Single Tax.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 107, 31 October 1894, Page 2

Single Tax.

♦ how to nationalise ground BENT. (Published by The Ground Rent Revenue Leaguo of New Zealand.) Review by X.P., Feilding. [Article No. 4.] On page eleven of the pamphlet it is stated : " Our plan would promote settlement." This is merely an 'opinion and not founded on clear and undisputed facts. My own opinion is that a man who took up land that had to pay ground rent to the State, such rent covering all the expenses of a growing country, would be a fool. Within the past few years land in Essex, England, that I am acquainted with, has been offered to anyone who will take it and keep it in cultivation for merely paying the rates on the same. No one would take the land, and it is now lying idle, ditches choked, fields . over-run with aquatic plants, hedges running riot, buildi ngs going fast to decay. See Essex papers, and you will find of cases like the one I allude to. On page eleven the writer or writers of the pamphlet state one fact which most people will endorse, viz., "It is a fact of universal experience that a tenant never cultivates or makes improvements as vigorously as an owner does," and yet these single taxers want to rob owners of their freeholds and make them tenants of the Crown. According to their own statement and beliefs the lands of the colony under Ground Rent tenants would soon become miserable untidy farms; and, being neglected by the tenants, would depreciate in value, and the State would soon become bankrupt. Really, Carlyle is certainly right. The world, i.e., Auckland City world, is made up of fools and knaves — mostly fools. Again, lower down on page eleven, the pamphlet says, "We seek to make it necessary that all should pay, year by year to the State, just as the many are now obliged to pay to the few, the equivalent value of the use of the natural and social opportunities which they personally enjoy." Then these Auckland City single taxers ought to be taxed far higher and heavier than settlers in the back country. These Aucklauders are supplied by the State with privileges and luxuries utterly unknown to the ordinary settler. The city moo get their letters delivered two or three times a day by a liveried State servant. They have a liveried State servant, the policeman, parading up and down the city guarding the inhabitants day and night. These city single taxers have the telegraph and telephone at their very doors — nay, even in their houses. These city single taxers most certainly do "personally enjoy many social opportunities " ; not bo with the poor back-woods settler, whom these single taxers would despoil. The settler has to ride for six months of the year through mud up to the horses hocks for his letters. He never sees a policeman, uulesa he visits the city; there is no such luxury as a telephone for him. But anything is good enough for a settler in the eyes of pampered, spoilt single taxers. Yes, let the settler be robbed of his freehold ; let him be a State tenant and pay all our taxes ; let him be a slave— nay, worse than a slave, for slaves are often treated kindly ; let him toil and moil from daylight to dark, from boyhood to old age, in order that we (single taxers) may get our beer, wine, whisky, tobacco, clothes, furniture, pianos, &c, duty free ! A settler who owns about a thousand acres of land, and who landed in New Zealand with only about a pound in his pocket, told me the other clay he would back any small shop in Lambton Quay, Wellington, against the best farm in the Manawatu district for making money, ' Just look at that,' says a single taxer who jumps at conclusions. ' This set. tier has acquired a thousand acres of land.' Yes, my friend, he has, but he earned the money in a shop in one of our cities. He is certainly not making money now on his land at the present price of stock. 2 The Wellington Post reports the oase of a Chinaman who appeared in a Court of Justice a while ago who has sent home to his father in China out of the profits of his business during the last five years the sum of .£2OOO. No farm of moderate size in New Zealand could havo done that. On p. 12 we find :— " In the method by which we propose to give them effect we have endeavoured to show the utmost consideration to existing owners of land." If 1 thought the writers knew what irony meant, I should have concluded they were speaking ironically. The famous Dick Turpin, when sticking up a coach on the King's Highway, was remarkable for his "consideration": ' Sorry to trouble you, but I must have your valuables.? In this case it is: •Sorry to trouble you, but we single taxers must have your land.! Again on p. 12 : " Rapidly as our views are spreading over the world." This 'our' must include Henry George, whose views have been rejected by his countrymen, and whose opinions have been refuted time after time. Settlers,, mark these words, 'rapidly spreading over the world.' (I will traverse Henry George's sophistical and impracticable theones later on). On p. 14, the pamphlet says:— 'The Colonial Treasurer would find his estimates of revenue exoeeded at once,' i.e., if the Single Tax were established. Surely none but children or idiots would believe a statement of this kind. Where are the statistics to prove it? The single taxers would only levy the ground rent on what is curiously called the 'unimproved value.' As I have said before laud is only worth a cerfcaiu number of years purchase on the aunual produce. Say a farm of 100 acres is valued at £600; and on it are house £800, orchard £100, fencing £150," shelter, trees £50, draining £50. Tp.tal improve* meuts £650. Unimproved value a minus sum of £50. This is by no means, an isolated or unlikely case. Owing, say, to the low price of stock or other causes the land would nqt fetoh at a sale more than £600, and yet the house, &q., could not be erected at a less cost than stated with labor at Is an hour. I speak from exact knowledge when I say that there are many hundreds of oases in this colony where far more money has been spent on improvements on land than the land is worth at the present time. P. 15 ; " Men who are not capitalists will be able to get secure possession of land." Yes, and a nice mess they would make of it. A man may start a business without capital by obtaining goods on credit, and by living on less than his profits derived from the sale of the goods may in time succeed iv establishing a good business, and becoming wealthy; but not so the penniless farmer. He cannot get stock on credit unless he can show he has means ; nor would he bo able to employ labour to plough the land or reap his crops. P. 17 : " The fact is that real iudiyidual freedom has never yet been tried.' 1 . Everyoue on the laqd under the Single Tax system would iv my opinion be a slave, at the mercy of some scheiniug demagogue wbo could manage to become dictator of the country. If my readers will turn to pages 18 and 28 of this precious pamphlet, they will see that on one page is advocated the free expansion of our towns so as to avoid overcrowding aud cm tho other page they advocate that all vacant lota iv towns should bo utilised for buildings. Quito contradict, ory. These singlo taxors must have soitemug of the brain. ' '