OPENING UP THE LAND 231 



ciently heav}^ men would take only such land as 

 they actually needed or as they actually worked, 

 whether it was ten acres or a hundred acres. They 

 would pay an annual tax to the State, not unlike 

 the rental now paid the landlord. But they would 

 then be free from all other taxes, and in addition 

 the great quantities of land brought onto the mar- 

 ket would materially cheapen the rental of all land. 

 For as taxes on land are increased the price of the 

 land diminishes. If the tax amounted to 5 or 6 

 per cent, on the selling value land would have very 

 little value. For such a tax would make specula- 

 tion impossible and the holding of land idle so costly 

 to the owner that he would give it up. 



And the taxation of all land values up to the full 

 amount of the rental value is the aim of those who 

 beheve in the single-tax philosophy. They would 

 tax land heavily as a means not only of freeing the 

 land but of freeing man as well. This would end 

 tenancy; it would end all land speculation; it would 

 end land monopoly forever. For then men would 

 hold no more land than they actually used, and as 

 land would exist in abundance for all it would be 

 impossible for owners to hold men either as tenants 

 or as agricultural workers. Men would own their 

 own farms and work for themselves. And that is 

 the ideal of a democratic agriculture. 



Moreover, the untaxing of all kinds of farm im- 

 provements would encourage men to build, to make 



