338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELT 



States, in 1861. The present revolutions in China and Mexico will 

 almost certainly abolish some political and some economic privileges. 

 The establishment of woman suffrage in some countries and states is 

 abolishing one form of political privilege. 



All political privilege will be abolished only when there is perfect 

 equality of voting and legislative rights. To get these, we must have 

 popular and democratic government, with one vote for each citizen of 

 whatever race or of either sex. If we have a so-called representative 

 government, it must be kept representative by the initiative, referendum 

 and recall. The reins must always be in the hands of the people. The 

 majority must always rule. There must be no hereditary rights and no 

 constitution that can not be overturned, at the will of the living ma- 

 jority. Anything short of this is not full political equality and is in- 

 consistent with the New Freedom. 



There are two principal forms of economic privileges : ( 1 ) Eestric- 

 tions on productions: (2) Restrictions on exchange of goods. Pro- 

 duction is interfered with mainly by monopolies of the source of supply 

 of materials or of the opportunities to produce. These monopolies are 

 conferred by means of title deeds, franchise rights, leases, etc. We can 

 ignore patent rights, for they are but temporary, and, theoretically, are 

 intended to encourage improvements in machinery and thus to increase 

 production, even during the short periods for which they run. 



Probably the easiest and simplest way to abolish land and franchise 

 monopolies, and thus to get rid of the privileges pertaining to land, is 

 through government ownership of all franchise or public service cor- 

 porations or monopolies, and by taking, for public purposes, the full 

 economic rent of land. This can best be done by what we in this 

 country call the Single Tax. The Single Tax simply takes for the 

 public what the public produces — the so-called unearned increment of 

 land — and, by taxing nothing else but land values, leaves to individual 

 producers all that they produce. The single tax, therefore, conserves 

 property rights to the greatest possible extent. It gives, in the most 

 practical way, each citizen, from his birth, his full right to the use of the 

 earth. Thomas Jefferson, Herbert Spencer and many other great states- 

 men and thinkers, from Moses to Henry George, agree that the earth, 

 in usufruct, should belong to the living, and that the dead should have 

 no control over it. 



Exchange of goods is interfered with mainly through import and 

 internal revenue taxes. Of these the import, or tariff taxes are, by far, 

 the more important from a restrictive standpoint. They can be abol- 

 ished by wiping them from our statute-books, in which case we should 

 have trade as free and natural between countries as it is between our 

 states and cities. 



With full and equal political rights and with full and equal rights 



