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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9335, 19 October 1893, Page 4

Therk has been a very feeble renewal here of the discussion about single tax owing to the publication of Mr. Withy's pamphlet, but elsewhere the whole question seems to be played out. The Anti-Poverty Society, whose motto was the single tax, has found it convenient to change its name into some vague designation which it is difficult to keep in one's memory. But that Society must have changed its principles, for it lias elected as its president Sir George Grey, who was never a believer in the single tax theory. In the United States the single-tax party were once able to runa newspaper —nogreat achievement, one would think, in a country of sixty millions, where the banner of single tax was first raised. Mr. Henry George was a contributor. Mr. George is the most unfortunate of political prophets. He raised an outcry for a time, but he has not convinced one man of mark or ability who is able to carry on the single-tax propaganda. However, the Standard, which was the single-tax organ for the world, is now dead. Not enough subscribers could be found amongst the sixty millions of the United States to keep it alive. Why, even Auckland had once its single-tax paper, and if that were to be resuscitated now, it would, we believe, be the only thorough-going single-tax paper in the world. One of the duties of the Standard, while it lived, was to tell lies about how single-tax was progressing in these colonies. In September, 1891, referring to New South Wales, it spoke of "the new labour party, the single-tax party as it really is." Henry George himself wrote: — "To-day the commonwealths beneath the Southern Cross lead the single-tax van." This was to mislead the people of America, who would not listen to the theory. Mr. E. Pulsford, who is at present publishing in Sydney a series of articles on the value and taxation of land, in which, referring to single-tax, he says :—" To-day the craze is everywhere fast dying away, and even in these colonies it will not be long before the very name disappears." There will be no single-taxers left soon, except Henry George himself, and perhaps Mr. E. Withy, but we are not without hope that the latter may recover sufficiently to blush when anybody reminds him of his pamphlet.