THIRD BOSTON OBJECT LESSON 
9i 
rate amounts to say $90,000,000. Is it charged that 
Boston is to-day confiscating $90,000,000 of the land 
of her citizens? 
All taxes are expended in maintaining the value of 
land. How can any vested right, or statute law, or 
hoary custom make it confiscation for the community 
to tax a value of its own creation, especially since, 
through the capitalisation of an established land tax, 
it is now, or soon becomes, to the owner of the land, 
a burdenless tax? 
What Is Meant by the Single Tax 
At the eleventh Dinner-Discussion of the Economic 
Club of Boston, the club was addressed by Professor 
E. R. A. Seligman, of Columbia University, upon 
the topic: 
Resolved-. That it would be sound public policy to 
make the future increase in ground rent a subject of 
special taxation. 
On that occasion there was printed and placed at 
each plate a statement of the meaning of the single 
tax, which, slightly revised, was as follows: 
1. It means the abolition of all taxation (not 
regulative or restrictive) except that upon land values. 
2. It means the gradual transfer to land of all those 
taxes now raised from buildings and other improve 
ments, personal property, etc. 
3. It means that Boston would raise its whole tax 
in the same way that less than one-half of it is now 
raised, viz., by a tax upon the value of its land. 
4. It means to provide for common needs out of 
ground rent — a common product — instead of out of 
Wages — an individual product.