays. On the other hand, see what splendid financial successes the ICONOCLAST, the Galveston News and the so-called yellow journalism of New York all are. “Deserve, in order to command success,” the old copy-book headline used to say, from which it follows as mud does rain, that whatever succeeds deserves it, and whatever doesn’t, doesn’t. It doesn’t take much besides capital to succeed, however, “where the conditions for the propagation of empiricism are more favorable than ever before.” All you have to do is to propagate and expound the “public concept of truth” and let the truth itself alone. The Single Taxers respectfully solicit some more plain truths on the “Mumbojumboism of George.” THOMAS FLAVIN.