Review of Reviews, If 6/06. 



Land Monopoly in Tasmania, 



461 



worthy of the movement nor of himst-lf. To pass 

 an Act specially aimed at a single company when 

 there are hundrt^ds of others all sucking the life- 

 blood out of the country, preventing its develop- 

 ment] and driving people to the other States, would, 

 of course, be totally inadequate, besides being grossly 

 unjust, but in the present ignorance of economic 

 principles, it would be a very popular measure, and 

 would stand a good chance of being passed. The 

 only sound way of dealing with the question is to 

 place a tax on land values all over the island whe- 

 ther hdd in small quantities or in large, witho'Ut 

 exemptions and without graduations, but for this 

 equable and philosophical method of coping with 

 the evil the public here are not apparently as yet 

 sufficiently prepared. 



Incomparably the ablest advocate of land national- 

 isation in Tasmania is Mr. A. J. Ogilvie, a farmer 

 of Richmond, near Hobart, whose interesting and 

 well-written lectures and articles have had a wide 

 circulation. He is in favour of a combination of 

 the schemes of Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry 

 George — the rep rchase of estates to be subsequent- 

 ly leased, with periodical reassessments, giving 

 security of tenure and the right to improvements, 

 the reservation of all mineral rights, and the taxa- 

 tion of such lands as are not bought. No one has 

 shown the e\ils of the present system in a clearer 

 light than Mr. Ogilvie. I admire his aims, but I dis- 

 agree with his means. The object we all have in 



view is the same — namely, to do away with the evils 

 of land monopoly, and to give labour access to 

 natural opportunities, but our methods differ. 

 Ministers of the Crown, politicians, and Land De- 

 partment officials, backed up by land nationalists 

 and sometimes by Labour members, would get over 

 the difficulty by buying the land back. Single- 

 taxers, on the other hand, contend that it would 

 be grossly unjust to buy back what already belongs 

 to the people by right, and we claim that the only 

 just and natural method is to place a tax on all 

 land values without exemptions and without gradua- 

 tions, and to gradually increase the amount till the 

 whole of that value, which has been directly created 

 solely by the community as a whole, has been ap- 

 propriated by the community and expended on its 

 behalf. To show how this simple act of justice 

 would force all land worth having into use, destroy 

 its speculative value, reduce its price and lower 

 rent, give every man an opportunity of earning an 

 honest living, raise wages to their highest point, re- 

 store to men their long-lost independence, enable 

 them to marry and bring up a family under such 

 favourable conditions as certainly doi not prevail 

 now, minimise the temptation to prostitution, dnin- 

 kenness and gambling (which are mainly the result 

 of CO ditions caused by land monopoly), and 

 solve the labour problem, would require a disserta- 

 tion by itself, but that it would do all these things 

 is as afisolutely certain as that the dawn will follow 

 the darkes- n'ght. 



I 



Plio ograph bv] [^Underwood and L'ndenvood. 



The Imperial Chinese Mission for the Study of Social and Commercial 



Conditions in Europe. 



