6 
THE A B C OF TAXATION 
tax contributes, in a manner especially direct, to the 
element of ground rent. 
Simple illustrations may help to open the mind 
to a consideration of whatever may seem novel 
or strange in the re-statement of a familiar truth. 
For instance: The cook turns the crank of her 
coffee mill; the whole coffee that was in the 
hopper comes out ground coffee, but it is coffee 
just the same. The Minneapolis miller lets on the 
water that turns the crank of his flour mill; the 
wheat that goes into the hopper comes out flour, 
wheat in a more subtle form. The people turn the 
crank of a great tax mill; the taxes that go into the 
hopper come out ground rent, no tax quality lost, no 
rent ingredient added. 
Or again: The myriad springs and rivulets of the 
great Mississippi are continuously delivering them 
selves in one great river to the sea. Suppose that some 
day you should read in the weather bulletin that 
nature had decided to suspend the regular return of 
these waters in clouds and rain and dew to their 
point of departure. How long would it be before 
the Mississippi Valley would be as parched and 
dry as the Desert of Sahara, or the North End of 
the city of Boston, or the East Side of the city of 
New York ? 
Or, more pertinent still, because more vital; The 
constant round of taxes and ground rent is the blood 
circulation of the body politic. When the heart throws 
out the life blood through the arteries, if that blood 
does not return through the veins, the patient dies — 
not of heart failure, but from loss of blood. When the 
public heart charges the arteries of the land with ground