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. ...
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