12 THE CONDITION OP LABOR.
Christianity teaches us that all men are brethren ; that their true interests are harmonious, not antagonistic. It gives us, as the golden rule of life, that we should do to others as we would have others do to us. But out of the system of taxing the products and processes of labor, and out of its effects in increasing the price of what some have to sell and others must buy, has grown the theory of "protection," which denies this gospel, which holds Christ ignorant of political economy and proclaims laws of national well-being utterly at variance with his teaching. This theory sanctifies national hatreds; it inculcates a universal war of hostile tariffs; it teaches peoples that their prosperity lies in imposing on the productions of other peoples restrictions they do not wish imposed on their own ; and instead of the Christian doctrine of man's brotherhood it makes injury of for- eigners a civic virtue.
" By their fruits ye shall know them." Can anything more clearly show that to tax the products and processes of industry is not the way God intended public revenues to be raised ?
But to consider what we propose the raising of public revenues by a single tax on the value of land irrespective of improvements is to see that in all respects this does conform to the moral law.
Let me ask your Holiness to keep in mind that the value we propose to tax, the value of land irrespective of improvements, does not come from any exertion of labor or investment of capital on or in it the values produced in this way being values of improvement which we would exempt. The value of land irrespective of improvement is the value that attaches to land by reason of increasing population and social progress. This is a value that always goes to the owner as owner, and never does and never can go to the user ; for if the user be a
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