The writer of this book has been watching the social process for twenty years, trying to figure out one thing—how the change from competition to co-operation can be brought about with the minimum of human waste. He has come to realize that the first step is a mental one; to get the people to want the change. That means that the program must be simple, so that the masses can understand it. As a social engineer you might work out a perfect plan, but find yourself helpless, because it was hard to explain. As illustration of what I mean, I cite the single tax, a theory which has a considerable hold in America, but which politically has been utterly ineffective.

A few years ago a devoted enthusiast in Southern California, Luke North, started what he called the "Great Adventure" to set free the idle land. In the campaign of 1918 I gave my help to this movement, and when it failed I went back and took stock, and revised my conclusions concerning the single tax. Theoretically the movement has a considerable percentage of right on its side. Land, in the sense that single taxers use it, meaning all the natural sources of wealth, is certainly an important basis of exploitation, and if you were to tax land values to the full extent, you would abolish a large portion of privilege—just how large would be hard to figure. I was perfectly willing to begin with that portion, so I helped with the "Great Adventure." But a practical test convinced me that it could never persuade a majority of the people.

The single tax proposal is to abolish all taxes except the tax on land values. Then come the associations of the bankers and merchants and real estate speculators, crying in outraged horror, "What? You propose to let the rich man's stocks and bonds go free? You propose to put no tax on his cash in the vaults and on his wife's jewels? You propose to abolish the income tax and the inheritance tax, and put all the costs of government on the poor man's lot?"

Now, of course, I know perfectly well that the rich man dodges most of his income tax and most of his inheritance tax. I know that he pays a nominal pittance on his cash in the bank and on his wife's jewels, and likewise on his stocks and bonds. I know that the corporations issuing these stocks and bonds would be far more heavily hit by a tax on the natural resources they own; they could not evade this tax, and they know it, and that is why they are moved to such deep concern for the fate of the poor man and his lot. I know that the tax on the poor man's lot would be infinitesimal in comparison with the tax on the great corporation. But how can I explain all this to the poor man? To understand it requires a knowledge of the complexities of our economic system which the voters simply have not got.

How much easier to take the bankers and speculators at their word! To answer, "All right, gentlemen, since you like the income and inheritance taxes, the taxes on stocks and bonds and money and jewels, we will leave these taxes standing. Likewise, we assent to your proposition that the poor man should not pay taxes on his lot, while there are rich men and corporations in our state holding twenty million acres of land out of use for purposes of speculation. We will therefore arrange a land values tax on a graduated basis, after the plan of the income tax; we will allow one or two thousand dollars' worth of land exempt from all taxation, provided it is used by the owner; and we will put a graduated tax on all individuals and corporations owning a greater quantity of land, so that in the case of individuals and corporations owning more than ten thousand dollars' worth of land, we will take the full rental value, and thus force all idle land into the market."

Now, the provision above outlined would have spiked every single argument used by the opposition to the "Great Adventure" in California in 1918; it would have made the real intent of the measure so plain as to win automatically the additional votes needed to carry the election. But I tried for three years, without being able to persuade a single one of the "Great Adventure" leaders to recognize this plain fact. The single taxer has his formula, the land values tax and no other tax, and all else is heresy. Actually, the president of a big single tax organization in the East declared that by the advocacy of my idea I had "betrayed the single tax!" We may take this as an illustration of the difference between dogmatism and science in the strategy of the class struggle.

I first suggested my program immediately after the war, with the provision that the land thrown on the market should be purchased by the state, and used to establish co-operative agricultural colonies for the benefit of returned soldiers. But we have preferred to have our returned soldiers stay without work, or to displace the men and women who had been gallantly "doing their bit." By this means we soon had five million men out of work, and many other millions bitterly discontented with their wages. Again I took up the proposition for a graduated land tax, with the suggestion that the money should be used to provide a pension, first for every dependent man or woman over sixty years of age in the country, and second for every child in the country whose parents were unable properly to support it, whether because they were dead or sick or unemployed.

You may note that in advocating this program, you would not have to convert anybody to any foreign theories, nor would you have to use any long words; you would not have to say anything against the constitution, nor to break any law, nor to give occasion for patriotic mobs to tar and feather you. To every poor man in your state you could say, "If you own your own house and lot, this bill will lift the taxes from both, and therefore it will mean fifty or a hundred dollars a year in your pocket. If you do not own a home, it will take millions of idle acres out of the hands of the speculators, and break the price of real estate, so that you can have either a lot in the city or a farm in the country with ease."

Furthermore, you could say, "This measure will have the effect of drawing the unemployed from the cities at once, and so stopping the downward course of wages. At the same time that wages hold firm, the cost of food will go down, because there will be millions more men working on the land. In addition to that, the state will have an enormous income, many millions of dollars a year, taken exclusively from those who are owning and not producing. This money will be expended in saving from suffering and humiliation the old people of the country, who have worked hard all their lives and have been thrown on the scrap-heap; also in making certain that every child in the country has food enough and care enough to make him into a normal and healthy human being, so that he can do his share of work in the world and pay his own way through life."

I submit the above measure to those who believe that the road to social freedom lies by some sort of land tax. But before you take it up I invite you to consider whether there may not be some other way, even easier. There is a homely old saying to the effect that "molasses catches more flies than vinegar"; and I am always looking for some way that will get the poor what they want, without frightening the rich any more than necessary.

I know a certain type of radical whom this question always exasperates. He answers that the opposition will be equally strong to any plan; the rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs—and so on. In reply I mention that among the most ardent radicals I know are half a dozen millionaires; I know one woman who is worth a million, who pleads day and night for social revolution, while the people who work for her are devoted and respectful wage slaves. Herbert Spencer said that his idea of a tragedy was a generalization killed by a fact. I shall not say that the existence of millionaire Socialists and parlor Bolsheviks kills the theory of the class struggle, but I certainly say it compels us to take thought of the rich as well as of the poor in planning the strategy of our campaign.

And manifestly, if we want to consider the rich, the very last device we shall use is that of a tax. Nobody likes to pay taxes; everybody agrees in classifying taxes with death. Each feels that he is paying more than his share already; each knows that the government which collects the tax is incompetent or worse. Stop and recall what we have proven about the "iron ring"; the possibilities of production latent in our society. Realize the bearings of this all-important fact, that we can offer to mankind a social revolution which will make everybody richer, instead of making some people poorer! Exactly how to do this is the next thing we have to inquire.