The Single Tax v World War One (7) May-August 1910
“land taxes are in force in practically every one of the British Colonies”
War and conquest tend to concentrate political power and lead to the institution of slavery.
They also naturally result in the appropriation of land. A dominant class, who concentrate power in their own hands, will soon concentrate ownership of land.
- Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Ch 41 The Law of Human Progress (1879)
Effects of land value taxation
The People’s Budget finally passes
American Georgist Tom L. Johnson and his encounter with Henry George
Soldiers on manoeuvre - a stock Punch theme
Parliament suspended
Battle won, war not over: the Land Union takes over from the anti-Budget League.
“for a body of determined men smarting under a sense of injustice, their restraint was wonderful”
“The valuation of land will engage the attention of the country, and there is no more interesting or profitable subject to which it could devote itself.”
SECOND BUDGET
David Lloyd George, House of COMMONS, June 30, 1910.
I Am introducing a Budget this year under circumstances which, to say the least, are very unusual, and I think I may say entirely without precedent.
But in spite of that nothing has hindered the growth of Expenditure. [OPPOSITION cheers.] …
But the greatest growth of all has been in the Navy. The increase here has been considerable-something like £5,500,000. Last year there was an increase increase of nearly £3,000,000; this year there is another increase of about £5,500,000. I would remind the House, by giving one or two figures, how expenditure upon the Navy has grown during the last few years.
In 1886 the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Conservative Government resigned his position rather than assent to Navy Estimates of a little over £13,000,000.
To-day they are £40,600,000, and I believe some people are not satisfied even with that. The total expenditure of the year, as the Committee will find by referring to the Papers that have been circulated, to £171,857,000.
From Better Times, Speeches by the right hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P. Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910).
The new King, George V.
Author JM Barrie, Single Taxer
Vancouver, Single Tax city
“land taxes are in force in practically every one of the British Colonies”
The great valuation begins: “Every single piece of land in the United Kingdom”
“Ninety per cent. of the wages goes in rent, ten per cent. in food.”
Cart before horse
“The long struggle for a Valuation Bill developed into a great campaign over the whole battlefield of national politics.”
“Land is the mother, and Labour is the father of all wealth.”
“This issue of the centuries”
Five million publications
“reach every household with a packet of interesting and instructive leaflets”
The start of The Great Unrest
In 1909, 2.7 million working days were lost to strikes; by 1912, that number had skyrocketed to 41 million.
The Single Tax v Land Nationalisation
“no country’s trade has been scourged and destroyed like that of Britain. In no country is landlordism more alert, more firm and vicious in its grip”
“He is driven from the land of the Dukes in Scotland, England and Ireland, and it set down by the Canadian trains on the land of the same Dukes in Canada.”
“this land system, this common malignant enemy which is incessant in its attacks on the interests of the Empire, on the lives of nations and individuals”
“We shall defend our Empire by making ourselves the indispensable friends of our neighbours.”
“The valuation of land is the first step towards raising a new social and national structure.”
“Every conceivable motive urges us to press immediately towards this one objective of breaking the power of land monopoly utterly.”
Depopulation
The national land valuation begins - landowners receive Form IV …
“a mass of obscure conundrums relating to land values”
Punch agitates
