III. THE SINGLE TAX AS A SOCIAL REFORM.
But the single tax is more than a revenue system. Great as are its merits
in this respect, they are but incidental to its character as a social reform.31
And that some social reform, which shall be simple in method but fundamental
in character, is most urgently needed we have only to look about us to see.
Poverty is widespread and pitiable. This we know. Its
general manifestations are so common that even good men
look
upon it as a providential
provision for enabling the rich to drive camels
through needles' eyes by exercising
the modern virtue of organized giving.32
Its occasional manifestations in recurring periods of "hard times"33
are like epidemics of a virulent disease, which excite
even the most contented
to ask if they
may not be the
next victims. Its spasms of violence threaten
society with anarchy on the one hand, and, through panic-stricken
efforts at restraint,
with loss
of
liberty on the other. And it persists and
deepens despite the continuous increase of wealth producing
power.34
That much of our poverty is involuntary may be proved, if proof be necessary,
by the magnitude of charitable work that aims to help only the "deserving
poor"; and as to undeserving cases — the cases of voluntary poverty — who
can say but that they, if not due to birth and training in the environs of
degraded poverty, 35 are the despairing culminations of long-continued struggles
for respectable independence? 36 How can we know that they are not essentially
like the rest — involuntary and deserving? It is a profound distinction
that a clever writer of fiction 37 makes when he speaks of "the hopeful
and the hopeless poor." There is, indeed, little difference between
voluntary and involuntary poverty, between the "deserving" and
the "undeserving" poor, except that the "deserving" still
have hope, while from the "undeserving" all hope, if they ever
knew any, has gone.
But it is not alone to objects of charity that the question of poverty calls
our attention. There is a keener poverty, which pinches and goes hungry,
but is beyond the reach of charity because it never complains. And back of
all and over all is fear of poverty, which chills the best instincts of men
of every social grade, from recipients of out-door relief who dread the poorhouse,
to millionaires who dread the possibility of poverty for their children if
not for themselves.38
It is poverty and fear of poverty that prompt men of honest instincts to
steal, to bribe, to take bribes, to oppress, either under color of law or
against law, and — what is worst than all, because it is not merely
a depraved act, but a course of conduct that implies a state of depravity — to
enlist their talents in crusades against their convictions. 39 Our civilization
cannot long resist such enemies as poverty and fear of poverty breed; to
intelligent observers it already seems to yield. 40
But how is the development of these social enemies to be arrested? Only by
tracing poverty to its cause, and, having found the cause, deliberately
removing it. Poverty cannot be traced to its cause, however, without serious
thought; not mere reading and school study and other tutoring, but thought.
41 To jump at a conclusion is very likely to jump over the cause, at which
no class is more apt than the tutored class.42 We must proceed step by
step from familiar and indisputable premises. ... read
the book