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Show LIVING ISSUES Warren Foster's Paper. VOL 4 SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, FRIDAY. AUGUST 19. 1898 SINGLE TAX AMONG THE INDIANS. necessary to prolong their own lives became the property, not of the slave, but of JOHN E. BENNETT IN SAN FRANCISCO STAR. the master. So long as the resources of were appropriated by a few, and nature The philosophy of the Single Tax is based freemen were no longer permitted to go upon the first truth in Nature. That is, that upon them and take what they wished, then the earth vas made for man. Not that was the only way freemen would have to supmade for some men to the exclusion of othport their lives would be to beg from those ers, or that some by Divine ordinance should who held their resources of nature their have in it rights from which others are expermission to employ themselves upon them cluded, but it was made for the common use at the terms of those who owned the reand benefit cf all mankind. No other postu- sources. And very soon, by reason of the late would be in accord with that truth on those offering themselves to of competition which all religions are based, upon which labor for a mere living, slavery would bethe whole human family is adjusted: that is come For there is a certain unprofitable. that we are the children of one God, and dead attatched to the ownership expense that he is an impartial and just God, and of a slave; he must be cared for when he is that in his sight, all men are alike. Upon sick and unable to when he is old and this broad Democratic principle the church can work but little; work; these times he and at and all its teachings rest. If wc do not find will consume more than when he is in it so in practice in the affairs and relations ol working condition; and, when he is sound, men, the fault is not with God or with the he must be kept between seasons of fundamental precepts which we have con- when there is little to do and when thecrops proceived about our Maker, but it is with man; ductive value of his work be worth not may it is that we are in error and have not con- his food and Besides all this, ho structed our system of society and our rights is frequently clothing. and to work lazy of property in conformity with Gods teach- and must be beaten or indisposed otherwise punished ings; and the awfnl conditions that now pre- and worried with, and harsh drivers must be vail in the world, in these United States, hired at them, big expense, not to dire show us that such is a fact. but to force them. So that it is only wnen To ascertain mans true relation to the wages of other kinds of labor is higher than earth on which he lives and of which He is a the cost of keeping a slave is slavery profitpart, the place to look is not in highly civ- able. So long as the land of the West was ilized and highly specialized societies where pen to settlement, and the men of the so many institutions artificially planned seem South might leave and come west a' d take to obscure the basic principles of mans re- up a farm, in the South, of white men, wages lation to the earth, but we should look at were high, and the institution of slavery human society in its simplest form that of profitable; but slavery was fast dying in the primitive mao: Take the Indians with whom South at the time of the breaking out of the we are familiar, for they approach nearer to war. It could not, in the nature of things, primitive man than any living persons. Hpw have lasted twenty years longer, for it was does the Indian stand in his society as re- becoming unprofitable. For, as the free gards the things of nature? Just as with us land of the West was becoming exhausted tho air is for common breathing, and no one just in proportion was the wages of white lacan have more of it than he can use, and bor falling in the East and South; until now, of it from the common he what appropriates stock is for the time absolutely his own property, just so with them are all the elements of nature. The river, the plain, the iorest is with them common property. Any man may go to the river and take fish, to the forest and take game, or to the plain and raise corn and tobacco. No one Las the right to deny him the privilege of doing these things, or to exact toll from him when he has done such. But the labor of the Indian is his own. When he has taken a fish from the river, the property of the community in that fish, which existed as long as it was a becomes the part of the river, ceases; and itwho has taken individual property of the man And so labor. his of the is for it it, product with the water of the river which he drinks. So long as that water is a part of the river, all persons of the tribe have a common right to it; but when one dips it up to drink or otherwise use, then it becomes the property of the taker solely. There are no water companies in Indiandom who lay hold of and exappropriate the water of the river, and shail take who any act toll from anyone the ownership part ol it, a toll based upon claim that they of a resource of Nature, and have a right to demand pay for their consent that such water shall be used. And when the Indian went to the forest to hunt, the game he took was his; no man had a right to deny him entrance to the forest to hunt, nor to demand part of the game he killed when he should return The game was individually his, just as the corn which he raised upon the plain was The wholly his when it was gathered. wild state his in free was Indian, therefore, of nature. No man of the tribe was seperi-o- r to him, and if a chief were elected, it was because he was a man of superior merit and the office assigned to him was that ol an adviser and guide, whose advice might bo acted upon or not, just as the person to whom it was given might determine. There was no man among them who possessed inordinate wealth, for no man could have more than he earned or what was given him; healthful work, activity in some term was for man necessary for him to secure a living, where he is that is Indiandom in plane upon sbedient to Gods command, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy bread. But let us assume that this Indian tribe is set upon by some foreign foe and is conquered. They are plundered of their possessions which are divided as spoils among the victors. If the invaders intend to depart from them and return to their own land, they may be content with this; but suppose they shall conclude to dwell among the captured. Obviously there is a wide chasm between the castes of the two peoples in that land, between the conquered and the conquerors, How shall this be defined in the practical conduct of society? It will be done by one of two ways: First by makining the conquered people slaves of the their work them against vaders to make When this were done will for the strangers. the land, the river and the forest would still be free, free to the freemen who are the I strangers, but denied to the slaves because they could possess nothing individually, and J" whatever they took from the river, the forest or the plain, beyond what was actually 1 no one would think of owning a slave in the South, because he could get free labor cheaper than the cost of keeping a slave. Freemen are cometing there for the opportunity of earning a living, and they will work for the barest living wage. They are superior to slaves, in that they do not have Successor to THE INTER-MOUNTAI- ADVOCAT N changes between men, so the toll for the use of that lot will rise; it is the law of that system' that wnatever possibility the land holds will most largely benefit the man who owns the land; and the Indian who does the work gets jittls above a bare living. This system would never have allowed society to have grown to anything like what it is today and, in fact, private property in land and the resources of nature is of comparatively recent origin in the worlds history. It caused the downfall of the Roman it would have extinguished modern if Europe it had not been that an outlet for that labor which the system is always pressing out of the country was found in the discovery of the Continent of North America, and that the people who took charge of that part of it which became the United States put the Single Tax principles nearly into practice. The land was in the first instance vested in the people through their government, and it was held to be selected by the people for their use. That was the theory: that it would be taken up only by those who wished to use it; it was not as- sumed that vast territories of it would be grabbed by speculators and held out of use and against the people. That was a of later years, unconceived at the time the land was assumed by the government, and was simply one of those political corruptions of which within the past thirty years and at the present time we have had, and have, so many. it was this outlet to immigration that allowed the private property in land system to grow in Europe. True, it caused the French Revolution; for the French are not much of an emigrating people; but the Germans and English, instead of revolting, emigrated. But the time has come, after a lapse of 400 years, that there is no free land in America anywhere which a man can take up and which will allow him a living upon it. There is no longer inducements for immigration from Europe, and new problems, or ra:her old problems revisited, are confronting the powers of that country They are confront-w- g these United States no less, and they piist be met. The only way in which they can be met is by returning to first principles: by treating .the things that God made as 2&mon property r the things -- made by individuals as sacredly their own property, upon which government no nor one else has a right to call wih a demand for a share. This can be simply done, simply by causing each person to pay to the whole peop'e, which is the government, an annual sum commensurate with the privileges which he specially enjoys in the way of natural resource. Then all would share alike in the resources of nature, and what a man produces is his own. This is what we call the Single Tax; it is not a tax; is is misnamed; it is simply a man paying for that which he exclusively enjoys, taken from the stock. The way to secure this is to abolish all other taxes, except the tax on land, raise this to the full annual value of the land possessed, and all things will adjust teemselves. The only person disturbed in the sligetest way in this process is the fond lord as a landlord; the speculator in Innd, the drawer of rent for land. These persons will lose for they are in the rong, and the loss should fall on them; everyone else will gain, and enormously gaiu; and as many persons are both landlords and industrials, there is not a doubt that there are millions, who, could they be made to understand what the Single Tax is, and means, would lreely make a deed to all the unused fond and all the rented fond they possess, and turn it over to the government m order that the prosperity which would ensue to them in their business, following the adoption of the Single Tax, might come to Em-pirej'a- devel-opeme- nd nt to be driven ; the lash of their necessities and the fear of discharge dpves them on. They eat about the same food as did ..the . slaves, and wear better clothes. They need no care when sick, and when old go to the poorhou.se. But suppose the instincts of the conquerors were against slavery; or suppose they did not wish to be bothered with slaves, as was the case with the followers of William the Conqueror. There is yet another way which they would take to enslave the people of the conquered country. The King would parcel out among his retainers the forest, the river and the plain. He would compile a d imes day book, in which he would have listed all ihe natural resources of the country, and would assign to various of his friends and servitors certain parcels of the earth and the the waters. Now the persons to whom this land or water was assigned would not wish to use these resources themselves, or very little of them, for a trifle in proportion to the whole would be sufficient upon which to produce all they could consume; but what would be really given by the king would be the right to levy a toll upon the native Indians for the use of these things which theretofore had been free to use amongst them So that when an Indian went to the river to fish, he would have to give a part of his catch to the lord who owned the river in return for his permission that the river should be thus used. And so with game caught in the forest, tribute would have to be paid to the man to whom the forest had been given; and so, also, with the cultivable earth; it could not be used, even to reside upon without paying, paw- The effects of this would be to shift the A man falls into the water. He is makdivine injunction upon all men to labor off the shoulders and of to create others, upon ing good headway to the shore. Friends a set oi idlers who would be sustained by come to his rescue. No amount of talk will those who were thus forced to labor for ever him but what he wonld have convince them. For the natural incentive of the Indian to get a living for himself would force reached the shore without any assistance. him to produce enough out of the soil to Another falls into the water and is heard to do this and to pay his tax to the owner of cry lustily lor help. He is taken out by his the soil. friends. No amount of talk will convince And as the lamp of knowledge is lighted in the minds of these people, and they come him but that he would have drownd, had to discover marvelous and never dreamed of not help enme. These facts show the utter uses of their resousces oi nature to the service uselessness oi trying to push reforms faster of man, as those resources rise in their es- than the people are ready for them . So teem, so would the share of the landlord long ns men are foolish enough to suppose who owned the resources increase. As the that reforms can be had through the eld possibilities of production on a given piece of earth arose, the toll for the permission ol parties they will never call on another for the landlorn to use it would increase, and help, and should the desired reform come the landless Indians, competing for a chance through a new party these old fossils would to earn a living, would by force of their always believe or at least prelend to believe, competition, give up all but a bare living that the old parties would have brought it that they could force the earth to yielL in order that the) might get that bare living. if let alone. There is no use of offering As the machine is invented which with the help him who thinks he does not need it. labor of one man makes an acre of land yield as much as five acres yielded before, the toll LABOR DAY AT CALDERS. for the use of that acre will rise proportiuate The Labor Exchange will celebrate LaI to its yield; as the rectaugular plot of ground presence bor Day at Calders Park. Good speak(omrs, by reason of the adia-eof a city, to be vastly useful ii making ex ers will be in attendance. nt NO. 31. IO n Ifthli number is on tho label talnlnsr your name, you had bettei renew as lathe number of the nextmighty issue. quick, that WE AND YE. BY MARKGARET HALE. We of the hut and hovel, We of the grime and sweat, To you of the purple and linen tine, Of the palace home and tne sparkling wine Are exceedingly in debt! For our bread we are indebted To you of the banquet spread . For the crumbs that tall when you need no more, For the hunger howl of the wolf at the door, Yea, for our famished dead! For our lives we are indebted To ye that lord the earth! Our lives! Ha! ha! Look on and see For the gifts how thankful we should be! Ye gods! is it not ol worth? For its round of ceaselers travail, Of gnawing fears and cares, For darkened mind and stunted frame, For childhood lost and blotted name, We owe you, O Millionaires! For many a long drawn contest, Our hunger against your gold, Your gold and the right arm of the law, And the breath of Famines gaping maw, Gainst us, O ye Warriors bold! Red Coeur dAlene and Homestead Were yours, Victorious Foe, And the cities twain beside the Lakes, Where brothers fell een for our sakes! But ours was the debt and woe! For ever and ever it crieth (And we may not forget) The blood of the murdered twenty fonr! Say, shall we pay you with golden ore, O Plutocrats, this deep debt? Yea, but our debts be many, We of the grime and sweat! Awake, O Sleepers, O Blind, and think! 'Tis not well to dream on the craters brink! We love not to be in debt! . The only course open to Populists is to ' ' V: labor and to wait. ' ' .'T: . The real issue, is shall the people or the corporations rule the country? The Editor has been too busy this week to write much. We are letting our brother editors talk to you but you will find them quite interesting. Among the first symptoms that a man is coming to his senses politically is when you hear him saying that he is disgusted. There are a great many people who are being disgusted about now. means taking land from a people who wear little else than a breechclout and giving it to people who wear clothes that! have pockets that can be picked at the hands of their masters. Imperialism The Democrats have refused to fuse with the Populists. The Silver Republicans have diffused so they cannot fuse. The Salvation Army has neither diffused nor refused to fuse, and it is thought by some that it may fuse. About the full extent of the Silver Issue this year is that ii furnishes an excuse for a series of combinations by which the "patriots lor revenue only can get back into positions to skin the people the same as they have done in the past. The only thing ever asked of Mr. Dunbar ia the matter of publishing notices was that he keep his hands off things that do not concern him. If a good officer, he could have had no interest in the matter. Whice conversely slated means that if he took an interest, he is not a good officer. The only hope for success with the plu- tocracy rests with the ignorance of the masses. Could all the people, or even a majority of them learn the real truth of the manner in which they have been robbed there would be such a tumult raised as was never seen. The real truth is all they need. SOCIALISTS TAKE NOTICE. Members os the Socialist Labor Party and those wishing to join section Salt Lake City, will meet August the twenty-fift( Thursday) at 8 P. M. at Room No. two 101 Main Street. h |