MOVEMENT  FOR  HIGHER  WAGES

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in  the  course  of  private  business  which  cannot  be  assessed,
and  even  in  the  case  of  public  companies,  the  possibility
of  evading  heavy  taxation  by  watering  stock,  distributing
bonuses  and  by  other  means  of  concealing  profits,  would
have  to  be  considered  by  statesmen  guided  by  an  economic
policy.  Economists  will  declare  that  these  elements  of
income  are  a  legitimate  object  of  taxation  wherever  they
can  be  reached,  in  that  they  are  the  result  of  public
activities  and  public  needs.  How  far  and  in  what  ways
they  can  best  be  reached  are  questions  for  politics  as
distinguished  from  economics.
These  practical  qualifications  do  not,  however,  impair
the  value  of  the  light  which  economic  analysis  throws
upon  the  paths  of  the  progressive  policy.
If  the  public  mind  once  firmly  fastens  on  the  economic
principle  that  taxation,  in  whatever  way  imposed,  tends  *
to  settle  on  the  economic  rent  of  land,  high  profits  of
monopolies  and  other  “  unearned”  elements  of  individual
income,  it  is  likely  that  the  assumption  of  public  property
by  means  of  progressive  taxation  will  be  more  rapid  and
more  systematic  than  hitherto.
§  4.  Working-Class  Movement  for  Higher  Wages.
The  other  line  of  advance  is  the  organised  pressure  of
the  working  classes  for  an  increasing  proportion  of  the
*  This  tendency  is  of  course  in  many  instances  thwarted  or
retarded  by  the  effect  of  leases  and  other  contracts  and  by  various
forms  of  friction  which  impede  the  strictly  “economic”  settlement
of  taxation  here  indicated,  imposing  for  a  time  new  burdens  upon
those  who  are  ill  able  to  bear  them.  The  tendency,  however,  of
practical  politicians  is  to  over-estimate  the  length  of  time  taken
by  a  tax  to  settle  on  rents.