Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/773

 THE SINGLE TAX : WHAT AND WHY 753

ingly, rent is higher where these advantages are greatest than it is anywhere else. Fertility of soil, health of climate, bright- ness of sky, salubrity of air, and all other natural blessings put together will not compare, in rent-producing power, with a situation in the midst of a vast, well-organized and well-ordered community. A fragment of rock or a hole filled up with refuse in the middle of New York city is worth more than io,000 fer- tile acres of the best rural land.

The landlord, therefore, collects from his tenants the full market value of all the advantages of society and government. Is it not a matter of simple justice that, having received the price of these blessings, he should pay for their cost ? Having received the price, ought he not, in justice, to deliver the goods ?

All other taxation than that upon the value of land is double taxation. The landlord, by force of natural competition, collects from his tenants the highest price which any human beings are willing to pay for the privilege of living in the society and under the government of that particular location. To tax the tenants over again, for what it costs to maintain that government, is sim- ple robbery, under the forms of law. They have already paid, under the operation of that law, both natural and artificial, which compels them to pay the full value of those privileges to their landlord, all that they ought to pay; and it is no better than legalized swindling to charge them for these advantages a second time.

It is because of their persistent ignoring of these considera- tions that nearly all writers on the subject of taxation are com- pelled to abandon the old and perfectly just theory that taxation should be levied according to benefits received by the taxpay- ers. There is no system of taxation, other than the tax upon ground rent, under which it is possible to apportion taxation according to benefits. But under that system it is not merely possible to do so ; it is impossible to do anything else. Each landlord collects from each tenant a sum, exactly proportioned to the relative benefit which that tenant receives from his particular situation. A tax, and an exclusive tax, upon ground