The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, 29, 1912. THE SINGLE TAX.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 27, 29 May 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, 29, 1912. THE SINGLE TAX.

Phat the Hon. Geo. IWlds was not ■ received with unbounded enthusiasm on the occasion of his visit to Stratford 'is scarcely to be wondered at, for appearing as he does in the guise of the apostle of the United Labour Party, a community which consists largely of small farmers is likely to \ie\v his utterances with suspicion. That the views expressed by Mr Fowlds are his honest and sincere convictions we have no doubt, but that in striving for ideals he has deluded himself into imagining that single tax is the one great panacea for all the ills oi" man we equally believe. The address he gave in Stratford evidenced his excellent theoretical knowledge of his subject. The case he made out sounded very well indeed—theoretically—but as Mr Fowlds himself was hound to admit when pressed by a questioner at the close of his address, his argument remains to be proved. Mr Fowlds' main point appears to be with regard to the "unearned increment," a something which he tells us the owners of land are taking and which does not belong to them. A good deal was said about communitycreated value, but allowing such to exist, 'how can it be separated from the owner's value? Mr Fowlds told his audience that unimproved land values had increased in New Zealand by £126,000,000 during the past nineteen years, and, in effect, that the nonlaud owning worker had created this increase and made a present of it to the land-owning section of the community. It has been computed that the land-owners, land-users and their dependants, number about two-thirds of the Dominion's total population, and

we presume Mr Fowlds, bo bo at all logical, will admit their right to twothirds of the £126,000,000, and all that then remains will be to ascertain to whom the remaining third ought to go. That probably is quite easy for Mr Fowlds and his friends to decide, but to Hie average practical man who is not avowedly out to plunder his neighbour or to reap where he ha« not sown, the question is as difficult to answer as would be the problem of adjusting the difference in wealth between a rich manufacturer and the employees who had made his business. That land values should lie taxed up to a certain poini and that the tax should bo graduated is just and sound reasoning, hut to argue that the whole of the rental value of all the land should belong to the community is pure and unadulterated nonsense l . Mr Fowlds is a well-meaning idealist who can afford to air his fanciful views, but he will find ii rather difficult to make converts to his doctrine.