Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/775

Rh behalf of farmers, are (1) that farmers would be compelled to bear more than half the burden of all taxation under such a system; and (2) that the annual value of bare land in farming districts is never enough to pay even the cost of mere local government.

Every champion of the farmer asserts the truth of both of these propositions. Very little investigation is needed to prove that they cannot both be true, and that both of them are false.

1. As to the claim that the burden upon farmers would be increased, the census of 1890 shows that of the 17,000,000 adult males in the United States there were about 7,700,000 farmers and farm laborers, of whom only 3,100,000 owned any farms. The total value of their farms, including all improvements, was less than $9,000,000,000, out of a total taxable real estate value of $46,000,000,000. They, therefore, own less than one-fifth of the real-estate value, and very much less than one-sixth of the value of land, without improvements. Instead of paying half of the taxes under the single-tax method, as is pretended, farmers would not pay so much as one-sixth part of them. At present they pay more than twice as much.

2. It has been demonstrated that the annual value of land in the United States is sufficient to pay all taxes, of every kind, more than twice over. If, then, the farmers really did own more than half of this land value, the claim that out of this they would be unable to pay even their small local taxes out of land values becomes obviously absurd.

More than ten years have now passed since any attempt has been made to attack the soundness of the single-tax theory upon the basis of any general statistics. This has not been because the theory has been neglected and left free from attack. On the contrary, the flow of criticism has been abundant. But, without exception, recent criticisms have either been founded upon mere generalities, or have been supported by carefully selected statistics, from such localities as seemed to furnish the best material for the critics. The reason for this singular form of criticism is that rather more than ten years