Decembkr 13, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



915 



The great advantage of the Hollerith 

 tabulating machinery, aside from its pre- 

 cision, lies in the possibility of making a 

 single transcription of data and but one 

 handling of schedules serves for the most 

 complicated tabulations and for those in 

 which the same facts are classified and ag- 

 gregated according to many different and 

 conflicting elements. It also has the merit 

 of simplifying the work of a large office and 

 reducing the greater portion of it to the 

 grade of factory work. 



' The Single Tax ' : Hon. James Crosby, 

 Denver. 



To the thoughtful mind the political out- 

 look at the opening of the new century is 

 profoundly interesting. The nineteenth 

 century was a wonderful century, but in 

 one sphere of human development it was a 

 disappointment. With all our boasted 

 progress, we have not made better citizens 

 or a more contented people. Industrial 

 slavery must be abolished before the 

 social organism can be restored to health, 

 and the single-tax philosophy contains the 

 proper remedy. Single-taxers maintain 

 that the reason the wages of labor do not 

 increase as material progress advances is be- 

 cause rent, or the price paid for the use of 

 land, is continually increasing. The laud 

 upon which Chicago now stands was not 

 worth an old shoe one hundred years ago. 

 To-day millions could not buy it. The land 

 upon which Denver is built was valueless 

 fifty years ago. To-day it is worth millions, 

 and as the city grows, wages will not in- 

 crease, but we all know that the value of 

 land will. By collecting this ever-increas- 

 ing rent and using it for the benefit of all 

 the people we abolish land monopoly and 

 solve the problem of the persistence of 

 poverty amid an advancing civilization. 

 This single tax is not a tax upon land, but 

 upon land values, an entirely different 

 matter. We are frequently told that the 

 single tax would bear with great severity 



upon the poor farmer. This criticism would 

 be just if we proposed to tax land, but it is 

 not true if land values are taxed. For while 

 most of the land is in the country, most of 

 the land values are in the city. Under the 

 single tax system the farmer would pay very 

 little tax. Land values are easily collected. 

 Land cannot run away, nor can it be hid 

 when the assessor appears. Everywhere, 

 in all times, monopoly of the land upon 

 which all must live and from which all 

 wealth is produced, is the basis of social and 

 political disorders. The single-tax system, 

 if adopted, will destroy industrial slavery 

 and will usher in a period of peace and 

 prosperity for all. 



' The Road Problem ': James W. Abbott, 

 Special Agent U. S. Office of Public Road 

 Inquiries for the Mountain Division, Den- 

 ver. 



The renaissance of road building began 

 during the first half of the eighteenth 

 century. Metcalf in England, and, con- 

 temporary with him, Tresaguet in France, 

 were the pioneers in this movement, and 

 were followed later by Telford and Mac- 

 adam, whose methods, with slight modifi- 

 cations, are still used. It is a singular 

 coincidence that correct road-building prac- 

 tices were evolved just before the beginning 

 of the railway era. In the United States 

 the first attempt at better roads was 

 made by toll-road companies ; later came 

 the National 'Cumberland Road,' which 

 was the beginning of an excellent sj^stem 

 of government military roads constructed 

 at public expense. While in Europe the 

 railway and highway systems expanded 

 together, in the United States the rail- 

 way displaced the highway in public at- 

 tention ; and, with the beginning of the 

 railway era, national appropriations for 

 road building were discontinued. Then fol- 

 lowed a very remarkable period of conquest 

 of the wilderness, during which the highway 

 question received almost no attention. The 



