Notice. Anyone erecting a building on a vacant lot, or constructing a factory to produce goods, shall be treated as an enemy, and punished by an increase of taxes.

"Well, Sambo, you object to slavery, eh? I'm exceedingly sorry for you, but I paid my hard-earned cash for you, and it would ruin me to let you go, and if you run away you will be guilty of gross confiscation."

The land monopolists say that land is raw material, and that it ought not to be taxed, because taxation would make it cheaper. They, therefore, object to cheap raw material, which, to say the least of it, marks them as a new and remarkable school of political

economists.

"I have another reason [why the incidence of local taxation should be cast on real estate], and it is this-it is the only property which not only does not diminish in value, but in a country growing in population and advancing in prosperity it always increases in value and without help from the owner." -Cobden (speeches, vol. I., p. 420.)

Mr. G. D. Meudell, principally remarkable for the possession of a pair of spectacles and of unbounded cheek, accuses Messrs. Higgins and Irvine, M.'sL.A., of "talking silly German Socialism." No other comment is necessary than to recall to our readers Landseer's wellknown picture" Dignity and Impudence." It exactly portrays the respective mental and moral calibre of the parties concerned.

The bakers in the State of Moko have lately cornered all the bread, nearly starving the inhabitants. A tax is proposed to be placed on the value of the bread they are withholding from the people. The monopolists have entered a strong protest, asserting that the tax will entirely disorganise their financial arrangements, will bring down the price of bread, and will ruin the country by flooding the market with nourishing food.

Mr. Foster Rogers, M.L.A.-the inventor of the surplus tax, Sir-gave the House a couple of hours of unadulterated enjoyment. For, in spite of the self-sufficiency and Nor was it all ill-natured enjoyment either. the pedantic tone of the utterance, the House respected the simplicity and earnestness of the member for South Yarra. But we would strongly advise the new member henceforth to cultivate an eloquent silence, and especially to eschew all reference to the great surplus tax, otherwise the House will soon declare him the champion bore, and his eloquence will fail to make any impression on empty benches and a sleepy Speaker.

The "Argus," quoting from an article in the "Contemporary Review" for October, states "that 31,500 persons own more than half the total wealth of the United States," the remaining 70,000,000 persons owning the other half. Does the 66 Argus " want the the truth were known, we are not far from same condition of things to arise here? If it. Protection and land monopoly combined must inevitably produce some such result. Yet the "Argus" wants neither Free Trade nor free land. evils with tariff reform. As well might it It professes to cure these try to remove the Australian Alps by the application of a mustard plaster.

Mr. Moule, M.L.A., stated in Parliament that two market gardeners asked him why the land owner whose land they were raising in value through their labour should not be taxed on that value. His reply was that the owner had purchased the right to the unearned increment. words, then, these gardeners, as regards In other this land owner, are exactly in the posi tion of slaves. right to reap certain results of their toil withHe has purchased the out rendering them any compensating return. and will be a community of slaves till the And let it be clearly understood that this is last jot and tittle of land values is taken by the people who earn them.

The assertion that the land value tax will "ruin the State" was put forward by Mr. R. Murray Smith at a meeting of Melbourne citizens held a few days ago; but Mr. Smith did not condescend to show exactly how the country would be ruined by the tax. Such gentlemen never do descend into the arena to give full logical reasons for their assertions. We are told that the welfare of the people is bound up in that of the banks. This is putting the cart before the horse. The reverse is the case; the banks depend on the activity of production, and on the prosperity of the people. Louis XIV. said, "I am the State;" the Victorian bank director thumps his chest, and likewise says, "I am the State."

Logic does not seem to be a strong point with Mr. Moule, the new member for Brighton, though he is said, by his friends, to be a lawyer. First he clamours for a

tax on all wealth, and then he denounces the tax on land values, because "it would give an interest in his land to A, B, and C at the other end of the colony." If the land tax does this, would not the wealth tax give a similar interest to A, B, and C in all Mr. Moule's possessions, his bed and his horse, his house and garden, aye, and even his baby's perambulator, if he has a baby? Probably he has not, for in the matter of logic, at any rate, he appears as yet to be a very small baby himself.

A few days ago a deputation representing waited on a member of the Ministry to procertain Flinders-street property owners test against the closing of two gates leading from Flinders-street station into Flindersstreet, the closing of these gates being likely to divert the foot traffic from their properties, and thereby to cause a reduction in the value of their business premises. The Minister was unable to assist them. Surely, on the Anti-Single Tax basis, these men have bought their properties on the understanding that the Government would continue to expend public moneys in keeping up their values; the Government has no right in the public interest to curtail its expenditure without first compensating the persons whose vested interest would suffer.

On the 16th of July, 1894-mark the date the "Argus" wrote:

"Assuredly, if we take into account the additional value which the railways have conferred on the private and public lands of the colony, it is self-evident that they have paid for themselves twice over."

This is only too true. But in spite of the fact that the railways have paid for themselves twice over," the people still owe the whole of their cost, and have to pay the interest thereon. The owners of the private lands manifestly got the bulk of the £90,000,000 which the railways earned, and now when they are asked to contribute a little to the cost of the railways, the "Argus shrieks robbery and confiscation. Truly, strange are the ways of the Tory.

One of the reasons urged by the "Argus land is that it would reduce the contribution against the tax on the unimproved value of of present land tax payers by £20,000. We to assure us that this was the same "Argus" did not trust our eyes, and called in a friend which had denounced the class tax on equatters in vitriolic terms. Talk of " revolving lights;" surely never was there seen one which gyrated in a more puzzling manner than this "Argus." But the erratic fashion of its revolutions is not accident but design. Like the wreckers of the Cornish coast, it exhibits false lights. For this same article contained the statement that this loss would have to be made good by the farmers and the farmers alone. That the cities would pay one penny towards it was craftily concealed. However, the farmers know better, and cannot be allured into the quicksands of revenue tariffism by the "wrecking light" of the "Argus."

doubt the fact that there are people foolish enough to relieve "poor Smith" of his burden on these terms, we do not mind confessing to be one of them. We are anxiously waiting for Smith to come along.

The members who oppose the Government proposals should come to an understanding with regard to the arguments they advance. Otherwise they will so effectually annihilate each other that the speakers on the other side will have nothing to reply to. Mr. Murray Smith and Mr. Madden, for instance, were very loud in their denunciations of the land tax as a class tax. And now comes Mr. Moule, and denounces the same measure because it is not a class tax, and asks, " Why, in the name of common sense, should they put a tax on that which nearly every man held?" We really are sorry for Mr. Moule, but there is a way to satisfy his yearnings for a class tax. Let us tax brains. Few men possess any worth talking about, and the member for Brighton might, peradventure, escape himself.

The defenders of the banks and other financial and unfinancial institutions against the unholy attempt of the Government to get them to contribute something to the revenue, maintain that the only methods of taxation placed before the country at the last general elections were wealth tax and income tax. For once these gentlemen are right. Neither the then Government nor the Opposition placed the tax on the unimproved value of land before the electors. But it got there all the same. It came spontaneously from the electors themselves, without any official patronage, and it secured the adherence of forty-nine members. Do these gentlemen pretend that the people had no right to insist upon the revenue being raised in a particular manner, unless that manner was recommended to them by a political party? To us it seems the mandate is all the more imperative because it was given spontaneously.

On the 10th last Messrs. Abrahams and Co. settled an action brought against them in the Supreme Court for the alleged fraudulent

attachment of the name of "Hollis " to inferior guns. The terms of the settlement were, that defendants pay to plaintiff £1250 damages and that they consent to a perpetual injunction restraining them from in any way using the name of Hollis and Sons in connection with guns not manufactured by plaintiffs. The defendants have thus virtually admitted that they have been guilty of fraud, which may have endangered the lives of and injured a good many people. At any rate there is a strong prima facie case against them. Now this is not merely an offence against the plaintiffs in this action, but against the whole community. If Messrs. Abrahams & Co. have been guilty of these acts they ought to be punished criminally, and if they are not prosecuted, the Crown Law Department is failing in its duty in a most heinous manner. So far we have not heard that a prosecution has been instituted.

The electors of Toorak are anxious to ascertain from Mr. R. D. Reid, M.L.A., which of the following are his real opinions:ELECTION SPEECH.

"I believe in a tax on the unimproved value of land. You have no right to tax

man's improvements, which should be free. You will hardly credit it, but one half-penny in the £ would give £333,000; and one penny-which would be harsh and too high would give £666,000."- Saturday, Sept. 8th, 1894.

SPEECH IN PARLIA

MENT.

"I only hope that the Government will withdraw this tax on the unimproved land values at once, and substitute something better for it. If they do so, they will have my support. If they do not, I must vote against them."--Two months later.

We should be sorry to accuse Mr. Reid of having deliberately misled the electors of Toorak, for he may have honestly changed his mind. By the time the next elections come, he may change back again.

The indignation which the Conservatives displayed when Mr. Higgins, M.L.A., asserted that the Government of every country claimed now, and always had claimed, the right to take land without compensation was as heated as it is ludicrous. This same principle has been embodied in the law of Victoria for 30 years, and was reenacted for a special purpose by the Patterson Government with the full concurrence of the House. The Act to which we refer is the Lands Compensation Act, and affirms that if a portion of any land is wanted for public works, the Government shall be at liberty to take it without compensation, provided its value does not exceed the addition, which the construction of the work makes to the value of the remaining land. A special clause to this effect was embodied in the Dimboola-Jeparit Railway Act, and was passed without a division. But it must be remembered that in this case it was only land belonging to farmers which was taken, whereas the present Bill refers to city and squatters' land as well. That makes all the difference, for no other can be discovered by even the best magnifier.

Mr. Moule, the new champion of toryism and plutocracy, gave the House a lecture on the proper attitude of the community towards financial institutions yclept money-lenders. He said:

The idea, if new, is at least striking. Here is a people of over a million souls, working like beavers, but their wealth does not in the least depend upon their labour. Their labour has nothing to do with it. Their wealth depends upon the question whether certain money-lending institutions can appropriate for themselves more or less of that wealth. If they can take more of the wealth the people make, the people will be wealthy; if the money-lenders take less, the people will be poor.

The argument is as convincing as that if Brown is hungry, he ought to let Jones eat his dinner, and the more Jones eats the less hungry will Brown be. It is the sort of argument which plutocracy always indulges in, and in Mr. Moule it seems to have found "a fit and proper person to utter it, with conviction, because he is not capable of appreciating its fallacy, at any rate as long as he participates in the dinner.

"Therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list." Well, we list to impugn. The "Argus" is continually stating that the agitation to tax land values is the result of the teaching of Henry George and his fanatical disciples, but it surely is not so illiterate on the land question. Mr. Goschen, speaking in the House of Commons, February, 1871, several years before Henry George was heard of, said: "I think that if the honourable baronet will look to foreign countries, or examine the history of his own, he will find that at no time has it been held that the taxes upon land are the same as upon other kinds of property." In the same speech Mr. Goschen quotes the following words of J. S. Mill:-"In most countries of Europe the right to tax as exigency might require, an indefinite portion of the rent of land, has never been allowed to slumber." We have also before us a tract of the Victorian Land Tenure Reform League, dated Melbourne, January, 1872. One plank in the platform reads, "The gradual abolition of all indirect taxes whatever. The revenue of the State to be derived solely from the rentals of the land." The "Argus" truly does stand in the place whereof it is demanded of conscience to speak the truth, but alas! what is its daily record? Let it cry Peccavi and sin no more, or else take in its signboard.

In spite of its determined efforts to mislead the farmers with regard to the incidence of the tax on land values, the "Argus" cannot succeed in keeping the truth entirely out of its columns. On the 13th last it published an interview with estate agents, from which we cull the following contradiction of all it has said about injustice to the farmers :

"On the subject of the general effect of the tax he considers that it will be more severely felt in the city and suburbs than even in the country-first because the country is altogether more solvent than the city and suburbs, and because the same enormous rise in values did not take place there as in the city and suburbs. More than half the properties round about Melbourne,' says our informant, are practically owned by the banks, building societies, and other financial institutions, while another fourth are in the hands of mortgagees.'"

Here it is: The tax will be felt more severely in the city, will fall mainly on the banks, financial institutions, and mortgagees. Then how can it fall most severely on farmers? If a

"The fact that stares every intelligent and every honest man in the face is that every step taken that is likely to increase values (of land) in town and country is a step towards prosperity, and that every step taken that lowers values is a step towards disasters." Thus the "Argus" on the 16th last, and it is quite right. Whatever improves the condition of the people increases the value of the land. But this is not the value to which the

66

Argus" refers, for a tax on the value of land must increase prosperity. It wants to make out that to increase the selling price of land is a good thing for the community. The mad speculation of a few years ago effectually raised the price of land. But, instead of "being a step towards prosperity," it was the cause of national disasters, for the increased price made it unprofitable to use land. Fancy any sane man maintaining that to raise land in price, till people are prevented from using it, is a step towards national prosperity. The exact opposite is the case. Cheap land attracts labour and capital, and increases production. The selling price of land has nothing to do with its value as a source of production. If the whole of the selling price of land is taxed away, its value may be doubled and trebled. But who can expect that the "Argus should see such an obvious distinction?

One of the most useful lies promulgated by the opponents of the tax on land values is the false allegation that the proposed act provides for country lands to be assessed at two-thirds of the value of the property; only one-third being deducted for improvements. There is, however, not a scintilla of truth in this allegation. The sole excuse for it is, that the Government, in the estimate of revenue derivable from the tax, took the average of improvements on all country lands to be one-third of the property value. This average, of course, includes squatting stations, farms in the mallee, farms in the western district, and orchards. It is well known that for each of such properties the proportion of improvement values to land value differs very considerably. The squatting station worth £10 per acre has, at the outside, improvements worth 15s. per acre; the mallee farm worth £2 per acre, has improvements of 30s. per acre and more; the farm in the western district worth £10 per acre, has improvements worth perhaps £3; and on the orchard or vineyard the improvements are worth from £25 to £50 per acre, whereas the land value comes to only £5 to £10 per acre. The Act provides that each case shall be dealt with on its merits. All this was clearly explained in the House by Mr. Irvine, M.L.A., and confirmed by the Premier, yet the lie is nevertheless repeated, and the liars are unabashed.

WORLD.

now deal with the modest assumption that the policy of the colony is to be shaped solely with a view of improving the position of the banks, whose grab-all policy is largely responsible for the present condition of the colony. But what we do want to point out is that no taxation to which the banks have to contribute can possibly improve their position directly. Consequently, if the above objection has any weight at all, it applies equally to the wealth tax or to any other taxation which can reach the banks. What the "Argus " therefore claims, is that the banks should be exempted from any contribution to the revenue, and that the common or garden variety of men, those outside the sacred chamber, shall pay the whole of it. As the banks have swallowed up nearly all the wealth in the country, the land included, this claim is characteristically modest. How do the farmers like it? We want to know.

be

Mr. Harper, M.L.A., the omniscient, committed himself to the statement that "ground values had been reckoned by English economists as fairly entitled to bear special taxation, cause the tenure of land in England was a feudal one." Yet in the same speech he showed that he knew better, that they hold this view because, 88 John Stuart Mill says, "They grow richer, as it were, in their sleep, without working, risking, or economising." For he said later on, "The statement of Mill 88 to income, which showed a tendency constantly to increase, referred to land in Eng. land under special circumstances which did not exist here." Here again, however, he is wrong, for the income from ground values has increased here from £1,000,000, to £6,000,000 in less than forty years. This sort of income, or rather tribute right, increases faster in every new country, Victoria, included, than in old countries. Of course, the ordinary farmer gets none of it, because we tax him a great deal more than the ground rent of his land ever comes to. The squatters, and especially the owners of city land, get it all, because we do not tax them. Mr. Harper uses these subterfuges in order that the taxation of the farmer may be continued, and the unearned and increasing incomes of the landlords may be exempted from taxation forever. And some so-called

farmers' representatives help him all they ment of the frozen meat industry made sheepcan. growing more profitable than wheat-growing. What Mr. Murray Smith did not know is, that the 800,000 acres laid down in grass are mostly small properties, which were previ ously held in an unimproved state by land companies. The land value tax caused these companies to cut up their estates and to sell them in small lots to those who wanted to work on them; as a consequence nearly 5000 new farms have been created in New Zealand.

Mr. R. Murray Smith has made a discovery. He has found that during the three years the land value tax has been in operation in New Zealand, wheat land has fallen from 402,000 acres to 242,000 acres, and that land laid down in grass has been increased by 800,000 acres. From these facts he argues that the tax on land values is not favourable

ONALI

What curious shape familiar objects assume when looked at through the spectacles of invincible prejudice is clearly shown by Mr. Murray Smith's assumed discovery.

One of the many untrue statements promul. gated by the "Argus," reads as follows:-"The doctrine of taxing land values came to us from the United States. Has it won over a solitary state of the union? On the contrary, we know that it has been rejected by all, and that the forty-five states have, with absolute unanim. ity, set the project aside as unfair to the cultivator, and have instead adhered to their tax on wealth-on wealth in all its forms, so that the charge falling upon all may be light upon all."

The above quotation is taken from its Leader

of the 12th last. It is untrue in every word. The tax on land values has not been rejected by "all

of the forty-five states," nor by a single one of them. Nor is it true that they all adhere to the tax on wealth, in the sense that the people approve of it. On the contrary, public opinion as well as that of experts, unanimously condemns it "as unfair to the cultivator." The system is not abandoned, because under the cast-iron constitution of the United States, it is almost impossible to effect constitutional changes which the plutocracy opposes. There, as here, the plutocrats love the wealth tax and abhor the tax on land values. Wherever the latter has been tried, it had to be discontinued, because the courts declared it unconstitutional, and not because the people rejected it. The people have never yet had a show to reject it, and when they get that chance it is safe to predict that they will accept it instead.

Eat this and it