Show THE COMMON SEaBE OF TAXATION Mr Henry George has written an article for the North American Review of July to which he has affixed this title upon the presumption that the view taken by him ef taxation must be commpn to everybody else at least as soon as his pages have been read His idea is that there is no intrinsic value in anything but land therefore land is the only thing that should be taxed All land and nothing but land is real estate according to his conjecture or rather to ba positive posi-tive assertion Houses barns atoreo and other improvements not count as property On the contrary he rather inclines to the notion that they should be in a manner subsidized But for one very sensible remark we should have clashed Mr George among the protectionists The farmer he says goes to work he worka himself him-self and hii wife works and his children workwork like horses and live in tho hardest and dreariest manner man-ner Such a man deserves encouragement encour-agement not discouragement but on him taxation falls with peculiar severity sever-ity Almost evarything that he has to buy groceries clothing tola are largely raised in price by a system of tariff taxation which cannot add to the price of the grain or hogs or cattle that he has to sell H Thin is + common com-mon sense view of taxation which we heartily commend to our farmers Still we do not exactly understand what our author means by laying that this overtaxed man deserves encouragement encour-agement nor what kind of encouragement encour-agement it would be to put a heavy tax on his land To be sure a little further on he objects to the taxation of the farmers improvements but we confess via do not see much difference differ-ence as all the revenue ia to be raised from the land in levying 20 upon an acre or 10 upon that and 10 upon tbe house that is built on it To our notion as Mr Mongredien Mr McAdam and Mr George himself here show the farmer already pays axes enough and gets nothing in return re-turn Some railroad men who jump hastily at a conclusion would like all of this but the reduction of tares and reight Or take the case ol the rail roads That railroads are a public benefit no one will dispute We want more railroads and want them to ro duce their fares and freight Why then should ere tax them for taxes upon railroads deter from railroad rail-road building and compel higher charges Instead of taxing railroads is it not clear that we should rather tax the increased value which they give to land It strikes us that this would be an odd way of building uptowns up-towns and introducing farming along the line of a railroad and that Mr George is inconsistent for it land according to his theory is taxable because be-cause of the profitable use to which it may be put then surely the lands on which the railroads are built ought to pay their full share A railroad man arguing with him does not see his own interest any more than did one gentleman who gravely argued the other day that it was for the advantage advan-tage of railroads and of everybody to pay Pennsylvania 28 per ton tax on steel raile Mr George is sometimes I very much mixed and contradictory but sometimes be blunders into a truism like this uNo citizen should be given an advantage or put at a disadvantage as compared with other citizens That ia i the essence of free trade He says the farmer haa no encouragement Well he does not ask it All that he asks ia that other people shall not be encouraged at his expense He wants to buy his groceries gro-ceries clothing and toolson the same terms that he sells his wheat That is all It is absurd to contend that land only is property If that is EO Vanderbilt and Gould who have their money mostly invested in railroad rail-road stock and bonds or United States securities are poor men and should pay nothing for the support of government This tort of reasoning will not hold Taxation should be made aa equal aa poeiible Once there was a heavy duty on tea and coffee the most equal tax that could posaibiy be assssaod for everybody drinks tea and coffee But a few years ago this tax was removed by a trick of Mr John Kelly the great representative of the Pennsylvania iron men He stood behind the scenes merely pulling the wires and Congress Con-gress almost unanimously voted the repeal because the constituents of all thembeing tea and coffee drinkers would not have elected them again if they had opposed the bill Then when argther bill for lessening the duty on iron and steel came up soon afterwards Mr Kelly i caused Y 0 w a e it to be defeated because the revenue bad already been so much diminished by remov I ing the duty from tea and coffee What makes this extortion he succeeded in maintaining the more outrageous is the fact that when the duty on lea and coffee all went into the treasury the duty on iron and steel goes into the pockets of Kellys constituents con-stituents for the most part We sadly need a reformation of our I system of taxation but it will not come from Mr Kelly or Mr George |