Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/767

 THE SINGLE TAX: WHAT AND WHY 747

foremost, among those land values which are subject to the single tax.

The single-tax theory, therefore, proposes to lay all taxa- tion upon the value of the privilege of using land, for any and all purposes, including not merely nor mainly the use of land for farms, but, to a vastly greater extent, the use of land for building purposes in villages, towns, and cities ; the use of land for mines and quarries, for railroads, telegraphs, telephones, gas-pipes, water-pipes, electric wires, and any and every other conceivable use to which land can be put. It demands the aboli- tion of all taxes upon earnings, food, furniture, clothing, mer- chandise, money, buildings ; the rails, rolling stock, and depots of railroad companies; the wires, poles, and other articles used for telegraphs ; in short, upon anything whatever produced by man. In the case of farms, the single tax would abolish all taxation upon growing crops, planted trees, drains, fences, and structures of any kind, and would not even tax that increased value which is given to land by ploughing, sub-soiling, or otherwise improv- ing it.

This is the single tax. It may be summed up in three sen- tences : Tax twthing made by man. Tax everything not made by man. Collect all public revenue out of, and in exact proportion to, the revenue which some men collect from other mefi, for permission to use that which no man tnade.

This is all that is necessarily implied in the single tax. But some of its advocates believe in what is called the single tax, limited, and others in what is called the single tax, unlimited. The former class believe that the state should take no more out of the annual rent of land than is required for the just and proper administration of government, year by year. The latter class believe that government should take just as much of the annual rent of land as it can possibly collect, without regard to the necessities of the state, and that it should devise some method of using, for the benefit of the people at large, the revenue thus taken.

The claim that the single tax should not be limited to the necessities of public revenue rests upon an argument which it is