AGRICULTURE AND THE SINGLE TAX. 499 



culture. The land-owners have so many stakes in the country, and 

 these are driven so firmly, and woven together so tightly, that no 

 revolution can gain head which has for its aim to dispossess them 

 of their homes and acres, or to unduly tax them. 



No evidence exists showing or tending to show that agricult- 

 ural land in the United States is capable of yielding any consider- 

 able amount of public revenue above what it now yields under 

 the tax laws of the several States. Evidence corroborating that 

 cited from the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics has been 

 supplied lately in a rapidly swelling stream, especially in the offi- 

 cial publications of the Commissioners of Vermont and New Hamp- 

 shire, where there are literally tens of thousands of acres of aban- 

 doned lands, which were once the homes of thrifty farmers, and 

 which can now be had for no greater price than the present value 

 of the improvements thereon. A remarkable letter from Judge 

 Nott, of the United States Court of Claims, in the " Nation " of No- 

 vember 21, 1889, presents facts and reasoning thereon, which, what- 

 ever else may be said, show conclusively that in the fairest parts of 

 agricultural New England there is nothing left for the single tax 

 to sweep into the public treasury. In the presence of such facts, 

 how idle is it for disputants to cull figures out of the census 

 reports, as Mr. Shearman does in the " Forum " article previously 

 cited, to show what was the value of farms in 1880, and what 

 annual percentage they ought to yield like measuring a man for 

 clothes, at the distance of a mile, with a theodolite ! 



There is no subject more bedeviled with dogmatism than tax- 

 ation. There is none in which dogmatism is less helpful. The 

 more study one bestows upon it the less will he be inclined to lay 

 down inflexible rules. While justice should be ever in the mind's 

 eye, yet our conclusions must always be mainly experimental. Of 

 all the dogmas on taxation the single tax on land is the most dog- 

 matic, and the one least favored by experiment, so far as experi- 

 ment has been made. In India the single tax has been in force 

 from the earliest times, supplemented by other taxes only after 

 economic rent had been exhausted. During the last half-century 

 British India has been well governed, so that whatever bless- 

 ings the single tax has in hiding ought there to have been dis- 

 closed. That it has not abolished poverty, or exhibited any 

 tendency to do so, may be confidently affirmed. 



There are some hundreds of professors of political economy in 

 the colleges and universities of the civilized world. They are of 

 various schools, including that of state socialism. Some are con- 

 servatives, others progressives, still others may be called radicals. 

 They are men who have somehow got themselves recognized as 

 fit to instruct others in the principles of the science which deals 

 with the production and distribution of wealth, with land, labor, 



