FACING VITAL ISSUES.

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19604, 17 June 1935, Page 9

FACING VITAL ISSUES.

i (To the Editor.) '' Sir, —In his rejoinder Mr John Sykes opines that I do not want to f engage in a controversy on Socialism. ; 110 is right there, because I regard ' Socialism, not as a vital issue, but as 1 a carbunoular manifestation that the L economic body lias been poisoned by •100 much artificial interference with “jits functioning. To me Mr Sykes’ ’•‘‘vital” issues are just so many run--1 ning isores on the body politic, and to } further infect the body with more ol ‘| Hie poison which has caused these hideous and painful excrescences does not appeal to me as a cure. However, since Mr Sykes appears to be just I frothing for a light I will oblige him l'or a few rounds. Firstly, then, let us get clear on the matter of terms and definitions. Since it is my letters that are being attacked 1 think it only fair that my terms should be used, unless they can ho proven lo bo incorrect and inapplic- • able. Since. 1 have been deaf 1 have I had a few challenges lo debate, and 1 am only sorry that my physical disI ability precludes me from aeeepling. As it happens, 1 debated Socialism publicly some ill years ago, and i have more than once been team leader for debates before audiences ranging up to and over 3000. If I could do so now I would leach some folk, from Hie platform, that a debaler’s llrsl business is to get terms and dellni-

lions settled, and his second is to stick to the point. Nowhere in my advocacy of land restoration have I called It ‘‘single tax." Henry George explained in , “Progress and Poverty” that what was , being advocated was the collection of “economic rent,” and he iuscd the I term “single tax" merely because ; people had become accustomed to the , term “tax” for all State collections. I However, no land restoration advocates i In New Zealand use the term “single ' tax," and none in the United States of America that I know of. One of the , journals is called “No Taxes,” to make the thing plain. “To call this rent a lax obscures j the principle and misdescribes the nature of the charge,” writes -Mr Janies Dundas White, in “Our Land, and How to Make It So.” He goes on: “It is not a tax on any process or product of industry, or on anything that should be regarded as private property. If is simply a rent for Ihe land, which has been provided by ; nature, and ought to be treated as Hie common property of alb” Thai is so, and only the “old hands” who once took an interest in land restoralion (in earlier times known as "single lax”) hut who have not followed it up, would now use the misleading term. I have now taken up enough space for one letter in clearing the ground. I hope 1 will lie pardoned for this, because "shocking inexactitude in the ■use of economic lerms” jars on my mind liA*» false note on a musician's

car. I feel confident that Mr Sykes 1 will not mind this correction, and will ■ in future uso the correct term “land , restoration." I will reply to the body \ of bis letter in another issue, and would ask him in Ihe meantime to J possess tils soul in patience. *1 am, , etc., ; T. E. Mc.MILLAN,, ' Matamata, June 14. 1 33a