The yearly tax bill took the whole of the economic rent, if not more, just as it now does in Connecticut. I remember that my step-father was glad to resign his advantages as a land-owner and accept a salary of five hundred dollars per year in a town, in lieu of his chances of being lifted into affluence by “the wedge thrust midway into the social structure,” which Mr. Clarke pictures for us. I suspect that Mr. Clarke never worked on a frontier farm.
Between the extreme West and the extreme East I presume that instances of economic rent can be found in farming districts, but my observation teaches me that it is an insignificant affair in the total economy of the nation. When you have swept off all buildings and other distinguishable betterments, all live stock and other personal property, and when you have deducted fair wages, or if you please the family support of the farmer (generally of a very meager sort), the residuum of economic rent, I am very sure, will not be worth the trouble of confiscation.
If the single-tax theory prevails, what shall be done in those cases where economic rent is a minus quantity? According to the Connecticut report, three hundred and seventy-eight farms out of six hundred and ninety-three (fifty-four per cent) report no profits, but losses instead. Should they not be compensated in some way? Would it be fair for the state to take only the choice cuts of economic rent, and leave the bone and gristle? The least that it could do would be to abolish taxes on all land that yields no return to an industrious cultivator. Of course, there are good farmers and bad farmers. Some can make a living where others can not. But when the Government, in addition to all its other duties, takes up the task of separating all the distinguishable betterments of the country from all the land in the country, and rack-renting the land afterward, it will probably stop short of the task of discriminating between good farmers and poor ones. It would be obliged to stop taxing the non-profit-making farmers, if indeed it did not consider them entitled to some compensation out of the treasury for their labor. I do not see how otherwise the single tax would abolish the poverty of these three hundred and seventy-eight Connecticut farmers.
V.
The solidarity and interdependence of useful industry dispose of the complaint that all except land-owners are crippled and curtailed of their chance of earning a living. Says Mr. Clarke:
“A material thing is not rightfully the subject of absolute property if the appropriation of it by the exertion of one man's natural powers interferes with the equal right of other men to exert their natural powers.
