A Footnote to the Single-Tax Discussion

To THE EDITOR: —

Permit me to thank you, and the author, for the very lucid, important, and timely article by Professor Alvin S. Johnson, in t he January Atlantic. ‘ The Case Against the Single Tax’ is the case against present political tendencies in this country. We who live in Wisconsin, which Mr. Roosevelt has so happily termed the ‘experiment station,’ know this better, perhaps, than some others, for we have been subjects for all the crack-brained prescriptions for curing the ills of unjust taxation by using ‘the hair of the dog.’

The tendency in this state is already toward the confiscation of property by taxation. Our system operates now, so far as farmers are concerned, virtually as a single land-tax.

In his first message as Governor, in January, 1901, Robert M. La Follette criticised his predecessors because their record showed ‘a steady and rapid increase in the cost of government.’ He defined this as ‘an advance of 50 per cent . . . within a period of ten years.’ A table which is a part of the message, shows that the aggregate cost of government for the ten years (18891898) to which he referred, was $30,334,000.72, or about $3,000,000 per annum. In the last year of the decade total disbursements reached $3,708,582.50.

Mr. La Follette, who established our ‘experiment station,’ was governor six years, during which the state spent $30,524,340.03, and for the last year expenditures rose to $5,104,868. That was doing well, but the last Legislature, of 1913, appropriated over $36,000,000, for the current two years.

We collect this year in income taxes over $4,000,000; and in taxes upon railroads over $4,000,000. Either item exceeds the entire cost of state government in 1900.

Meanwhile our ratio of increase in population has fallen from 22.2 per cent in 1900, to 12.8 per cent in the Census of 1910.

These figures have large significance in the light of Professor Johnson’s argument.

Wisconsin has progressed in tax reform only in the direction of collecting these greatly increased sums of money, and also, in adding largely to local bonded indebtedness; for as our assessments rise, the limit of county, town, and municipal indebtedness rises, automatically. The constitution limits such indebtedness to 5 per cent of the assessed valuation.

Thirteen Wisconsin cities have recently taken over various public utilities and others are moving in this direction.

Is not the demand for government ownership of railroads, telegraphs and telephones, a wider manifestation of the unrest that finds new burdens, rather than relief, in higher taxes and growing public extravagance?

Professor Johnson points to the goal toward which ‘reform’ is hastening us, and at breath-taking speed. It is socialistic and communal ownership. We shall first extinguish private property by methods of taxation that will eventuate in the single tax, then culminate in confiscation, and we shall extinguish other private ownership in government ownership, through purchase or virtual confiscation, as in the case of the express business, now before our eyes.

Pardon me, but as I see it, this country is already in the midst of a revolution that means, if it succeeds, the destruction of all rights in private property, If I am, even measurably, correct in this view, the seriousness of the menace is my justification for trespassing upon your space.

ELLIS B. USHER.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN, January 6, 1914.