y6 
THE A B C OF TAXATION 
he pays his ground rent, the natural tax. Why ask 
him to pay for the same things a second time? 
The people of Boston, as hereinbefore alleged, 
actually pay in single taxation a natural tax of 
$55,000,000, coupled with an unnatural and “double” 
tax of $13,000,000, a grand total of $68,000,000. 
They receive in return benefits amounting only to 
$23,000,000. The failure to pay all public expenses 
out of this natural tax of $55,000,000 is the cause of 
gross inequality in the division of wealth, an inequality 
greatly exaggerated by the additional $13,000,000 
unnatural double tax. 
The single tax stands for the recognition of a 
scientific principle of taxation. When or how it is 
to be introduced is not for us to say. All that is 
here asked is that you shall study the problem, adopt 
the single tax principles, and then begin to apply 
them. The complaint is against a condition and 
never against an individual or a class. 
The man who, when paying his water rate, or his 
city gas bill, or city electric light bill, pays in full for 
a public service rendered to him, is not paying a tax. 
How, then, could a land owner, who, in paying his 
single tax, would pay to-day not in full, but only 
fifty cents on a dollar for the communal service rendered 
him, say that he was paying a tax, or that he was the 
victim of confiscation? 
The proposal of the single tax is gradually to 
abolish the present complex, unequal, and systemless 
method of taxation, and to defray all public expenses 
from a tax upon land values alone. This surely 
would be a simple process. It would be to distribute 
the public burden with invariable justice, because in