Show LAND AND LAND TAXATION A writer in tho Mirror 1 says During a short p period ri rid d of of twenty years years from from 1850 to o 1870 inclusive American congresses be st stowed upon railroad corporations nearly acres of the peoples people's es e's patrimony or 01 an amount equal to o twelfth one of the area of the United States We Ve thought that had all been threshed out and disposed of Assume that the figures are arc e correct I What of it 7 The r result has been that the farmers in the various states who formerly burned their co corn cOin for fuel get a good price for it The result is that the whole country between the Mississippi J and the west coast has bas been settled and the value of the property of the tho United States has been multiplied multiplied mul mul- by ten If 11 a man maii has twelve acres of l land nd isolated and away from froni all oIl markets and by giving up one acre of that land can put himself with his eleven acres left within two days' days or three thre e days days' distance from either ocean and through it be enabled enabled enabled en en- to sell his products for a fair price who says ho las hC has not made a good bargain 1 There Thero is s a great deal of bosh about mon monopoly pol of land in the United States The Thc way to cure that thatis is not to put all tho tax taxes s that the people have ha to pay on the land but to tax the uncultivated acre the same as the cultivated because while a man has a right to own land he has no right to own idle land when the poor need the products that that land hind would d produce if put under cultivation Tax tho the uncultivated acre the same as the cultivated cultivated cultivated and then the great monopolists in land will do one of two things things they they will either cither sell their surplus land or they will work it and that is all alt that is required because if a man has a thousand or ten thousand acres of land and he works it all aU raising valuable crops he has ha to give employment to to more men meil than would be at work if that ten thousand acres was divided up equally among a thousand men |