Chapter  V

SECOND  BOSTON  OBJECT  LESSON
WASHINGTON  STREET  AND  THE  SINGLE  TAX*
I N  VIEW  of  the  nature  of  ground  rent  as  already
considered  there  is  one  way  that  promises  to
simplify  and  equalise  taxation,  viz.,  by  beginning  at
once  the  gradual  transfer  of  the  burden  to  shoulders
by  which  eventually  it  will  not  be  felt,  thus  tending
to  correct  the  distribution  of  wealth,  abolish  strikes,
silence  the  clamour  against  monopoly  and  special
privilege,  and  sweep  from  before  the  halting  wheels
of  social  and  moral  progress  much  of  the  degradation,
distress,  and  vice  precipitated  to-day  upon  society
by  want  on  the  one  hand  and  surfeit  on  the  other.
Men  who  have  large  selfish  interests  often  prove
themselves  just  as  open  to  conviction  of  fairness  and
soundness  as  those  who  have  small  selfish  interests.
So  far  as  the  case  is  made  plain  to  them  their  judgment
generally  will  be  impartial.  No  business  interest,  for
instance,  is  more  keenly  sensitive  to  crooked  taxation
than  is  the  real  estate  business;  none  quicker  to  take
alarm  at  the  sound  of  hostile  legislation.  No  one
would  claim,  and  few  would  allow,  that  to  justify  a
reform  it  should  be  shown  to  be  to  the  pecuniary
*  This  chapter  is  adapted  from  an  address  at  a  banquet  given  by  the  Massachusetts ­
  Single  Tax  League  to  Representative  Real  Estate  Men  in  the  Hotel
Brunswick,  Boston,  October  8,  1900.
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