Socialism vs. Single Tax A Verbatim Report of a Debate held at Twelfth Street Turner Hall, Chicago, December 20th, 1903 PDF version of original pamphlet

Published by CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY (Co-Operative) 56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago For Socialism Ernest Untermann

Seymour Stedman

A. M. Simons For Single Tax Louis F. Post

Henry H. Hardinge

John Z. White With Portraits of Karl Marx, Henry George, and the Six Debaters (in the original)

The Chairman (Hon. Frank W. Jones, ex-Senator of Massachusetts): Ladies and gentlemen - It is entirely unexpected to me to have the honor and the pleasure of presiding at this debate today. I came over as a spectator because I saw in a newspaper an announcement that you were to discuss the question of Socialism and the Single Tax. We have six speakers and these speakers are to be allowed thirty minutes each. The affirmative will be by the Socialist speaker and he will be controverted in a thirty-minute argument by the Single Tax speaker, and the Socialist will have ten extra minutes at the close of the series of thirty-minute addresses in which to close the debate, and we propose to keep closely to the time. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you the first speaker in the affirmative, Mr. Untermann, who represents the Socialist side.

Ernest Untermann:

The subject of this debate is formulated in the following resolutions: "Resolved, That it is to the interest of the working class to take up the propaganda of Socialism rather than that of the Single Tax."



Mr. Dinkelspiel, the funny philosopher of Hearst's Chicago American, stated one of his great half truths when he said : "It is easy to be a philosopher; all you have to do is to think of something that somebody else said and then sit down and say something different." We Socialists say something different from the Single Taxers, but we gladly waive our claim to be included among Mr. Dinkelspiel's philosophers. The Single Taxers, on the other hand, can not lay any claim to be included among the distinguished Dinkelspielers, because they have never said anything else, anything different, about land reform ever since Moses, the first land reformer, laid down the rules for his followers. Numerous Single Tax ideas are found in the Old Testament, and the same Old Testament also shows that land is not the only means of exploitation. For there was free land galore in Jacob's time, yet he worked fourteen years for Laban in order to get what the people of that time considered as means of production, two wives.



In spite of the numerous stringent rules which forbade land speculation during the time following the patriarchal age, nevertheless the great mass of the Jews and of all ancient nations believing in the principle of private ownership of the means of production were very nearly landless. Periodical redistribution of land was then resorted to as a means of relieving the conditions, yet no matter how often it was tried it always proved futile. To demonstrate this let me mention a few conspicuous examples:



In 594 B. C. Solon of Athens forbade mortgages on farms and landed property. He fixed a maximum allowance of land ownership, and thus he freed the farmers by giving them land, and yet he lived to see these same farmers whom he freed again landless, and during the time of the Tyrants the great mass of the Athenian people were again without land.



Rome started with common ownership of land, took up private ownership, tried various schemes for freeing the land and ended in the morass of immense latifundian estates tilled by slave labor.



The early Christian Church denounced speculation and monopoly of land, yet that did not prevent the Catholic Church from becoming the great feudal lord of the middle ages.



The Reformation armed the peasants of middle Europe against the feudal lords, yet the freed peasants very soon groaned under the load of mortgage and tenantry.



From William the Conqueror to Wat Tyler, from Wat Tyler to Cromwell, from Cromwell to the Chartist movement, from the Chartist movement to the Irish League - these are some of the stages in the attempt to free the land, for the English people, and they have not got it yet.



The French revolution freed the peasants by giving them land, only to rob them of their rights of common and their secular rights; to load them with a burden of taxation, to deliver them into the hands of land sharks and money sharks, and to force them to compete with their primitive tools against the great landlords and their mighty machines.



The United States gave away millions of acres to settlers, with practically no compensation, and yet today of 15,963,965 private families as many as 11,236,423, live in mortgaged or rented homes.



In Russia when it was found that after the freeing of the serfs from feudal rule so many peasants had become landless that there was considerable falling off in taxation, the czar resorted to the measure of declaring the land common property, making the commune liable for the debts of its members, and apportioning out to these members land in order that they might all have an equal opportunity - to pay taxes. When these peasants showed their ingratitude at being so freed and revolted, they very soon found themselves face to face with "freedom" in the shape of the knouts and the swords of the Cossacks. The ungrateful rebels were whipped publicly and sent to the mines of Siberia. In the United States the capitalists do not yet send us to Alaska when we rebel against their freedom. They may do that by and by, when, in accordance with Senator Spooner's suggestion, the President of the United States will be elected for a term of twenty years, and when the Dick military bill will have turned this country into a military despotism. As yet the capitalists are satisfied with sending us to the free land in the free bull pen (laughter), when we refuse to yield them profits. (Applause.)



There in the bull pen we will have plenty of leisure to consider the advantages of free competition with scabs and of the freedom that is thrust upon us at the point of the bayonet. The Single Taxers want to give us free land instead of the bull pen, so that we may live at the lowest margin of subsistence and pay to the capitalist government, as does the Russian peasant, all that we produce above that margin. And if then we rebel against that capitalist government the same as the Russian peasants, we will go back from the free land to the free bull pen. (Laughter.) It may be necessary for some of our Single Tax friends to go through some such experience in order to find out that capitalist oppression under the Single Tax is little, if any, different from capitalist oppression under capitalism. (Applause.) These short hints may suffice to demonstrate to you that there are more things between human freedom and free land than are dreamed of in the Single Tax philosophy.



If in spite of thousands of years of earnest effort to free the land, you still leave millions of the oppressed landless, there must be some fundamental mistake which all forms of land reform have overlooked. Now I do not claim that because those reforms failed to accomplish what they were designed to accomplish the Single Tax for that reason will also fail to accomplish that now, but I have a right to ask: What was it that made all those land reforms futile, and does the Single Tax now go to the bottom of the matter? If we put the question in this way we at once come to the parting of the ways between the Single Tax and Socialism.



Before the modern Single Taxer ever thought of the Single Tax the Socialist had already analyzed it and rejected it as absolutely inadequate. The early sessions of the International Workingmen's Association had taken it up and dropped it. As early as July 21 and 22, 1872, the English branch of the International Workingmen's Association met at Nottingham, England, and at that congress the Single Tax idea, coupled with money reform, a kind of cross between the Single Tax and Populism, was already used to combat the Socialist program, the Socialization of land and all the means of production and distribution.



As early as 1853, Lassalle, the Socialist leader in Germany at that time, writing to Marx about Ricardo's theory of ground rent, said that he regarded it as the "Most eminent communist feat." And in 1863, in writing to Rodbertus, a German economist, he referred to the idea of abolishing ground rent by levying a tax on it, and asked: "How can that be done? Very simple; simply by levying a tax which will leave free the land of the lower classes, but tax all the margin of cultivation out of the land of the higher classes." Yet Lassalle never indulged in any illusions as to the efficacy of that Single Tax idea for the emancipation of the working class. In the first place, he knew that it would not be applicable, and could not be enacted in his time. In the second place, he recognized that this very Ricardian theory of ground rent was based on the distinction that the poorest land, while it might not yield any ground rent, still might yield enormous profits on capital. In other words, he saw plainly that the abolition of the landlords would not abolish the industrial capitalist, hence would not abolish capital and relieve wage labor.



But the world rolled on, and suffering humanity patiently waited for the Moses that was to lead it out of the capitalist Egypt. And in 1880 a new star appeared on the horizon with the once brand new idea of freeing the land by levying a single tax on it. That star was Henry George. (Applause.) He unreservedly accepted the Ricardian theory of ground rent, and he fell so in love with it that he built on it his Single Tax scheme which he magnified into a beautiful philosophy that would bring down justice and emancipation from the clouds. He entirely overlooked the fact that today the agricultural classes are no longer the essential element in production, but that the essential element today is the great capitalist class with its modern machine production and its great army of dependent wage workers. (Applause.)



But thirty-two years before Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" was written, and fifteen years before Lassalle wrote that letter to Rodbertus, a twin star had arisen in the proletarian firmament - Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. (Applause.)



They did not regard the Ricardian theory of ground rent as the "most eminent Communist feat." Much less did they magnify it into a fundament for a new world philosophy. They recognized that the Ricardian theory of ground rent dealt simply with a phenomenon which was in no way calculated to offer a solution of the social problem. They recognized that it was merely a symptom that pointed to a deeper cause. And investigating that cause, they found the key which opened all the secrets of capitalist production and history: The Economic Interpretation of History.



In 1848 Marx and Engels expressed the greatest historical truth when they said that "The history of all societies based on private property is the history of class struggles." And when Marx in his introduction to his "Critique of Political Economy" said: "The economic forces of production form the fundament on which are built up human laws and from which arise all political, religious and moral ideas," he took politics, law, religion and ethics down from the clouds and placed them on a scientific foundation that has not been shaken since. All the leading economists of the world, capitalist and all, today use the Marxian method of investigation, although they very seldom give him credit for it. (Applause)



The Marxian Conception of History clearly shows that great historical changes are not brought about by the magnificent personalities of certain great and inspired men. It shows that great historical changes flow from changes in the economic basis and that political phenomena are determined by those changes in the economic basis; that the thoughts of men are reactions caused by natural and social environment, in the same way that chemical changes in the stomach suggest the thought that the individual must eat.



Summed up, the Socialist philosophy says in so many words that the economic foundation of society determines the form of human thought and activity; that a society based on production for private profit consists of classes with antagonistic interests. Such society is subject to certain laws. In following those laws, economic antagonisms are gradually intensified by the concentration of wealth and the means of production in the hands of great capitalists and the creation of a large body of dependent workers who have no other means of existence but the sale of their manual or intellectual labor power to the owners of the means of production. One class after another rises through changes in the economic system, becomes politically supreme, and uses its political power for the maintenance of its rule against all other classes.



Today in the present capitalist system we distinguish three great economic categories : Above is the great capitalist class, the owners of the great machinery of production. At the bottom of society, the great mass of the wage working class, the dependent proletarians. In between them there is a so-called middle class, which is partly proletarian and partly capitalist in character. So far as, with the minority of that middle class, their capitalist interests prevail over their proletarian interests, to that extent they belong as parasites in the capitalist class. But the great mass of the middle class today is practically reduced to the level of the proletarian wage workers, and their economic and political interests are on the side of the wage workers. Between the great capitalist class and the working class there gradually arises a struggle for the conquest of the political powers. Owing to the disappearance of the capitalist class as an essential factor in production, that struggle will end in the conquest of the political power by the working class. The victory of the working class will abolish all classes and all class antagonisms, because there is no lower class below the working class whom they might subjugate. The historical force, the historical party, that will bring about the victory of the working class is the International Socialist Party. It is international because exploitation is world wide and cannot be abolished in any single country separately. Therefore the workers of the world must unite to abolish exploitation all over the world. (Applause.)



I hope I shall not hear the hackneyed and irrelevant objection that I am preaching class hatred. The enunciation of the doctrine of the class struggle is no more an appeal to class hatred than the enunciation of the doctrine of the struggle for existence by Darwin was an appeal to species hatred. When I say to a man: "A leech is sucking your blood," I am not telling him to hate that leech. He will hate it anyway and get rid of it. And when I say to the working class : "The capitalists are parasites who are sucking your blood," I am not telling them to hate those parasites. They hated them before I told them. I am simply telling them not to vote either for the capitalist parasites or for those parasites of parasites, the capitalist politicians. I am advising the working class to unite politically against the capitalist class and to abolish all class antagonisms and causes for class hatred by voting for the party of their class, the Socialist Party. (Applause.)



Equipped with the Marxian philosophy of history, we are at once enabled to point out why former reforms were futile and failed, and why the Single Tax is inadequate to meet the present problem. First of all, we say, then, that whoever wants to alleviate the suffering of humanity must have a comprehensive grasp on the history of humanity. He must also take into account the economic classes. He must furthermore recognize that the moving force of history is not sentimentalism but definite, hard and cruel material laws by which the great mass of humanity is swayed. (Applause.)



A hasty glance at the history of ground rent suffices to show that ground rent has gone through many different phases and forms, and therefore the Ricardian theory of ground rent is not applicable indiscriminately to any and all historical periods. If I had time I could easily show that it falls far short of meeting the problem, if applied to the present time. Before the Single Taxer therefore can apply his philosophy he must first of all know that the particular form of ground rent which he wishes to abolish is the product of a definite historical period. What does he mean by ground rent, and what does he mean by land values that he wants to tax? Does he mean the land values that arise simply out of the speculative increase of land price? Does he mean the land values that arise out of improvements put into the soil? Does he mean land values that change with the various crops that you put into the soil? I hope the gentleman on the other side will not fail to answer these questions, because it is important that we should know. Or do they mean that, together with those speculative and agricultural land values, they will also take what is produced on the land by the aid of capital? In the first three cases I can show that the Single Tax will fail to accomplish what the Single Taxers claim for it, and in the fourth case the Single Tax would not be the Single Tax. (Applause.)



In regard to the first three forms of ground rent, I may say in general that this is not the essential form of exploitation at all. The essential (form of exploitation is today carried on in giant industries which are organized for the exploitation of wage labor. (Applause). How it is that capitalist exploitation exceeds the exploitation through land may be shown by this simple example which I shall illustrate by round figures. In ~goo the total value of industrial products amounted to about twelve billion dollars. The wage workers employed in those industries received in wages two billion dollars, leaving ten billion dollars in the hands of the exploiters. In rent those wage workers paid from their two billion dollars one billion dollars to the landlords. The wage workers could have afforded much better to lose that one billion dollars of rent than to lose that ten billion dollars of profit. (Applause.) Now, do not accuse me of being unjust to the poor capitalist because I am not counting what he pays out for raw materials and incidental expenses, because in that case I am going to show you by statistical figures that at no time in the history of the United States did the capitalists have enough money to pay the wages and pay for the raw material in one single year, let alone pay profits or dividends.



A tax on speculative land values, on the other hand, does not touch the grand industrial combinations. The steel trust, the oil trust, the egg trust, the fruit trust, the packing trust, all these great trusts own practically no land capital compared with the value of their industrial capital. (Applause).



Census Bulletin No. 122, dated December 30, 1901, enumerates 183 industrial combinations whose total capital amounted to $1,432,804,920. The total land capital of those combinations amounted to only $152,266,753, or one-ninth of the total capital used for exploitation. Tax every cent of land value out of their hands and they would still have eight-ninths left to continue exploitation. Nor would they pay that tax if it were imposed on them, for having in their control all the production and distribution they would shift the Single Tax in the form of prices to the shoulders of the consumer. (Applause.) We Socialists say that the Single Tax is simply a fiscal measure urged with great zeal by the Single Taxers for the purpose of taxing themselves, and they have the nerve to come before the working class and ask them to help them in such a suicidal policy. (Applause.)



The Single Taxers claim that the capitalists could not continue exploitation after the Single Tax was instituted, because the workers would flock in droves to the free land. Perhaps they would, if they believed the Single Taxers. But pause and consider. If you leave these great industries and go out on the free land with bare fists to produce, you will throw humanity back into the primitive stage of production and rob it of thousands of years of evolutionary effort by leaving these great machines, your product, in the hands of the exploiters. (A voice, "That's right.") If these machines cannot be used, then you must return to the primitive stage of production, without the hardihood of the primitive savage. (Applause.)



And how would the great mass of people in the United States, the most numerous class - the small peasantry - be benefited by the Single Tax? If the Single Tax is a tax on improvements also, then it is simply a tax which puts a premium on depreciation and decreased production, because no one will care to put any improvement on the land when the whole margin of cultivation is taxed out of him. So the Single Tax, as far as the small farmers are concerned, means simply an increase of taxation for them, and I recall that Henry George claims himself that they would have to pay more tax. It is true he claims that there would be many benefits they would get from the Single Tax, but I have shown you that instead of being benefited they would be exploited still more. To rush to the country is to give up the amenities and productive advantages of association. In that case many workers would prefer to work for wages rather than to starve on free land.



Under the Single Tax the farming class in the United States would be transformed simply into tenants of a capitalist government. We want to oust the capitalist government, and in order to oust that capitalist government we need a political party of the workers. But the Single Taxers do not believe in a separate political party for the working class, but they have a very peculiar affinity for the democratic donkey who uses his political power to crush labor when it strikes for higher wages.



The capitalist system will fall in obedience to the great economic and political laws to which it is subject, but above its ruins will tower the giant statue of labor, that true God of Liberty who will dethrone that lying prostitute of the dollar almighty, the capitalist Goddess of Liberty. (Applause.) The victory of the working class will not only free the men, but also the better half of humanity, the women. (Applause.) Socialism will write a new Declaration of Independence which will read: "All men and women are born equal and have an equal right to life, liberty and happiness."



The Chairman:



You have listened to a most scholarly presentation of the Socialist question by our friend Mr. Untermann, which has given us great intellectual pleasure and profit. We have with us to open the debate on the side of the Single Tax one of the most eloquent and able advocates of that question in the United States, and it gives me pleasure to present to you Mr. Louis F. Post. (Applause.)



Louis F. Post



Ladies and Gentlemen - I am going to move to strike out of the record those complimentary remarks of the chairman,



The Chairman: The motion is not in order. (Laughter.)



Mr. Post:



I make the motion now, because maybe the audience will want to make it when I am through. (Laughter.)



Now, ladies and gentlemen, this question, correctly read by my adversary who opened on the other side, invites us to consider if it is to the interest of the working classes to take up the propaganda of Socialism in preference to that of the Single Tax. Well, if we should ask confirmed Socialists whether it is to the interest of the working classes to take up Socialism instead of the Single Tax, of course they would say yes. If we should ask confirmed Single Taxers if it is to the interest of the working classes to take up Socialism instead of the Single Tax, of course they would say no. So there is absolutely no use in our debating this question before Socialists and Single Taxers. They have made up their minds. The men and women we must address are the working classes. Do they consider it to their best interest to take up Socialism in preference to the Single Tax? Unless we can convince them, our debate either way is of no great moment. It is only as what we say may go out to and influence the working classes that it can be of any real benefit.



Now, the working classes, as my friend has already stated, do not include merely the men and women who work for hired wages, who work as hired men or hired women; but a very large proportion, as he says, of the middle class also really belong to the working classes, because their interests are the same as the interests of the working classes. To that extent, of course, we agree. So we are addressing a great mass of people, some of whom are in what we call distinctively the working class, and others of whom are in the middle class, but all of whom really belong in the working class. All of them have identical interests so far as the interests of labor are concerned. It is the interests of labor against the interests of exploiters of labor - that is the real question that we confront. (A voice, "Hear, hear.")



My friend observes that it is rather nervy on the part of the Single Taxers to propose the Single Tax philosophy to the working classes as a remedy for their condition. It may be, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know, I would rather leave that to the working classes to decide than to my good friends who represent the Socialist side of this question. But if that is nervy, if it is nervy for Single Tax men to propose their remedy to the working classes, what shall we say of the nerve of my good friend who comes upon this platform and tries to convince the working classes that figures which are cooked up in the figure-cooking factory at Washington are worthy to be presented anywhere to an intelligent audience? (Applause.) I am not going to waste any time in discussing figures purporting to show certain facts. Figures are not enough in themselves; you must mix common sense with them. Even if those figures about twelve billions and two billions were true, that there were twelve billion dollars' worth of product and two billion dollars of it paid as wages to labor, the question arises, What labor? Hired manual labor alone. That is the only kind that is meant. What about self-employed laborers? What about the labor of the self-employed American farmer, of which there is no record at all? Those other figures, the ten billion balance, how far do they go to compensate men who are not hired workers? We are not told by the figure-cooking factory at Washington. The figures are utterly unreliable to begin with, as a matter of fact; and if they were true, my friend's application of them has no bearing and really no value with reference to this discussion.



Now, I say it is the working classes that we must address on either side - the working classes that are not yet convinced either that Socialism or Single Tax is what they want. This is an important question. It is a vitally important question to you, my friends of the working class, because the time is rapidly coming when labor strikes will cease to be effective. They have almost ceased to be effective now. (Applause.) There is only one place where labor can strike and strike effectively, and I think my friend will agree with me that that place is at the ballot box. (Applause.)



Whether you are inclined toward Socialism, or whether you are inclined toward Single Tax, the place you have got to strike at is the ballot box. And whether you shall strike there for the Single Tax or for Socialism is a vital question. I do not claim to be a prophet, but I do believe that the real contest, at least in this country, the first really great labor contest at the ballot box is going to be between the principle of the Single Tax on one side and the principle of Socialism on the other. (Applause.) I do not care what the names may be. It may not be called the Single Tax on the one side, it may not be called Socialism on the other; but the underlying principles of those opposing schools are the principles which we shall have to fight over at the ballot box. So, my friends of the working classes, it is for you to consider, and to consider very seriously, which side you will vote with when this question comes up for your decision. It is true that in many respects we have views in common. Socialism and the Single Tax touch at many points. But fundamentally they are apart. In principle they are hostile, and the working classes must so consider them.



Now, what is the issue that we are to meet? I am going to assume that the working classes want what's right; that they want what is fair between man and man. My friend has said that sentiment does not move the world, that nothing but materialistic conditions, nothing but materialistic aspirations moves the world. In the short run that is often true. We are going through a period now when it seems to be true. But he who reads history and reads it with an open mind, can see that in the long run the greatest force in human society throughout all history has been the appeal to sentiment, the appeal to men's ideas of the rightness and fairness of things. (Applause.) So I believe today that the great mass of the working classes of all kinds can be appealed to with reference to what is right. No, they do not need to be appealed to. They are not seeking what is wrong. The demand they are making is for what is right. And I doubt if my friend upon the other side will deny that fundamentally that should be the human aspiration - to reach a condition of righteousness as between man and man, fairness as between man and man, in our economic life.



In the first place, then, we want to preserve the right, and to advance farther and farther towards the right - towards fairness.



In the next place, we want to preserve the material advances that have been made. Some of our friends seem to imagine, as my friend has already indicated, that what the Single Tax men are urging upon the working classes is that they should go back to primitive conditions. But we start out with the understanding, admit the demand of the Socialists, that the material advances which have been secured shall be retained. I am willing to rest our whole case upon that proposition. If what we propose is going to get rid of the material advances already made, we lose our case before the working classes. What the Single Tax demands, and demands as strenuously as Socialism does, is that all material advances that have been made shall be retained and secured. No one proposes to send men under the Single Tax out to eat sand on free land a thousand miles away from all civilization. (Applause.) One needs but to read the literature of the Single Tax to see that I am not merely stating my own opinion. I am stating the principle of the Single Tax philosophy.



What we want is right, don't we? We want to preserve the material advances that we have made. And we want personal liberty. Those are three things that the working classes surely require, surely demand. Those are three things, at any rate, that the Single Taxers demand. We have not got them now. The working classes have not got them now. The working classes are not fairly treated; they are not getting righteous treatment; they are not getting the benefit of the material advances that have been made; they do not have personal liberty. My friend can say nothing about "bull pens" that I won't echo with all the vigor at my command. The working classes haven't got those three things; and if you will analyze the situation you will find that the reason they haven't got them may be summed up in one or two explanations.



In the first place, they are under-paid for their labor. There is no man that works who gets the full product of his labor. I do not have to go to Washington for statistics to prove that. All I need to do is to point to the men who get a great deal without labor. They cannot get it from any other source than from the men and women who do labor. (Applause.) The working classes are not getting what they earn; they are not getting fairness; they are not getting the best out of the material advances of civilization, not as much as they ought to get. They are not getting what they earn, I say. That is one of the explanations. And they are disemployed. There is lack of employment. You could probably sum it all up in those two things : Inadequate pay for work, and the army of the unemployed - more men than there are jobs. The men out of jobs compete with the men who have jobs, and so wages are kept down.



Those are the two conditions. There is the sore: There is the diagnosis of social conditions at present - of the social state with reference to the working classes. Poor wages underpay; and a lack of employment relatively to the number of people that seek to be employed. (A voice, "How are you going to remedy it?")



My friend, I will come to that in time. We have to proceed in order. One step at a time, and the closer we hold to that one step at a time the more likely we are to get at the truth. If we start with the truth, and then try to build up from that, we are very likely to reach a true solution. I am trying to build up from what seems to me to be the truth.



Now, as to the remedies of this condition of underpay and lack of labor opportunity. The Socialist remedy in substance comes down to this - whatever form it may be stated in - that organized society should furnish opportunities for work; that it should do so by taking over all the land and socializing it, as it is said, and all implements of production, and making, so far as the large industries are concerned, a great organized social workshop where everybody should have employment; and then by regulating wages. That is to say, organized society shall as a matter of fact furnish employment to all and shall regulate the wages of all. That is what it comes down to. No matter how the Socialist proposes to get it, no matter what steps he expects to take, that is what it all sums up in - a great governmental workshop in which everybody shall be employed - (applause) - I am glad to recognize by the applause that I am stating it correctly - a great governmental workshop with wages regulated by organized society.



Now, that can be made to give work to all, and it can be made to give wages to all - if the man on horseback doesn't ride in and ruin the whole concern. (Applause.)



I am not, however, criticizing: I am comparing the two philosophies - stating what they propose.



On the other hand, the Single Taxers propose merely this - no matter what their method; if their method is wrong it won't work, and it is open to criticism; we are submitting it to your criticism - what they are aiming at, what they are trying to get is to remove the obstacles which prevent there being a natural demand for labor, demand not merely from employers, but by one man of another, that natural demand which will always keep the demand for labor in excess of the supply of men wanting work. (Applause.)



I am going to give you a simple and crude illustration for the purpose of making it concrete, nothing more, simply that you may see my point better. Suppose, under existing conditions, that for every ten men who want to work there are only nine opportunities, only nine jobs. That is, in a rough way, our present condition - more men than jobs. Under that condition you can see that wages are bound to go down, for you have got one man out of work all the time, or the equivalent of one man, competing against the others. Ten men competing each against the other for only nine opportunities; that is the present condition, crudely illustrated as it may be. What the Single Tax men propose, if their method will accomplish it - what they propose is to reverse that and to open up opportunities so that there shall all the time be ten jobs for every nine men: or more jobs than men. (Applause.) When you have that condition, more opportunities for work than you have workers offering to work, then you will have no unemployed army at any time, and you will have wages tending all the time upward toward the full earnings of the man. And that is the only way of determining what the earnings of men are.



What do men want? Work? That is not what they want. They want what work will get. What they want is food, clothing, shelter, and those things that we call luxuries. That is what the working classes want. Why don't they get them? They make them all. The working classes make all those things. Why are they without them? Do they give them up voluntarily? If they do, it is their right. But I do not believe that they give them up voluntarily. They give them up under some coercion. What is the coercion?



Our friend on the other side says that the coercion is the monopoly of machinery, the monopoly of capital. Monopoly of what? Monopoly of capital? Well, let us stop a moment and see what is meant by capital. Is a factory capital? I suppose it is, with all its equipment of buildings and machinery. Is the ground on which it stands capital? If it is, then you are speaking of two entirely different things under the same name, and may be charging to capitalism evils that result from landlordism. Now, capital - machinery and all such things - is produced by labor itself, by laborers. How does it get away from them? It is not a question of the history of the past; It is a question of the present hour, because all the capital that exists today would last but a little while if labor ceased utilizing and maintaining it. Labor is producing it all the time. How does it slip away? It is not enough to say that it slips away because somebody has got it monopolized. You have to go deeper and inquire what are the conditions under which it is produced.



We know that labor produces all that is produced. We also know that labor cannot create it. Then how can it produce it? Only by getting access to the natural source from which it must come. You have got to go to the land.



My friend is mistaken in imagining that the farm question is the land question. He seems to think that nobody but farmers live on land. Why, if you measure land by the demand for it and its value, we use more land in cities than do our farmers. The mines furnish material as well as the farms. The city furnishes sites, the great country furnishes the highways that control industries and control commerce. The land question is the globe question. It is the question of the ownership of the earth. Labor has got to go to the globe for all the capital that it produces and for all the products of that capital. The Single Taxers put land into a category alone and make capital another category. They say land is the natural source of labor products, and that man must have access to it. Having that, he can make and use capital. Not having that, he is under the control of men that you may call capitalists if you wish, but who are really landlords.



We have some men in Chicago that own $18,000,000 of stock in a street car company worth $27,000,000 on the market. The plant of that company, the machinery, etc., is worth but very little. What makes that twenty-seven millions of value? The monopoly of the streets of Chicago, the monopoly of the land which the streets are built upon in Chicago. (Applause.) And yet you say that man is a capitalist. We say he is a landlord. * You say that is capitalism. We say it is landlordism. (Applause.)



Now, we propose to abolish landlordism, for it is landlordism that is the base of industrial trouble. We propose to abolish landlordism. But let me ask you to remember that "landlordism" is broader than the term "landlord." I think I have indicated to you that what is called a capitalist may to a very great degree be a landlord, although he does not go by that name. Don't let us be misled by the terms of our friend Mr. Untermann, but let us look at the substance of the thing. To the extent that a man's wealth is capital he is a capitalist but to the extent that it is land, he is a landlord, whether he goes by the other name or not. That is the essence of the thing.



We propose to abolish landlordism. How are we going to do it? Think a moment of what land value is, which is what we propose to levy taxes upon. We propose to tax men; but we propose to levy the tax in proportion to the value of their land. My friend wants to know what ground rent is, what land value is. There is no difficulty in defining it. You can find out from Single Tax books, you can find out from Socialist books, you can find out by talking with your real estate agent, what land value is. He will tell you what land value is if you go to talk about renting or buying, but if you go to talk about the Single Tax with him he don't know any more about what land value is than my friend does who wants us to explain it. (Laughter.)



We would tax land value. But the mere taking of the money into the treasury is not all of it. If we could only devise a way by which we could throw the equivalent of all the land values into the ocean, or burn up all wealth that represented land values, we should produce an immensely better condition than we have now, because the land values that go to people now through land monopoly, excite other people to buy land. A great many of them buy in the wrong place, and that land does not go up in value, but the speculation is going on all the time, and it monopolizes the land of this whole continent, here in the city and out over the country, until eighty millions of people are actually crowded, in this immense country of ours. But they are crowded not by other people; they are crowded by wire fences that arc stretched across the land under this Landlordism that exists here in the cities and also in the country. (Applause.)



One effect of taxing land value would be to remove all taxation from industry, so that if a man wanted to build a house he would have no burden of taxation on the materials, and the burden of taxation which now begins at the time the house is done would be gone. What is the result? It makes men want to build houses. You could build more houses, you could build better houses. What does that mean? A greater demand for labor. The very moment that occurs you are getting to a point where you' have ten jobs for nine men instead of nine jobs for ten men.



But that is not all. The thing grows. As you take away land values you remove all incentive to hold land out of use. Vacant land would then be of no value in the market. It would not be monopolized, because there would be plenty more vacant land as good. When you have done that you make it still easier to build houses, you make it still easier to do any of the things that labor makes its living by doing, you have a still closer approach to the abolition of monopoly; and if you get it completely done, if you bring it up to the ideal, then you have a condition in which no man will coerce labor, because labor cannot then be coerced.



Let me give you an illustration of that point, for I have a minute or two of time for that purpose. Suppose a continent should rise up in mid-ocean, and that is more than a thousand miles away. Suppose it to be a rich continent. Let there be an assurance that there never shall be land monopoly there, and that labor shall always be free to go from this continent to that. Let that be a continent where any man can go and take up land. Now, with that assurance, that the land shall never be monopolized, that the Single Tax, for instance, shall be in operation, cities will spring up there, great industries will spring up there. Where will they come from? From the labor of the men who find there a better place to exercise their labor power than here. Wages will rise there to the full earning of the laborer. And how long, let me ask, would they then be less here?



In conclusion, let me ask you men and women of the working classes to consider this: The Single Tax will begin to yield its benefits step by step from the very start. The very moment that you abolish taxation of personal property you will begin to get some of its benefits. The moment you abolish taxation of products of labor generally, you will get more. The moment you turn a larger part of the rent of land into the public treasury, you will get more. Make it progressive and you get the benefit progressively all the way from the beginning. But with Socialism you first have got to win an election, and you have got to hold your power, and you have got to change the old order; you have got to abolish the existing condition of things-root and branch. (Applause and a voice, "Three cheers for Socialism.") You do not begin to get any benefit whatever under Socialism until you have done all that. (Applause). Socialism is revolution, is it not? (A voice,"Yes.") The Single Tax is progressive. (A voice, "No.") Yes, it is progressive. There you have an essential difference between them, which, if there were no other, whether you like it or not, my friends, will appeal to the working classes in favor of the Single Tax. It will give them benefits as it goes along. That advantage will appeal to human nature over a movement that gives no benefit until you have organized a party that can control the whole world and have abolished the old order of things and set up a new order. Even under your own philosophy, my Socialist friends, you do not begin to get any benefit from Socialism until that time comes. You begin to get the benefits from the Single Tax from the very moment that you begin even in the most timid way to put it into operation, and those benefits grow and grow as you advance.



Now I can understand that confirmed Socialists, such as compose this audience, may very well say (applause) - I knew it (laughter) - confirmed Socialists (prolonged applause). How much time have I, Mr. Chairman?



The Chairman:



A minute. I wish to say that we do not care to have interruptions of a speaker. You will have an opportunity to hear both sides.



Mr. Post:



Since I have but a minute this is all I care to say. You Socialists who are confirmed may be willing to wait until you uproot the existing order; you may be willing to forego any benefits until that long distant time comes. But the great mass of the working classes are not willing to wait that long nor to act in that way. (Applause.)



The Chairman:



It is a healthy sign of the times that of a winter afternoon an audience of this size, some two thousand people, will gather to listen to dry economic questions. I have thought many times during the past few years that we were slowly drifting into the grasp of an oligarchy, but when I see an audience of this size and this intelligence leaving the comfort of their homes to listen to arguments, and arguments which appeal only to reason, I have hope. I have been told that warmer things are yet to come. It becomes my pleasure now to present to you one of the gentlemen who will attempt and probably will warm up the discussion to a higher temperature than it has yet reached - Mr. Stedman.



Seymour Stedman:



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen - Mr. Post in almost the opening sentences of his address made the statement that sooner or later the Socialist cause, perhaps not under that name, would be launched against the Single Tax movement. I can well understand why that may be possible. The Single Tax is simply the crowning of capitalism. (Applause.) It stands for shifting the taxes of a portion of the capitalist class upon the shoulders of another part of the capitalist class - namely the landowners. And by doing that they do not at all claim or believe that it will result in the abolition of all classes. The Socialist movement will live and thrive and grow until there are no classes within the civilized world. (Applause.)



Seeing that it is Sunday, it may be well to read a little from the Single Tax Koran. I read from page 358 of "Progress and Poverty" : "To buy out the individual property rights would merely be to give the landholders, in another form, a claim of the same kind and amount that their possession of land now gives them. It would be to wrest from them by taxation the same proportion of the earnings of labor and capital that they are now enabled to appropriate in rent."



As stated before, the Single Tax simply contemplates a change in the form of taxation and it does not for one moment propose to abolish exploitation. Socialism will abolish exploitation. That is why Socialism is revolutionary in its character. (Applause.) And let me say here that in using the term "Revolutionary" Socialists do not at all mean physical force (applause), but we mean by revolution not a mere reform but a complete change in the fundamentals of society. On the 10th of August the French revolutionists enfranchised the citizens, abolished titles and overthrew the nobility, which formed the fabric of feudalism, and there was no blood shed on that day.



Mr. Post stated that the speaker who preceded him announced the doctrine of material interests. The speaker who preceded him in substance, said this: That the material interests of a people is that which governs and determines their laws, mode of production, their lives, morals and ethics. He did not mean that sentiment, religion, ethics and morals failed to play any part in molding the character of men. The class in control determines the prevailing standard of morals and religion, and its purposes are always consistent with their materialistic aims and interests, which it requires and nourishes. Mr. Post forgot his earlier statement, and in conclusion said : "What does the working class want? It wants food, it wants clothing, it wants shelter." There is the materialistic argument that the Single Tax ethical preacher sets forth to prompt you into action and to urge the working class to dispossess one class of capitalists in favor of another. (Applause.)



He talks about rights, and then he fails to define them. He talks about natural monopoly, and I hope the speaker that follows me will define that.



Mr. Post, in reply to Mr. Untermann, said: "Mr. Untermann asks, ‘What are land values'?' In reply Mr. Post said : "Go and ask a real estate broker, go and ask your landlord, read books on Single Tax," and then proceeded to say, "We will take that," never making any attempt himself to answer the question. (Applause.)



He says "the Socialists propose a government that shall regulate things in a stereotyped manner." The Socialist movement in its program and its purposes must conform to the economic evolution and tendencies of the time. We realize that by organized industry and associated effort, today we have the social regulation and the social method of production and distribution of wealth, but the contradiction exists in the private ownership of these socialized means of production, and the Single Taxers propose to let it stand and continue.



I ask the speaker who will follow me to answer, do you believe in profit? Let us not have any evasion of that question. (applause.) The moment you believe in profits, you must believe in interest. Interest and profit you can calculate to infinity, but the possibilities of actual production are finite. The moment you uphold profit you uphold a system of Carnegies and Rockefellers, and the private ownership of the means of production and distribution. (Applause.)



Furthermore, the Single Tax proposes that no man would go into a factory and work for less than he could earn upon the land. They tell us that with free land we may all build more homes. But what are we going to build more homes with? Will we all become carpenters? What will we wear and eat while we are building those houses?



Furthermore, the Single Tax proposition that a man can go upon the land and maintain his existence, is a reversion of progress, a degeneracy to the ancient system of savage life, because what you can produce without the modern methods of production and distribution is exemplified by all savages that exist to-day, and we know their limitations and capacity for production. We cannot in our production ignore the machine as a means of wealth creation.



In speaking of farmers, I call attention to the fact that they are averaging about $29 a month, excluding all interest upon the capital invested in land or utensils which they use in their production.



Moreover, I want to ask Mr. White how he would apportion land values where among a thousand men who have labored for a year, to find-an oil well, who have spent their time to enrich the community, but failed through accident, and some other man who by chance finds the oil well? What would he tax that land, and what would you pay those who lost in the original search and who have nothing to show for their effort?



We have a real Utopia built by Mr. Post on free land on an island a thousand miles from shore. Mr. Post had it populated by emigration and forgot the most essential thing in populating the island, which was a steam boat. (applause.)



And then the question arises who owns the steam boat? At the present time the water is free and yet we know that the steam boat traffic is an industry owned by a few and, monopolized. Let us assume that you go out there on the island and one man has a Mergenthaler machine, the type and capital with which to run a newspaper, hasn't that man an advantage over a man who comes there with no capital except the ability to run a Mergenthaler, and who has absolutely no money with which to compete with the man who owns the machine? We may say in Chicago to a man out of work, "We have got free land." But what he wants is profitable employment. He goes down to Marshall Field, and says, "I want a job as counter jumper. I am a man out of work. If I was employed here, I might get a salary of twelve dollars. I want a salary here working for you." Marshall Field replies, "No, we don't need you." The job hunter replies, "Well, but the land is free, and if you don't employ me at twelve dollars a week, I will go out here to 67th street (seven miles from the center of business) and build a department store." (Laughter.) "No," Marshall Field would say, "You can't do it, your capital is insufficient." "Well, I will get a hundred men and women who will pool their savings and together we will all buy a department store." Field would reply, "That's right, you go out there and put up a department store, my place will continue here at the corner of State and Washington streets, and after you have run for about a year, I will go out there and buy in your goods at bankrupt sale and sell them here as a job lot." (Applause.)



Furthermore, the great industries of this country at the present time do not rest upon land value, or the proprietorship of land by them. You can go to countless cities around Chicago and they will give you a factory site for the purpose of inducing you to locate there. The Standard Oil Trust is not in the business of owning territory or oil wells. It owns refineries, which stand between the laborer in the refineries and on the land, and the consumer in the market. Not only that, but the sugar beet and cane refineries are not based upon land ownership. They go to a little town and talk to the farmers and tell them what they can make in growing beets, and then build a factory there. The value of that trust does not rest upon the beet farms or cane fields that are owned by the farmers; it is based upon the fact that they have millions of dollars' worth of plants and machinery and buildings in which the refining is done.



You can go down the list and single out one industry after another. The higher priced land means that instead of having one-story houses to live in, we have five-story and six-story flats and live away up in the air with a lot of vacant land around us. A beautiful dream. A Utopia of - plenty of land and high buildings.



Every single workingman in this hall wants what: Better houses, better clothes, better working conditions and higher wages to raise his standard of life. What does the capitalist want? He wishes to pay lower wages and impose longer hours. He does not produce for utility; he does not produce for use. His interest is entirely different from that of the working class, arising from an entirely different motive in the production of wealth.



With competition, you have a warfare condition for domestic markets. The failure of the local market means that you must contest with the world powers for foreign markets. Your contest for foreign markets means that you must maintain armies and support navies, and all that goes with the perpetuating of class rule or government.



You tell us about government. The Socialists can agree, perhaps, with the logical Single Taxer, for the logical Single Taxer lands in one of two camps. He becomes either a communistic anarchist or a Socialist. (Applause.) And your government will live as long as the Single Tax will be in operation, because government is the police power and the force that is used by the dominant class to further its own material existence and perpetuate itself. Government will never fall until all class war disappears, and that will come when you have industrial freedom.



He wants liberty. Who is to define your liberty? Always heretofore in history the class that had control have told you in what your liberty consists. They tell you what our freedom shall be. Tell us, Mr. White, will the Single Tax abolish classes, will it abolish the economic antagonism of classes? Will it abolish on the one hand the workers searching for food and products to consume, and on the other hand the men who own and control the industries and run them for profit? Will it change the motive and the purpose which arrays these two great classes against each other? Mr. Post has said that you cannot accomplish that until you accomplish it throughout the world. Sir, we know it. The capitalist class is a world class, but so is the proletariat. (Applause.)



Let us contemplate for a moment what Single Tax intends. What is the curse and idiocy of the modern system? The waste that is based upon the present form of industrial society. One of the strongest points in Socialism is that it will do away with the waste that exists in the competitive life in which we live. There was appropriated for your schools only about two hundred million dollars a year, but for armies, eight hundred and fifteen million dollars a year, an amount that would reproduce the buildings of thirty-seven complete world fairs, such as we had in Chicago in 1893. The destruction by war of property alone, eliminating the question of men, in the last century was something like 1,405 billion dollars, enough to erect over six thousand world's fairs. This will give you some conception of the loss of effort and the waste that exists under present conditions. How many instances are there? Take advertising, pick up your daily paper, examine the street cars, go along the thoroughfares and look at the bill-boards and you can imagine the terrific amount of waste there is in this line. Consider the useless persons that exist at the present time - one hundred thousand in the penitentiaries. I admit that there may be such a thing as congenital criminals and antisocial characters, but the great class of criminals are produced by the economic struggle, which saps the life of the people.



We see a man who is a hobo on the street, and we think, "Well, there is one man that has spent a useless life and he is a wreck," but if you go down to his past, you may find that he was taken off the farm and put into a glass factory when he was six or seven years of age; that he worked there ten years to create profits, which the Single Taxers believe in-and it has completely sapped his vitality and life.



There are about 80,000 or 90,000 lawyers in the United States, with an equal number of clerks. (Applause, and a voice, "You are a lawyer.") Yes, it is true, as long as there is a working class that is stupid enough to labor from seven o'clock in the morning until six at night and perpetuate this system, I shall get down at ten o'clock in the morning (laughter); as long as this system plays favorites, I shall try and be one of them. When socialism comes, I suppose I shall have to earn an honest living.



You have a large number of insane, and I want to call attention to the fact that the isolated life and hardships of the American farm send more men and women per capita to the insane asylums than do the cities. Free land would increase the hardships of the farm, and the Single Tax may thus increase the insanity that exists. (Applause.)



They tell us about coal lands, and the unused coal fields which exist. I grant it. Can we increase the pay of the coal miner by opening up the countless fields that exist surrounding us in other states, and increasing competition among them by your process? Instead of having one general store you will have half a hundred. Did you ever notice that where there is only one grocery store in the neighborhood, the owner will open the store at six o'clock, seven or eight, and close reasonably early, but if another man comes in and starts a grocery store next to him and he opens at seven and closes at nine, the other must do the same. Each must open as early and close as late as his rival. By doing that through competition you are wasting your labor and lives in competition. The Socialist proposes that you use your labor for actual production and the blessings of life. (applause.)



What does the system of competition produce in morals, in ethics? It puts sand in your sugar and turmeric in your mustard, chicory in your coffee and alum in your baking powder - adulteration on every hand. The Senate of the United States appointed a committee to investigate the subject of adulteration, and I read from the report of that committee:



"The adulteration of prepared and manufactured foods is very extensively practiced, and in many cases to the discredit of our manufacturers." (How pathetic.) "It is only fair to say, however, that a large proportion of American manufacturers who are engaged in adulteration of food products do so in order to meet competition."



That is, the manufacturers say: "We would like to quit adulterating goods, but in doing so our competitors would take the trade away from us."



The first thing that every man is confronted with, and the paramount thing, is the struggle for existence. If the man next to him employs machines, he must do the same. If he employs women and children he must secure women and children. If one adulterates his goods, becoming a criminal, the other must follow him in his career of crime, or must cease to live or become a wage worker working for his heartless competitor. (Applause.) And I want to know how the opening of land (if it will not decrease, but on the contrary, increase, competition) will do away with adulteration? They tell us that we haven't competition now and that we are going to get that when we get the Single Tax. Whether you call it voluntary rivalry or emulation or competition, what you mean is the struggle for profit, whether you call it by one name or another. It makes no difference what the name, the result is the same; the capitalist competitors are both after profits. The motive is the same.



Furthermore, let us understand this : In all historic epochs we have had contests between classes. Do you think manufacturing and landed interests will unite on the Single Tax program? By no means. The factory legislation in Great Britain was due to the fact that the agricultural proprietors endeavored to shift the burden of taxation upon the cities and towns, the bourgeoisie. Those in the towns endeavored to shift it back upon the land, and the earlier factory legislation was due to the conflict between those two classes, making concessions favorable to the employes of their rivals, which resulted in some beneficial legislation to laborers, the result of capitalist conflicts rather than the organized effort and protest of the working classes. So from capitalist conflicts some benefit comes at times to the workingmen.



The Single Tax, as a fiscal measure, proposes the confiscation of land. You say you are taking land values. That is all that has any utility to society, and when you take all in land that has any utility to society, you then advocate confiscation - a capitalist revolution.



The gentleman speaks of the public opinion which must be aroused. Do you know what public opinion is? Let me illustrate it. In the summer when the days are warm and the thermometer is dancing away up in the nineties, the Chicago papers come out and say that business is dull because the people are all out of town. We know who are out of town; those who can afford to go to the mountains and the seaside. They are the people, and those are the people that make public sentiment. Let me tell you now that if you had a marriage in this hall between people of questionable intellect, but with much paraphernalia; the Chicago American would be loaded down to-morrow morning with two or three pages devoted to it (laughter), while this meeting will probably get about three lines, and it may not get that much. Were it not for the fact that the Single Taxers dearly love the democrats more than they do the republicans, I do not think we could get even those three lines.



Mr. Post tells you that Mr. Untermann says as a class we ask the support of the middle class. Let us not misunderstand that middle class proposition and their support of us. That is only partially explained by the statement made by Mr. Post, and even by Mr. Untermann. The man who is working in a grocery store, or in a small business, working twelve or fourteen hours a day, should join the Socialist movement, because with Socialism, his hours of labor would be cut down to a civilized basis and his income would be raised to permit him to enjoy some of the luxuries of life.



But do you for one moment suppose that those people who belong to the class depending for their existence upon the continuance of the wage system will come to us? We know well they will not. We know that like the democrats and republicans in Haverhill, Mass., they will unite against us. (Applause.) We know that like the Manufacturers' Associations which unite the capitalists against the trade unions and the Economic Leagues of proprietors and capitalists united against the Socialists. We know that when there is a strike of delivery teamsters at one department store, the capitalist who is a rival of that store will send over to deliver his rival's goods. We understand the unity of interest which capitalist class have against the Socialists, and we also understand the unity of interest which every intelligent workingman must recognize in each other, against the capitalists, and that their salvation comes only from a recognition of that and their economic class interests expressed at the ballot. (Applause.)



Mr. Post referred doubtingly to the figures that had been made by the statisticians in Washington. Certainly, they cannot be regarded as favoring Socialism. (Applause, and a voice, "Sure.") And if they do, we can refer to the more open and obvious lessons to which we can draw attention. We know that if in this hall at this moment it should be proclaimed that the land was free, every man who had money would desire to invest where he could draw the largest return, and if he thought he could make more by investing in something else than building houses he would be governed accordingly.



The Single Tax is not a philosophy. It is a proposed patch work for the purpose of remedying certain presumed abuses of the capitalist system. Socialism, on the contrary, is far different. We recognize certain changes which have taken place in the past and which show the evolution from savage to barbaric life, and from barbaric to civilization or capitalism, and an inevitable change into a new form of industrial existence. These changes and occurrences lead us to believe, with a great deal of certainty, that the next industrial era which will follow the present will be Socialism.



We recognize that you cannot destroy a single link in the process of social evolution, but you can, through industrial activity, hasten the death of an epoch that is injurious to the men or women who are passing through it. You can no more destroy an essential link in the process through which the evolution of society is taking place, any more than you can eliminate any stage in life (childhood or maturity), from conception to death. The Socialists propose to gather all the achievements and utilities of the past which can be of service to society, and to take full advantage of all modern methods of production and distribution, collecting the riches of the past and the wealth of the present, and march forward to industrial freedom, comrades in the greatest cause, and striving for the noblest achievement that ever warmed the heart or inspired the brains of men. (Applause.)



The Chairman:



I think you will agree with me that the temperature is higher (laughter), and I have no doubt but what the thermometer will rise still higher. (Laughter.) You know it is always good policy to keep the good things until the last, and without any reflection upon those who have gone before in this argument I have no doubt that the other gentlemen will send us all up to the boiling point. I now have the pleasure to present Mr. Hardinge, who will take issue with the last speaker.



Henry H. Hardinge



You should not disappoint the audience by telling them what they are going to get. They might not get it.



Socialism is, to my mind, the unscientific protest of the dissatisfied. (Hisses.) You are taking up my valuable time by hissing. Not that I am opposed to dissatisfaction. All of the progress of the human race flows from intelligently directed dissatisfaction. But I am opposed to anything that is unscientific, because it will not work. What is science? It is the discovery and the application of the laws and the forces of nature to the uses of mankind. This is the beginning and the end of science. It is based upon a recognition of natural laws. If there is any one thing that scientists do lay particular stress upon, it is the existence and immutability of natural laws and the persistence of force. Socialists-and with particular reference to the gentleman who will follow me, Mr. Simons-have many times in my hearing in public, repudiated the existence of natural law, which is the basis of all science, so that it is almost pathetic to hear them insist upon the fact or statement or principle that Socialism is nothing if it is not scientific, and yet repudiate its foundation.



Be that as it may, Mr. Stedman has raised many questions. He says that under the Single Tax, if you could not make money by investing in land you could invest it in buildings. True, that is just what you would do, because there are only two things you can put money into; one is land and the other is labor; one is monopoly and the other is industry. Under the Single Tax you would not have to buy monopoly; there would be no monopoly to buy. Therefore, in spending money, whether you are a rich man or a poor one, you would buy labor, if you bought anything, because there would be nothing else to buy. What effect would that have upon the labor market? If a man were, for example, a millionaire - if there were such a thing under the Single Tax, and I doubt it very much - if he did spend money he would spend it in buying things and nothing but things, because, if you eliminate land monopoly, what have you got in which men can invest money? In order to produce anything at all you need land. For instance, here are some gentlemen in New York paying five millions cash for a site along Broadway and putting four and a half millions into the largest and finest office building in the world - paying half a million more for the chance to put the building there than for the building itself. They are paying four and a half millions for labor and five millions for monopoly. Under the Single Tax they would have all of that $9,500,000 to spend for labor, and then would have a building more than twice as valuable. That is one of the supreme advantages of the Single Tax; it will compel every man who buys anything to buy labor, because when you buy a house or a loaf of bread or a pair of shoes, you are buying labor, because they are made by labor.



Now, as to classes and the class struggle and the class consciousness which Socialists everywhere insist upon so urgently. Classes and the differentiation of society into classes are simply the result of institutions that make classes. Forty years ago we had chattel slavery in America. Two classes were involved, the slave owner and the slave. With the abolition and extinction of the institution of slavery both classes went by the board, and the only way to destroy present classes is to destroy the institution on which they are based-land monopoly. This the Single Tax will do; it will dispense with landlordism and landlords and monopoly of every kind.



As to competition and the competitive age, this is not the competitive age in any proper sense of the term, or any proper interpretation of the term "competition." This is the monopolistic age. There never was a time in the history of the world when monopoly reigned as supremely as it does to-day, and hence competition was never at so low an ebb. Competition has not free play to-day. Nowhere has it half a fair chance. Monopoly is in control of nearly everything, and competition is throttled and almost destroyed. This is certainly the monopolistic age. All of the evils of which Socialists complain grow out of monopoly and not competition; this includes the evils in competition itself, which is one-sided and not universal as it would be under the Single Tax. Natural competition would be the great distributor of wealth and social advantages. The Single Tax is a tax upon monopoly, and the basic monopoly at that.



As to the coal trust and other trusts mentioned, Mr. Stedman has said that there are very few of the great industrial combinations to-day which owe their existence to the ownership of land. Let US examine this statement. The coal trust consists of nine railroads combined with all or nearly all of the available hard coal beds of Pennsylvania, consisting of about 450 square miles of territory. Without railroads you cannot get a pound of hard coal to the market. Nine railroads tap that vast region. The result is that by controlling the railroads and ore beds they control the situation, dictating to the American consumers what they shall pay for coal and to the miners what they shall get as wages for producing the coal. The Single Tax will be a tax in Pennsylvania exclusively upon land values, and the bulk of Pennsylvania land values lies in the coal beds of Pennsylvania, the cities and the oil region, three of the most valuable things they have, and the Single Tax will strike them and strike them hard, and the operation of the same laws that tax land values will force unused coal beds into the market, which will compel the use of the coal beds, which will employ more labor, which will enormously increase the visible supply of coal, which will increase the demand for labor, which will increase wages, and by the same bold stroke that you increase the demand for labor and increase wages you will increase the supply of coal. (Applause.) You need simply to reverse the process of starving the market and charging higher prices to the consumer. You simply turn it around, reverse it, have more . work for the worker,' more coal for the consumer, higher wages for the miner and cheaper coal. Land cheap, wages high. That is what the Single Tax will do in regard to the coal trust.



So far as the railroad problem is concerned, a railroad is but "Two streaks of rust" and a right of way, and the right of way is the only thing which does not wear out, which does not have to be repaired. It is the only thing that gets more valuable as invention goes on and population multiplies. The basis of the railroad trust is certainly land monopoly, and more than half of the capitalized value of the railroads in this country consists in land monopoly pure and simple. The railroads are capitalized at about eleven billions. The Single Tax is a tax upon land monopoly.



As to advertising, we see as plainly as anyone the enormous waste resulting from advertising to-day. No way to get rid of goods, the market is out of balance. The trick is. not to make goods, but to sell goods, to find a market. This is not because there are not enough people to buy goods; no, not through scarcity of people, but of money. There are not enough buyers for goods because purchasers have not got the money to buy back the goods they have made. They have not got the money because they do not get wages enough. They do not get wages enough because work is scarce, and work is scarce because of land monopoly, .and the worst feature of land monopoly is land speculation. The Single Tax is a tax upon land monopoly and will destroy it and destroy it forever. (Applause.)



And when you destroy land monopoly and make opportunities free to all men, how much freer can opportunity be under Socialism or any other ism? Subtract land from man and what is left? Nothing, because we are made of it. Land is the basis of all production, and if you are the owner of the land you can control the people. Unless you solve this problem you cannot solve the social problem. If you own the capital and I own the source of capital I will control. If there were but 2,500 people in the world and I owned the land there would be just 2,499 too many in the world, and they would have to come to me and make their bargain with me if I insisted on my legal rights. The Single Tax will destroy the private ownership of the earth in the only intelligible, practicable, simple, scientific and just way that it can be destroyed, and it will work, and that is why the landlords fear it.



As to wasted energy, a gentleman sent me a letter yesterday and he said: "I know that it will cost much more to get these things which you make for us on the market than it will cost to make them." What kind of a social condition have you got if that is true, when men need and make useful things everywhere, and yet it costs more to get those things to the people who need them than it does to make them? Now, if that is not commercial and industrial upsidedownedness, then there is no such thing, and it results from scarce opportunity.



Who would define liberty? Mr. Stedman asks. What is liberty? Those only can define it who understand it. It is the right to live. What does the right to live amount to if the right to labor is destroyed or taken away from you? Where does liberty come in, or what does the pursuit of happiness amount to if a man cannot pursue anything without paying a price to somebody for the privilege of working, or being free, or being happy?



Armies and navies, says Mr. Stedman, are to defend the capitalists. All the armies and navies of the world have one object and one purpose, and that is this: to grab and to hold land. Everywhere in the world that is true. We do not need an army in Chicago. All our vast industrial and commercial enterprises here are carried on by productive industry and without armies and navies. Armies and navies consume everything, they produce nothing. We do not need them in the city; we need policemen only, and under the Single Tax we would not need one where we now need a hundred, for nearly all policemen are employed in suppressing the victims of land monopoly. Why do we want armies and navies elsewhere? To grab and hold land, that the land monopolists who own this country may use said lands for the exploitation of other peoples, as they do our own people who are landless. Armies and navies have but one object and no excuse, that the exploiters of labor may grab and hold land. No nation can grab and hold land in outside territory without armies and navies. Land monopoly rests upon the use of armies, navies and policemen, the visible expression of physical force. There is no natural or just excuse for land monopoly, and moreover, if the men who to-day get the benefit of land monopoly through the use of the armies and navies had to pay, as they would have to pay under the Single Tax, the value of their monopoly would dwindle down to the point of ultimate extinction.



As to the making of goods for profit and not for utility and use, I challenge that statement. I challenge it because it is not true and I can prove it. I am a mechanical engineer. I use the finest kind of measuring instruments and tools. Without this perfection I cannot accomplish my ends. I find in these things the visible expression of the most beautiful workmanship. They are constructed for use and utility, and unless they are so constructed they would be utterly useless for accurate work. He said goods were made to sell and not to use. I tell you they are made to use primarily and to sell incidentally. (Applause.)



So with food, clothing and shelter, the sale is incidental, because when a man is running a shoe factory if he produces more shoes than he has personal use for, he must exchange them for things he has use for; therefore the sale of shoes is incidental, for unless people wanted to use them he would cease making them. And so through the whole complex series of exchanges, unless at bottom all goods were made to use they would not be sold, and under a fair industrial adjustment all things would be made both to use and to exchange. That is all there is to production carried on as it is to-day. It is utterly useless to produce unless exchange takes place, and under the Single Tax there would be fair exchanges.



As to the steel trust, about a year and a half ago, Mr. Schwab, who knows as much about steel as any man in this audience, for he is a shop man, brought up in the works at Pittsburg, went before the industrial committee at Washington, was examined, and gave his testimony. He was asked this question by the chairman of that committee: "Mr, Schwab, don't you think the steel trust is over-capitalized?" He said : "No, I don't." "Why?" "Because in the Connellsville coking region of Pennsylvania there are 60,000 acres of coal, the best coking coal in the world for steel making purposes. We have got it. We own it. That land was appraised and the value was based upon the prsent and the expanding uses of steel, for this is the steel age. That land is worth now $60,000 an acre and $60,000 multiplied by 60,000 gives $3,600,000,000." That value in private hands represents nothing but tribute-levying power, nothing but land monopoly, nothing but land value. You may not know what land values are, Mr. Stedman, but Mr. Schwab does. (Applause.) He said: "The $3,600,000,000 is more than twice our present capitalization. I think we are under-capitalized." In his testimony he did not say one word about steel mills, rail mills, plate mills, bloom and billet mills, blast furnaces or the various machinery and capital entering into the production of steel plates, blooms, rails, sheets or anything of the kind. What he did say was that the steel trust rested on land monopoly in the State of Pennsylvania, a monopoly given to them by the laws of Pennsylvania and upheld by the people of Pennsylvania. He was talking about, thinking about and discussing nothing but land monopoIy. He did not care for the rest because he knew he could duplicate every rail mill, steel mill, billet mill, bloom mill, steamship and ore dock. That is not what constitutes the monopoly. The monopoly exists in the ownership of that which can not be duplicated. You cannot duplicate land because land cannot be made by man, not an ounce of it, and for that reason those who own it have an ab'solute monopoly. You cannot find a substitute for,it, and the men who own it have got an absolute monopoly, and the Single Tax would destroy that. (Applause.)



When Mr. Schwab was before the Marquette Club here in Chicago he said: "You have heard many complaints about the steel trust being over-capitalized. Let me tell you something. Up in Michigan, in Minnesota and in Wisconsin we own or control between eighty and ninety per cent. of the best available iron ore beds discovered in this country for making iron or steel, When you consider the enormous production of steel and the increasing demand for it all over the world, you will see that this is the steel age." He never said a word about bloom mills, plate mills, billet mills or blast furnaces. He was thinking about the monopoly of the source of supply. That was the only thing he was interested in. And he said this in substance to the industrial commission and the Marquette Club: "Land monopoly in Pennsylvania, land monopoly in Michigan, land monopoly in Wisconsin and land monopoly in Minnesota is our sole source of power, our sole source of monopoly." The only power of the steel trust to underpay workmen and overcharge customers lies in its monopoly of land and the tariff on steel, amounting to $11 per ton. The Single Tax will destroy both at one fell swoop. (Applause.)



The Standard Oil trust. The Standard Oil trust owes its monopoly to two things, the private operation and ownership of railroads and pipe lines based upon franchises and land values and the private ownership of oil wells. Abolish this by the Single Tax and there is nothing left of the standard oil trust as a monopoly, and if the average citizen could buy transportation just as he can now buy postage stamps, without favoritism, he would not have to pay thirteen or fourteen cents a gallon for six cent gasoline. People pay that now only by virtue of land monopoly secured to the trust under statutory law.



As to the sugar trust. The Single Tax is a tax on land values only. When you abolish all tariffs the sugar trust will lose its power to do evil. The evil power of the sugar trust is simply the power to overcharge customers for refined sugar, and that it does by means of the differential tariff on refined sugar and the prevention of foreign competition by the tariff. The Single Tax will operate to destroy the tariff and thus destroy whatever there is of power for evil in the sugar trust.



As to the steamship trust - there is no steamship trust. It went to pieces when Mr. Schwab and Mr. Morgan waterlogged and sunk it. The ocean cannot be monopolized, hence steamship trusts are ephemeral, they cannot last, they haven't got their feet upon the ground, like the fabled Anteus, and the coal trus, and would never be thought of were it not for the private monopoly of docks and terminal facilities now controlled by the railroads, and the Single Tax will render both forever impossible.



As to Marshall Field and these other gentlemen who own department stores, Mr. Stedman said that Marshall Field would say to these other men who wanted to start a department store, "Go on and start your store, and in a year from now I will buy your goods as a bankrupt stock." Mr. Field might also say to them, "Your capital don't amount to anything. You haven't got the right place to sell goods. You are not on the right kind of dirt. The kind of dirt to sell goods on is down on State street, and I have got a monopoly of a large section of State street. I have the customers, and if you want to get customers you have got to come down here alongside of me where the customers are. Your capital don't amount to anything. You are no use as capitalists." (Applause.) You have proved conclusively that the power of capitalists does not consist in the ownership of capital merely, but in ownership of monopoly. Mr. Field would be powerful only as a landlord and not as a man engaged in production, exchange or useful industry. (Applause.)



Mr. Stedman asked, "Gentlemen, how are you going to ascertain the value of oil land?" Well, it took Mr. Crowther, of the King Crowther combination, of Texas, just seven years to get control of 7,500 acres of land. Why did he do that? In order to engage in production? Not at all. In order to become useful to his fellow men? Not at all. In order to get a land monopoly, so that he might sell out to those who needed oil in their industries i that is why he did it. The land speculator is not a useful citizen and society does not need him. He is simply the man that gets there first. Land monopoly is at the bottom of your oil trust, your oil kings and your millionaires. Mr. Crowther is said to have "got" several millions; he "made" nothing. Now, Mr. Stedman, how did this man ascertain the value of that oil land?



As to rent, profit and interest. To divide the present system of distribution into rent, profit and interest, as Socialists do, is just as foolish as to talk about the human family being divided into three classes, men, women and human beings. All there is to society is men and women. All there is to distribution is rent, wages and interest. You call a landlord a monopolist and class his rent as profits; he calls it interest on his investment - two names for the same thing. The vast bulk of so called interest now paid is rent, ground rent for the use of the earth. The power of Shylock, which both Socialist and Single Taxer condemn, arises. not from tire avarice of the man who takes the last pound of flesh, but from the necessities of his victim which drive him into the Shylock's den. The Single Tax will abolish such necessities by making people free, by making industry free. All industry is based upon land. By making the land, the source of all wealth, free, men can then engage in production under such conditions that they will not need the aid of a Shylock, and all will have plenty without going to a Shylock. No matter how greedy the Shylocks are, they can not extort by the mere fact of greed, for it takes two to make a bargain, and the very instant you make men free you take away the advantage of any Shylock to crush his fellow men. You can not crush an eggshell unless you have something on the other side, even with the weight of Jupiter. And you have got to have something underneath the worker to compel him to give up the bulk of what he produces for the opportunity to work. Why does he do it now? Because his hand is palsied by lack of opportunity, and the "thing on the other side" is land monopoly. What is it today that stands between industry and its products? Three things only: land speculation, taxes upon production and taxes upon exchange - just three. The Single Tax would abolish taxes upon production and tax land monopoly only. It would abolish taxes upon exchange, and tax land values only. It will remove the taxes from these two things and place the burden upon the other thing, on land speculation. Every vacant piece of land is a tramp factory. When you abolish land monopoly you leave industry in a condition for unhampered production. Men will, be free to produce what they like, where they like, when they like, and how they like, and there will be a more equitable distribution, for by the same bold stroke that you abolish land monopoly you abolish the three things which now stand in the way of industry - you abolish the desperation, the poverty, and the dependence of the worker. The dependence of the worker explains his willingness - no, not willingness, but necessity, for giving up the bulk of his products for the opportunity to work. As soon as that dependence is abolished, so soon does he become free as an American citizen should be. Now you Socialists have got to deal with this question of taxation. You have to meet it. You can not abolish it without abolishing all government. I am not opposed to government; I am not an anarchist, nor yet are you. What will you do with it? You have got to deal with it. There are only two things you can tax: one is labor and the other is land monopoly. If you tax labor as it is now taxed, by taxing personal property, and everything in sight produced by labor, you will do the very thing that brings about our present industrial problems, the very condition you wish to destroy. If you ever achieve political power you will have to do this first. If you do that, you will abolish the very evils that you are organized to combat, and nothing else will be left to combat, for what can a people not accomplish when they are industrially free?



We want co-operation; so do you, and we know how to get it. We want it to be voluntary and universal. We know that men co-operate because it is natural and necessary, because men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion, and if you remove the trinity of burdens, prohibitive land values and taxes upon production and exchange, you will at once make production perfect, unlimited and universal; and the moment you do that you will have the free industrial system that the world today is looking forward to; for already the sun of liberty has risen above humanity's horizon, and when it reaches the full zenith of its power and glory no Socialist, no Paternalist, no Protectionist, no advocate of the extension of governmental power and no apologist for privilege will be able to look upon its face and live. (Applause.)



The Chairman: The general summing up and conclusion of the arguments in favor of Socialism and the Single Tax will be given by two well-known gentlemen, after which ten minutes will be given to Mr. Simons on the Socialist side of the question.



I will now present to you Mr. Simons.



A. M. Simons:



For one thing, I want to thank our opponents. I want to thank Mr. Post that he came out here and said two things: in the first place, that they were willing to rest their case with the working class omf the world, and in the second place that the coming struggle which is to shake the foundations of society was to come between Socialism and Single Tax. We know what that means. The Single Tax to-day is but the tail of the democratic kite, and Haverhill, Brockton and a dozen other places have shown that democrat is but another name for republican, and justify what we have always said, that in the last great line-up between plutocracy and Socialism, the Republican party and the Socialist party, standing face to face will fight the battle of humanity in America. (Applause.)



I want to take up for a moment, before proceeding to my main discussion, some of the things that Mr. Hardinge put before you. He told us that the Single Tax would compel everybody to buy labor. May I ask Mr. White, who is to follow, who there would be that would sell labor, if everybody was to buy? If there are buyers then there are sellers. (Applause.) And we know enough about what is the result when human flesh and blood, the power of muscle, the skill and brain of the workers is sold in the markets of the world to not want to move a finger to carry that phase of society on through another stage of our existence.



Again, he told us that to-day was not competitive; that to-day was monopolistic, but the fact of the thing is that the evil of competition of which we are complaining is here. (Applause.) And he gave no evidence whatever to show that the Single Tax which should usher in this era of glorified and beatific competition would take away the damnable waste of advertising, of armies, of lawyers, of the whole mass of parasites that to-day ride upon the backs of the working class in America.



He told you that the armies were the real foundation of your land monopoly. Was it to secure land monopoly that soldiers shot down strikers in the City of Chicago in 1894? (Applause.) When soldiers and sailors are sent beyond the seas is it to acquire land? No, it is to acquire human beings that they go there, that is, the possibility of consuming the things that American laborers are creating and which capitalism denies them any opportunity to enjoy. (Applause.) When to-day in the "bull pens" of Colorado the soldiers are carrying on a reign of terror beside which that of the Cossacks of Russia is mild indeed, they are doing it not to add more territory to the United States, not to produce more rent for the landlord, but to give more profits to the Rockefellers and the Gateses who own the Colorado Iron and Fuel Company. (Applause.)



He told us the Single Tax would make so many more buyers you would not any longer need to advertise. Evidently this gentleman never had any experience in the advertising world. It is when the buyers flock on State street that the State street merchants advertise. Why do they advertise? Did you see as much advertising in the time when those streets were deserted, in the terrible panic times of 1894? No, the greater the crowd of buyers the more the waste that is spent in decorating bill-boards, covering up and padding our magazines, sending an army of drummers across the country, and the greater the general waste, not simply of dollars, but of the life and blood and energy of the working class of America. (Applause.)



We asked them who would define liberty, and he told you that those who knew the most would define it. That was not a very clear explanation, because I don't believe we would all agree as to which one knew the most. I will answer the question for him that in any stage of society it will be that class which dominates and rules and controls the social organism. Under the Single Tax, as under capitalism, with two classes, there would be a ruling and exploiting class. I do not want any ruling class to say what shall be liberty for you and me. I say that you have no right to define liberty for those who chance to belong to the working producing classes. There is a fact that these gentlemen utterly overlook; that every stage of society has a different definition for right and wrong and liberty and all these catch-phrases which are juggled here. Under Socialism there would be a different definition. The class that would do the defining, that would decide what was right and wrong and what was liberty, would be the great producing class of the world, who would then be the Social rulers and the Social whole. (Applause.)



Again, they took up the trust question, and I want to make a few comments along that line and then since I am going to devote the most of my talk to the subject of industrial concentration, I may come back to these questions again:



He told us a few things that I do not want you to miss. He told us that the steel trust rested almost exclusively upon land monopoly. I hold here in my hand "Trust Finance," by Edwin F. Mead, recognized as the greatest authority in the realm of trust finance, the man who foretold that Morgan was trying to sell gold bricks when he started the steel trust; that compelled the steel trust to issue a statement in order to explain away those predictions, and then every one of those predictions proved true, and who to-day is feared by Wall street as well as recognized. And he tells us what? He tells us that with regard to these coke ovens, with regard to these coal mines, that they are a source of weakness because in them is tied up capital,