Single Tax

A National Convention of the great Presidential year of 1924 was held in Manhattan. Before the Convention, the name of the Party was the Single Tax Party. After the Convention it was the Commonwealth Land Party. But the change was only a change of name.

The Single Tax principles of Henry George* were again affirmed in the Party's platform. Under the Single Tax program, the Government would assume practical ownership of all land. The Government would be supported by one tax alone, the tax for the use of land--in other words, rent.

For President, the Party nominated William J. Wallace, of Newark, N. J., President of the Eck Dynamo and Motor Co.; for Vice President, J. C. Lincoln, President of the Lincoln Motor Works of Cleveland.

Said the platform:

"All evils arising out of our unjust economic conditions, such as business depressions, hard times, unemployment, poverty and the fear of poverty, bad housing conditions and the crime, vice and disease due to these conditions, are the result of the private ownership of the earth and the appropriation of its products by the few. . . .

"War and strife, now and always due to economic maladjustment, would disappear with the elimination of private ownership of land, which has ever been the basis and the cause of all the world's economic troubles. . . .

"No structure built in violation of natural law can stand; civilization built in such violation must fall; other civilizations have gone down; the foundations of this civilization are crumbling. If civilization is to live, private ownership of land must go. If private ownership of land continues, this civilization is doomed."

*Henry George (1839-1897), after hardly more than a grammer-school education in Philidelphia, leda varied life, including seafaring, elopement, printing, journalism. In 1879 he published his most famous work, Progress and Poverty, which sold by millions and was translated into several languages. He toured Ireland, England, Australia for his cause--a single tax, a tax that would support all government by consuming all the economic rent of the land. The slogan of the Single Tax Party was at one time: "We Want the Earth."