17 



tions between producer and consumer would dispense, in 

 large part with the services of the middleman and save his 

 profits to the bettering of both of them. 



A class of reasoners has lately appeared who hold that 

 taxes should be levied upon land alone. Land, they say, 

 can be seen. It can not escape the grip of the tax-collector 

 like stock-certificates and paper values. This view is most 

 attractive to the average city resident. He holds no real 

 estate. He expects to hold none. The view may become 

 popular. Most people have their savings in stocks and 

 banks and business securities mainly. But the farmer will 

 have no easy task to reconcile this view with his prosperity. 

 If the burtheu of the public revenues is to be borne, in the 

 first instance, by land, it \vould seem to foUoAv, that the 

 holding of land will be a more precarious investment than 

 it is, inasmuch as a larger mone}'' return from the products 

 of land nuist be assured every year in order to make the 

 investment a safe one. There must be an ample reserve 

 fund to meet contingencies. No man can then afford to 

 take the risk of holding land except he have a plethoric 

 bank-account to fall back upon to meet his taxes in case of 

 crop-failure, or, what is quite as bad, in case of price-failure 

 due to over-production. The acreage of the county, it 

 would seem, must in this event pass out of the hands of 

 the practical farmer and be absorbed by great land-propri- 

 etors, and the tiller of the soil be driven to trade, or to 

 manufactures, or to the uncongenial lot of tilling his own 

 birthright acres as the tenant of another. You say we are 

 in no danger of this, — that the proposition needs only to be 

 stated, to be scouted. The national election now in pro- 

 gress ought to persuade us that no political vagary is too 

 fantastic to command its votaries — that there is no such 

 thing as the impossible in politics. It is the whole people 

 of the commonwealth who have the settlement of methods 

 of taxation. In considering the single-tax proposition, the 



