SINGLETAX, The, is a name for the so cial reform which Henry George proposed in 'Progress and Poverty.' This book was first published in 1879, but the social reform it pro poses had been foreshadowed by its author in his monograph 'Our Land and Land published in 18'1. He had discussed it, also, in newspaper editorials and magazine articles, and had subjected it to criticism through extensive personal correspondence. Having satisfied himself of the economic and moral soundness and the political feasibility of the reform, he devoted his life, from the beginning of his task of writing 'Progress and P'overty' in 1877 until his death in 1897, to popularizing it and to promoting political action in furtherance of its legislative adoption. In the course of this agitation he wrote several additional books only less famous than 'Progress and Poverty,' among them being 'Social Problems,' 'Pro tection or Free Trade,' an open letter to Pope Leo XIII on 'The Condition of Labor,' 'A Perplexed Philosopher' (a criticism of Her bert Spencer in certain respects), and a pos. thumously published incomplete treatise, 'The Science of Political In addition he carried his agitational work to the lecture plat form, making two tours of Great Britain and Ireland, one of Australasia, and several through the United States and Canada. As an editor he advocated the reform first in the San Fran cisco Post (a daily newspaper) and later in the New York Standard (a weekly), both under his own proprietorship; and as a maga zine contributor he discussed it in the Popular Science Monthly, the North American Review, the Century Magazine, the Arena, and period icals of similar character in the United States and abroad. His political activities — includ ing two gigantic campaigns for mayor of New York (1886 and 1897), in the latter of which he suddenly died a few days before the elec tion, were inspired and rigidly governed, like his authorship and his editorial work and lec turing, by his devotion to the Singletax.
Coming first into use in 1888, this name is the one now best known in the United States, Canada and Australasia. It had currency in Great Britain for a time, but the more familiar term there has for several years been etaxation of land values.a In Germany the current name is aBodenreform." Numerous other designa
tions have been used; "land restoration," °anti poverty,* °free soil," "land and labor," etc. None of them all, however, is satisfactorily de scriptive. Although the reform they designate involves alterations in the prevailing systems of land tenure, it is more than a land-tenure re form; while it would begin (partly for strategic reasons) with land-value taxation, and notwithstanding that (for more substantial reasons) this method may be advocated as a permanency, yet the reform itself has no fiscal limitations; whereas the tax proposed would by a single tax, the essential character of the reform is neither the tax nor its singleness; and although the reform aims at abolition of involuntary poverty and of exploitation of labor, its fiscal method for attaining these ends is one of its characteristics. To understand the Singletax, therefore, recourse to verbal defini tions of its names will not do. Its essential principles and its distinctive method for their realization in public policy and law, must be taken into account and considered together.
The primary social-utility principle of the Singletax, as formulated by Henry George, is uassociation in equality.° his is referred to as the natural law of progress. Without asso ciation progress would be impossible; without equality of opportunity to live and to earn, the progress which association produces reacts in juriously upon itself and engenders poverty as a social phenomenon.
The secondary social-utility principle of the Singletax proceeds logically from its primary one. Equality of opportunity to live and to earn being inconsistent with monopoly of nat ural resources, equal rights to natural resources (which are comprehended in the economic tech nical term eland") is an unescapable condition of social progress without social poverty. It is also imperative as a condition of the social morality that is implied by such phrases as "the brotherhood of man," and which, finding religious expression in the Golden Rule of Christian teaching and "the Second Great Com mandment" of Christian and Jewish teaching alike, gets political expression through the hu man equality clauses of the American Declara tion of Independence.